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Birdwatching trip report - HungaryPeriod: 29.5.2007-5.6.2007Author(s): Alastair Richardson Key sites visited: Lake Ferto, Tata, Kecskemet, Hortobagy Hungarian Birdwatching May/June 2007 A conference in the charming village of Tihany on the shores of Lake Balaton brought my wife and me to Hungary earlier this year. As enthusiastic, if not very expert, birders we wanted to make the best use of this opportunity to see continental birds a long way from our home in Tasmania. Some research on the internet yielded a few possibilities, but we liked the look of the tours offered by Hungarian Birdwatching since they offered some experience of rural life in Hungary as well as pure birds, and they seemed to have a flexible approach to planning the tour. So I emailed Karoly Teleki and soon found that they were indeed very flexible and could put together a 6 day, 5 night, tour that fitted our schedule perfectly. Karoly organised accommodation for us in Budapest at the Hotel Hold, conveniently situated close to the parliament on the Pest side of the Danube. Karoly collected us from the hotel on the evening before we started the tour proper to show us some of the sights of Budapest, particularly the amazing new concert hall and national theatre, and then take us to dinner on one of the floating restaurants on the Danube, where we also met Janosz Matolcsy who would be looking after us later in the tour (and incidentally used one of the world’s more interesting gents toilets with a spectacular view across the Danube!). Next morning Karoly drove us from Budapest to the north west of the country, near the Austrian border. We went first to our accommodation in the Rozalia guesthouse in the little town of Sorrod, where we saw the first of many Greater Spotted Woodpeckers drumming busily on a power pole across the street. The guesthouse was beautifully appointed and we had a choice of two bedrooms and three bathrooms. We didn’t linger but headed off to pick up Laszlo Kozma, the first of three local guides. He took us to a “reconstructed” wetland on the edge of Lake Ferto, which actually straddles the Hungary/Austria border, becoming the Neusiedler See on the other side. The lake is shallow and the margins carry extensive weedbeds, areas of which are managed for the birds. From a high stand beside the road we looked out on a scene that to my surprise was similar to coastal habitats back home. In my ignorance I didn’t expect to see so many shorebirds: Redshank, Curlew, Black-tailed Godwit, Avocet, Kentish Plover, Turnstone, amongst others. We were able to survey the general scene while Laszlo picked out the specialities, such as Ruddy Shelduck and Ferruginous Duck, for us through his scope. We visited a couple of other viewing stands among the reedbeds, adding more species fast on this first day, and seeing a huge nesting colony of Black-headed Gulls all fly up together in a great spiralling cloud. We also became very familiar with the gorgeous Great White Egrets that have become the symbol of Hungary’s successful bird conservation. After a quick stop for lunch at the guesthouse we drove a couple of kilometres to the Eszterhazy Palace, where Hayden composed and first performed many of his works for his patron. We went there to look for woodpeckers on the old trees, but we had a short tour of part of the palace, which has been restored from the dereliction of the Second World War and the communist era. We had the first of many memorable meals in a small restaurant at the western end of the lake, with local wines, but to our regret Karoly could not join us in the latter since Hungarian law stipulates no alcohol at all for drivers. Day two in the Sorrod area dawned with scudding clouds and a cold wind. It stayed dry all day, but this was the only day (in our whole time in Hungary) when we wished we had another jumper. Karoly cooked breakfast, we met Laszlo and transferred to his 4WD, and set off down a maze of straight roads with right-angled bends in the peaty plains around the lake. A Hoopoe obligingly flew and settled in front of us as we drove down one track, and we walked across the natural grasslands to see a colony of Bee-eaters; photographs had prepared me for their brilliant colours, but not their swooping hawk-like flight. A Kingfisher streaked up and down one of the drainage channels, but the morning’s highlight was a nesting White-tailed Eagle. Laszlo is a raptor specialist and took us to where we could spot the nest, a surprisingly long way in amongst the trees in a patch of woodland. As we were examining the nest through the scope one of the adults appeared above the trees on its huge parallel-sided wings. It was mobbed by a pair of Buzzards and the scale of this bird, Hungary’s largest raptor, was immediately apparent. We were close to the Austrian border, and actually crossed it on foot over the Andau Bridge; only a small footbridge across a drainage canal, but the scene of many desperate escape attempts during the communist days, and many deaths. On the other side (watched by the Austrian border guard from his post up the road, but it’s all legal) we climbed an observation tower in the hope of seeing some Austrian Great Bustards, but not today. We had lunch at the ranger station and museum in the park where the ranger showed us the collections and told us the legend of Hanyistor, the web-footed, scaly-backed boy who is supposed to have been caught in the reed beds by two local fishermen. The ranger also made us a very welcome cup of coffee and told us that we were only his second ever Australian visitors. After lunch we went to see Laszlo’s special babies, a nest of four Saker chicks that he helped to ring a few weeks previously. Two birds remained near the nest in an isolated tree in the middle of a field of oil-seed, one on the nest and the other perched in the tree. The latter bird gave us a short flying display showing off its flickering, falcon flight. Only about 140 pairs of this bird nest in Hungary. As a fitting finale to this interesting, but chilly, day Karoly took us to the thermal spa at Sarvaz. There are many thermal baths in Hungary, but this was one of the most modern with an indoor/outdoor pool at 32°C, an intermediate one and then the 37°C pool where we really got the cold out of our bones. Back at the guesthouse Karoly showed us how to make authentic Hungarian goulash, which we ate with a bottle of kekfrankos red wine from the Sopron wine district in Hungary. In the morning we said farewell to Lake Ferto and headed back eastwards along the M1 motorway and then a little north to the old town of Tata. Our accommodation was in the Casablanca Hotel on the edge of a large artificial old lake dating from the 1500s, looking across the water to the