Tag: Sakertours

Our annual tour to Romania has ended. This is a relatively short 9 days tour aiming to see as many mammal species as possible! Yet again it was an action packed tour with a lot of mammal sightings and fantastic starry nights in the Danube Delta and the Carpathians. This year we saw an amazing 58 species of mammals and this was the first time we could observe the rare Marbled Polecat. There were many other highlights too which included a rather brief European Mink sighting as well as Eurasian Forest & Hazel Dormouse, Romanian and Common Hamster, Northern Birch Mouse, Bechstein’s and Geoffroy’s Bats and five spoecies of shrews! A great tour with lots of fun! This is still the ultimate mammal tour in Europe, so if you want to see mammals in this continent this is a tour for you! Come and join us in 2025!

Our Bee-eater hide was excellent throughout June and most of July with some excellent actions. These colorful birds are always firm favorites for our guests and spending a few hours with their daily activity offers a great chance and unique experience. Europe’s most colorful birds usually arrive back in early May and start their activity around the breeding places. Normally from 15 or the latest from 20th May their photography can start. In 2024 it was an extreme years when the first Bee-eaters were observed as early as mid April in Hungary and the entire breeding season was early. We had fantastic mating activity already from 10th May and action never stopped until late July. Great fun! Come and join us for our June 2025 Hortobagy Bird Photography tour: https://www.sakertour.com/hide-photography/hungary-photo-tours/spring-summer-hide-photography-tour/#price-and-date

We finished our annual GT the first time excluding Slovakia from the itinerary, thus being one day shorter and visiting Hungary and Transylvania (Romania) only during the tour.
Our expectations were exceeded as we managed to record more species during the tour as on any previous one and broke the ‘record’ standing for 10 years as we managed to put down 234 bird species on our list.

Luckily all major highlights were seen, including 10 woodpecker and 9 owl species with the tricky Three-toed Woodpecker, the scarce White-backed Woodpecker included as well as the sought-after Ural Owl and Tengmalm’s Owl.
We birded the lowlands in Hungary with great wetlands giving us such great birds as Broad-billed Sandpiper and Great Snipe, while reaching higher altitude zones in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania where we saw Western Capercaillie, Eurasian Pygmy Owl and ‘Carpathian’ Brown Bears. The most scenic parts in Transylvania were the Békás Gorge where Wallcreeper was a dream bird for many of us to see and the Torockó Valley which held some trickier to see species like Sombre Tit and Common Rock Thrush.

Click here for the report of the tour with all the details and images give a concise reading what happened in 11 days of birding in Central Europe.