Our fixed date tours starting in Hungary
Excellent value for money and guaranteed departure from a minimum of three persons
Hungary & Transylvania GT (11 days)
Join us for the classic Eastern European spring grand tour. Our journey across the Carpathian Basin will take us first to the Kiskunság National Park and then to the pretty Zemplén Hills, a foothill range of the Carpathians. We will then descend to the bird-rich grasslands and wetlands of Hungary’s famous Hortobágy National Park and finally into Romania where we will explore spectacular limestone gorges and the dark mountain forests of Transylvania – the home of Brown Bears as well as the original Dracula! This amazing tour visits all the important bird habitats of the region and is hard to beat in terms of variety. The bird list is anticipated to be an impressive 200+ species and our targets include: Eastern Imperial, Golden and White-tailed Eagles; Long-legged Buzzard; Red-footed Falcon; Saker Falcon; Eagle, Ural, Pygmy, Tengmalm’s and Scops Owls; all ten European woodpecker species and a great selection of warblers (Barred, Savi’s, River, Moustached and Marsh). Other special birds on our agenda are: Pygmy Cormorant, Great Bustard, Little Crake, Corncrake, Collared Pratincole, Alpine Swift, Wallcreeper, Rufous-tailed Rock Thrush, Thrush Nightingale, Red-breasted and Collared Flycatchers as well as Ortolan and Rock Buntings.
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Tours:
2150 €/person
Booking closed
2230 €/person
Places available
Hortobágy-Zemplén Autumn Tour (7 days)
October in Hungary is something special! One of eastern Europe’s truly great bird areas, an autumn visit to the Hortobágy is hard to beat. In addition to its many scarce resident birds, the sweeping steppe grasslands and reed-fringed lakes of Hungary’s most famous National Park are a vital staging post for huge numbers of passage migrants and winter visitors streaming south to escape the iron grip of winter further north. The rare Lesser White-fronted Goose arrives at this time to be joined by as many as 100,000 Common Cranes! Though in recent years the Lesser White-fronted Geese were rather difficult this time of the year as they were only staying a few days in the Hortobágy area. We have better success rate finding them on our Red-breasted Goose Special Tour in November. Raptors are abundant and October is an excellent month to look for them. Eastern Imperial and White-tailed Eagles, Long-legged and Rough-legged Buzzards, Northern Goshawk and Saker are all present at this time. As we search the steppes for them, we may well encounter Great Bustards, a late autumn gathering of Eurasian Stone-curlews or a flock of Eurasian Dotterels. Long-eared Owls will be gathering at favoured winter roosts in their hundreds! We will also visit the beautiful Zemplén Hills, where the autumnal forests, richly hued in golds, reds and browns, harbour Ural and Eurasian Eagle Owls, gangs of Hawfinches and up to eight different species of woodpecker, including the sought-after White-backed.
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Tours:
1450 €/person
Places available
Red-breasted Goose Special Tour (5 days)
This short tour was designed to see one of the finest looking waterfowl in the World! The vulnerable Red-breasted Goose is our prime target but we have excellent chance to see the equally rare Lesser White-fronted Goose while Great Bustard and Saker Falcon are quality supporting cast. Our main focus will be the geese watching but if time allows we will have the chance to look for other winter visitors like Rough-legged Buzzard, Merlin, Snow Bunting and big number of Long-eared Owls. Early November is the arrival time of the Red-breasted Geese and numbers increased in the World Heritage Hortobágy National Park in the last 20 years. In recent years up to 2000 were counted in November and we likely to encounter flocks of 5-250 in amongst the large number of Greater White-fronted Geese. The Scandinavian Lesser White-fronted Geese leave the Hortobágy by early October but with the big hordes of geese we get increasing number of Siberian birds and our chance to see the other vulnerable goose is excellent. If you would like to prolong your visit we can arrange extra days to look for woodpeckers and owls in the Zemplén Hills. Please advise our office if you planning any extension and we will be happy to help!
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Tours:
1050 €/person
Places available
Hungary-Slovakia Spring Tour (8 days)
Our spring tour to Hungary and Slovakia is a fantastic combination of special birds in a short 8-days tour. This action-packed birding adventure combines the bird-rich grasslands and wetlands of the Kiskunság National Park and the world famous Hortobágy National Park with the quiet woodlands of the pretty Zemplén Hills and the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in Slovakia. A May visit always produces the longest bird list and our targets include: Eastern Imperial and White-tailed Eagles; Long-legged Buzzard; Red-footed Falcon; Saker; Eagle, Ural, Eurasian Pygmy and Tengmalm’s Owls; all ten European woodpecker species as well as a great selection of warblers (Barred, Savi’s, River, Moustached and Marsh). Other special birds we will be searching for are: Pygmy Cormorant, Great Bustard, Hazel Grouse, Little Crake, Collared Pratincole, Collared and Red-breasted Flycatchers, Eurasian Nutcracker and Rock Bunting. If we lucky even the late arrival Corncrake is a possibilty in some years. Hungary and Slovakia in spring is a wonderful birding experience. A selection of species, which have disappeared from much of Western Europe, such as Lesser Grey and Red-backed Shrikes, are still happily a common sight in the countryside here. Thanks to our extensive network of local contacts we will have the most up-to-date information on bird movements from day to day and quite simply, nobody knows our backyard better than us!
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Tours:
1690 €/person
Places available