We run only one tour to Transylvania for bear photography in the autumn. It is a great time to see these magnificent creatures and our 2017 tour was a great success again! We enjoyed several super encounters with a total of 22 bears in 3 different hides in the course of 3 days plus had some exciting extra events such as Hazel Grouse showing for two consecutive days in front of the hides. For some lucky photographers it stayed around for 40 minutes! Wow! We also had excellent landscape photography and a selection of birds around our drinking hides. It is a short but very exciting tour!

In 2018 we will run this tour again from 7 to 11 September and more informations you can see HERE.

Carpathian Brown Bear drinking (Photo: János Oláh)

Male Hazel Grouse in front of our hide (Photo: Zoltán Nagy)

Sakertour team

We have just uploaded the report of our latest Grand Tour to the Central Europe! We have been running this Hungary, Slovakia & Transylvania tour for 6 years now and it yielded amazing results in 2017 too. We got all European breeding woodpeckers, seven species of owls and lot more! You can read about it here as Gábor Simay reports on this years expereinces! We also have our 2018 dates and the tour already has a guaranteed departure. Come and join us for some great birding with a newly updated itinerary!!

Collared Flycatcher (János Oláh)

The Transylvania Birding Tour with its new itinerary was a great success this year! The tour recorded a total of 145 species. It is a fantastic tour to see amazing forests, limestone gorges, a selection of great birds, Carpathian Brown Bears and a crossection of Transylvania. This hidden part of Europe still has fantastic natural resources and still has large carnivores too! In the European tourism Transylvania is getting more and more popular and after 20 years of experience in the area we have also decided to launch a birding tour in this fascinating place. For overseas birders it makes a great 15 days tour to Romania if combined with our Danube Delta Spring Tour.

Come and join us for 2018 as the new dates are now online for the Transylvania Birding Tour! The report of the 2017 tour is now available at the trip reports section!

The 'balcanica' race of the Shore Lark in Transylvania (Photo: János Oláh).

Red-rumped Swallow nest building in Transylvania in 2017 (Photo: János Oláh).

Ural Owl chicks in Transylvania. We have a good chance to see these owl on the tour (Photo: János Oláh).

Barred Warbler in Transylvania (Photo: János Oláh).

White-backed Woodpecker in Transylvania. It was seen well on the tour with other woodpeckers like Three-toed Woodpecker (Photo: Zoltán Baczó).

Sakertour Team

Please take alook at our birding tour calendar and the photography tour calendar as we have uploaded the first tour dates for 2018. More to follow but the best dates are quickly sell so why not to secure your 2018 holiday with us in time!

Our most popular birding tour is the three country Hungary, Slovakia & Transylvania GT which already have dates for 2018 and this tour is linkable with our Danube Delta tour every year!

The Hungary Spring Hide-photography tour dates has already been uploaded and we have two back to back tours in 2018! If you looking for a longer photography holiday we have a special 10% offer for photographers booking both tours!

Ural Owl has been seen every year on our GT tour alongsid with another 8 species of owls (Photo: János Oláh).

Rock Thrush is also a target on our GT tour (Photo: János Oláh).

Red-foted Falcon is one of the star bird on our Hungary Spring photography tours. In 2018 we run our tours in the mating season of these delightful birds (János Oláh).

Sakertour team

We have designed a short break in 2014 to see two rare and globally threatened waterfowl in Hungray: the RED-BREASTED GOOSE and the LESSER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. Hortobágy National Park in Hungary is probably the easiest place to see these two geese within one short tour. The Red-breasted Goose numbers are continously increasing in the last 20 years (sort of doubled in every 5 years) and nowadays it is easy and predictable to see them. We regularly have hundreds of these majestic birds! The supporting cast is also excellent with thousands of Cranes, Eastern Imperial, Greater Spotted and White-tailed Eagles, Long-legged Buzzard, Saker, Great Bustard and with an extension of a day or two you can see Ural Owl and woodpeckers in the nearby hills.

Our tour is running in late October and in March, please take a look at our tour calendar and select the most suitable dates for you! Come and see these rare geese with us! We also design custom tours for single travellers and friends!

