Our Bear Hides are very good in late summer and early autumn. We regularly run these short tours since 2016 in the early September period. We have had excellent bear activity and in the last three years the shy Hazel Grouse has also been regularly photographed from the bear hides. Our 2018 bear photography tour just ended and everybody was very happy with the results! About 9 different bears were seen and photographed and there were 3 different visits from Hazel Grouse to our hides too. We have also been stalking and photographing these beautiful grouses along the tranquil forest tracks – sometimes several seen in a day.

Now as we will be launching our Bears & Birds Photography Tour from April 2020 (you will find this tour on our website from March 2019) we have also decided to rename our short bear tour in the autumn as Autumn Bear and Hazel Grouse Photography Tour. Our 2019 dates has also been published. Come to Transylvania with us in September 2019!

Carpathian Brown Bear in September (Photo: János Oláh)

Hazel Grouse in front of the bear hide in September 2018 (Photo: Zoltán Baczó)

Landscape photography can be excellent in early September (Photo: Zoltán Nagy)

Hazel Grouse from our bear hide in September 2017 (Photo: tour participant Pál Marchhart)

Sakertour team

Year 2018 brought us some really nice birding surprizes and one reason was the Rose-coloured Starlings breeding in two places along the west coast of Black Sea, in Romania and Bulgaria. The romanian colony was as big as 2500 breeding pairs. The breeding started in the end of May and the last chicks left the colony in the end of July. Last time this species has bred in 2003 in Romania!

The colony. The Starlings has bred under rocks. (Photo: Beat Rüegger)

Displaying male Rosy Starling (Photo: Beat Rüegger)

Male and female Rosy Starling at the colony (Photo: Beat Rüegger)

Sakertour team

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!