Month: October 2013

The Crane migration in 2013 was / is (still happening) as spectacular as ever and the peak number was recorded on the 17th of October when 106 950 Cranes were counted in the Hortobágy National Park at four different roosting sites. The national park has a syncron count every Thursday at all the roosting places. Although this number was not the biggest ever number recorded at one time in the national park but a very impresive number indeed!

Flying Common Crane (Photo: János Oláh)

The Hortobágy National Park serves as one of the biggest (if not the biggest) gathering site for the Common Crane (Grus grus) in the World. The estimated number of birds passing through the park is about 120 000 – 140 000 individuals but now regularly over 100 000 birds staging in the park at one time.

Click here to watch the video of the Cranes going to roost at a roosting area which had 45 000 birds in 2013.

Gathering Cranes at a roosting site (Photo: János Oláh)

If you have never seen this spectacle do not hesitate to do so! Come and see the Cranes of the Hortobágy with Sakertour! We have custom and fixed tours as well! Please check out here!

Sakertour team

With our partner company, Limosa Holidays we had a very enjoyable and productive tour this Autumn where we recorded 170 species during 8 days of birding. Some species on our list are rare birds in Europe, such as Pallas´s Gull, Pied Wheatear or Paddyfield Warbler but we also encountered a great number of migrating birds as well, including masses of shorebirds, terns, raptors and passerines. The highlights species included Broad-billed Sandpiper, Terek Sandpiper, Marsh Sandpiper, Collared Pratincole, Little Tern, Gull-billed Tern, Caspian Tern, all the `marsh terns`, Lesser Spotted Eagle, Spotted Eagle, Levant Sparrowhawk and many many Red-backed Shrikes and Red-breasted Flycatcher…

You can read the detailed trip report here.

We stayed at some great hotels with welcoming and friendly people and enjoyed superb food and quality local wines. We are looking forward to seeing you here soon!

Juvenile Red-backed Shrike (Photo: Zoltán Baczó)

Autumn birding in the Danube Delta (Photo: Zoltán Baczó)

Sakertour team

Though the autumn forest is full of food for the Brown Bears, we had no less then five of them in two afternoons in front of our new hide (among them two cute cubs). They spent less time in front of us then they do in spring or summer, we still had the opportunity to take some nice images.

While not in the hide we had some time to do birwatching in the surrounding and despite of the unseasonally cold weather we had good activity with Wallcreeper, many Crested Tits and Nutcrackers which were buisy to collect food, especially nuts.

(Photos: Simay Gábor)

Sakertour team

We are delighted to announce that Zoltán Nagy our new photographer guide for some of our Romanian photo-tours managed to win the grand prize of 5 th. International „Milvus” Nature Photography Contest with his lovely image of a Waxwing in the winter forest of Transylvania (image name: winter visitor). Congratulation to Zoli! Please check out his current website for more information (though his new website is due to be launched soon).

´Winter visitor´ by Zoltán Nagy