We are staying in the newly opened Bíbic Nature Lodge and often both Red-breasted Goose and Lesser White-fronted Goose is a 'garden bird' here. Take a look of the images taken in the past two weeks from the lodge!

Red-breasted Geese by Tibor Juhász / Bíbic Nature Lodge

Lesser White-fronted Geese family by János Oláh

Red-breasted geese by Tibor Juhász / Bíbic Nature Lodge

Sakertour team

Sakertour is also a sponsor of the Saubermacher – The Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2016  (Hungary) competition.

The special Sakertour prize was given to Tamás Pajor for the image named 'The king is landing'.

Congratulations to him!

Our Danube Delta and Dobrudja Autumn tour was a great trip again and we have seen so many great birds and had really nice experinece in all the three top birding destinations visited during the tour. Last week of August is one of the best time to witness bird migration in this region but also good to find some of the more interesting breeding birds before they heading to the wintering places. We encountered 187 birds pecies on this a week long tour with highlights like Dalmatian and White Pelicans, Greater Flamingo (rarity in the country) Little Bittern catching 3 frog in a row in front of our boat, Levant Sparrowhawk, Saker Falcon, 12 Little Crake in one lake, Stone Curlew, Broad-billed Sandpipers, a total of 176 Pallas`s Gull, Citrine Wagtail, Isabelline and Pied Wheatear, Rufous-tailed Rock Thrush, Paddyfield Warbler, Red-breasted and Collared Flycatcher and finished the tour with 28 Eurasian Dotterel. Also the sheer number of shorebirds and terns in the Danube Delta was astonishing!

Thanks for joing to this trip, detailed trip report will follow soon but until then the next year date is already online: 25 August to 1 September.

Come and join us for this fantastic tour in 2017!

One of the 59 Red-necked Phalarope seen during the week. Photo: Zoltán Baczó

Young Little Bittern with a frog. Photo: Zoltán Baczó

Group of Broad-billed Sandpipers and Dunlins at Sachalin bay, Danube Delta. Photo: Zoltán Baczó

Sakertour team

Please take a look at our Spring birdwatching tour reports! You can see and read our reports so you have an idea about our highly succesfull tours in May 2016.

Hungary, Slovakia & Transylvania GT 2016

Hortobágy – Zemplén Spring Tour (Hungary)

Danube Delta – Dobrudja Spring Tour (Romania)

Come and join us in 2017! Now we have all tour dates online in our BIRDING TOUR CALENDAR!

Male Red-footed Falcon on the Hortobágy (János Oláh)

Migrating European Honey Buzzards in Dobrudja, Romania (János Oláh)

The 'alpestris' race of Ring Ouzel in the Carpathian Mountains (János Oláh)

Sakertour team

Our longest and most popular birding tour, the Hungary, Slovakia  Transylvania GT has ended and yet again it was a remarkable tour with a lots of tour highlights and fantastic birding in Eastern Europe! The report will be available soon but do not hesitate to book your place on this amazing tour for 2017!

Trip highlights from the 2016 Grand Tour:

– 228 species recorded (including 3 heard-only)

– 10 species of woodpeckers (with White-backed and Three-toed as the highlights)

– 9 species of owls recorded (the Tengmalm's Owl was heard only)

– unforgettable mega views of Pygmy Owl

– 5 species of grebes (the Slavonian a scarce passage migrant in Hungary)

– 16 species of raptors (including the mighty Saker Falcon)

– magnicifent views of all the 3 marsh terns

– huge male Great Bustard

– 3 species of snipes in the same plot

– mega views of the shy Nutcracker

– 17 species of warblers

– Wallcreeper on the ground

– 4 species of flycatchers

– good selection of scarce birds (Broad-billed Sandpiper, Black-winged Pratincole, Gull-billed Tern, Red-rumped Swallow, Sombre Tit etc.)

Wallcreeper is allways a great bird to see (Photo: János Oláh).

Sombre Tit is now also possible on this tour (Photo: János Oláh).

Sakertour team