castle and monastery. Here Karoly passed us on to Norbert Reizing, our guide for the next two days. Norbert is an excellent all-round field naturalist who could tell us almost as much about plant ecology and the local frog species as he could about birds. Like all our guides he has what a character in a schoolboy book once described as “supersonic earsight”; they all could pick out individual bird calls with amazing accuracy, locate them and get them in the scope while deaf old me was still trying to hear which one he meant. Norbert took us first to series of fish ponds near Tata which are mostly for carp production, but some are managed to encourage birds. Once again here were the mudflats and the shorebirds (Little Ringed Plover, Dunlin, Wood Sandpiper), though the cold winds of yesterday (now abated) had hastened many of them on their journey, apparently. We also explored the reed beds and saw Bearded Tits, the very noisy Great Reed Warblers and Marsh Warbler. Norbert worked hard to show me a Savi’s Warbler, but I was always too slow to get a good view. When the birds were quiet in what was now a warm and sunny afternoon we went and botanised on some limestone grassland where there was a diverse community including rare orchids. In the evening we scoured the woodlands around Tata’s lake for woodland birds before dinner at a lakeside restaurant. Day four started before breakfast with a walk through the lakeside woods, looking for any woodland species, but especially woodpeckers, of which there are potentially six on offer. We had already been lucky enough to see a Black Woodpecker at Tihany before the tour started, but here we were looking for Syrian Woodpeckers. No luck, but we did see Treecreeper, Nuthatch and Hawfinch. After a quick breakfast we drove to the Geresce hills, close to the Danube and settled ourselves on a small hilltop above the little village of Udvozoljuk Agostyanban to watch for raptors. It was a delightful morning and right on cue a pair of Imperial Eagles took off from their nest across the valley and climbed slowly on the thermals before cruising off for a day’s foraging. We also hoped for Short-toed Eagles, and although we failed with them we did see a Goshawk and a Honey Buzzard from another local hilltop. We had a picnic lunch among the hills and then walked up a wooded valley. Native beech forest at last, rather than the endless black locust, which is rapidly taking over as the dominant tree. A persistent pursuit through the trees, guided by Norbert’s earsight, finally yielded a good view of a Wood Warbler. Norbert tried to attract a woodpecker by drumming with a stone on the tree trunks, but in the end we headed back into Tata to investigate a record of a Syrian Woodpecker’s nest in a street tree in the town. We found the street, the tree and the hole, but no bird. Casting around, Norbert eventually heard the bird call and following the sound we found that it was coming from an athletics park closed to the public, since it is the training ground for the Hungarian Olympic team. Some impassioned pleading with the security man at the gate got us access and we finally had an excellent view of our third (and final, as it turned out) woodpecker. Dinner that night was at the Hilltop Winery, overlooking the Danube and Slovakia across the river, but first we joined a cellar tour and sampled some excellent wines. We arrived back at the Casablanca after dark, but just as we were farewelling Norbert we heard owls calling and tracked down a family of young Long-eared Owls silhouetted against the sky. It’s never over until it’s over. Next morning Janosz Matolcsy arrived after breakfast to take us to a very different scene. We had been in the wooded rolling hills of Transdanubia, but now were heading south east, around Budapest and into the plains of central Hungary. Our first destination was the area around Kecskemet on the plains, or puszta, lying between the two main rivers of Hungary, the Danube and the Tisza. We picked up our third guide, Laszlo Albert, en route thanks to the mobile phone, and he piloted us into the Great Plain. In my ignorance, once again, I had imagined that the puszta as an extension of the central Asian steppes, but it seems that these grasslands with patchy woodlands are partly the result of forest clearance in human times, along with grazing pressure. But whatever, it makes a marvellous, sky-dominated landscape. The wide flat horizon is barely broken by the long, low farm buildings, or tanyas, whitewashed and thatched. Our first stop was an ancient burial mound that gave a bit of a view, but the first impression was of wide skies and deafening silence, broken occasionally by Cuckoos (which were very common, as were Nightingales). While we were expecting a different set of birds here, the main objective was the Great Bustard. It is not always easy to get close to these birds and Laszlo made it clear that we might have to make do with a sighting from a kilometre or more. As we scoured the ground without success I saw what I took to be a Stork flying some distance away, but when I drew it to Laszlo’s attention he said “No stork, is bustard!” And here was this huge bird flying strongly, but unfortunately heading away from us. A surprise to me, since I had imagined that they did not fly often. At this point we had a little non-ornithological deviation to see a display of horse riding by the gulyas, the puszta horsemen after whom goulash is named. This was spectacular, if a bit touristy since we shared it with a large group of Primagaz employees on an outing. From there we went to lunch at the Somodi Tanya where we were to stay, and after the meal Janosz left for Budapest and we transferred to Laszlo’s car. We then proceeded to have one of those days when everything goes just right. I think if we had asked Laszlo to show us a Great Auk he could have produced it. We drove first down a whole series of roads and tracks that tested the springs of Laszlo’s little car to a viewing platform that looked over a drainage canal and a raised bank. We couldn’t see anything until we got to the top, but when we did, there were the Great Bustards! One male was little more than a hundred metres away, and another was displaying to a couple of females just a little further off. Further into the distances we could see two or three other parties, easy to pick up because of the big white powder puffs that were the displaying males. Through the scope the males seemed to turn themselves inside out as they revealed their white display feathers. Laszlo said we had done well to see so many and asked what else we would like see. I tentatively said that I had heard that there were Stone Curlews. Laszlo looked doubtful; a pair had nested not too far away last year but the site had been put to crops. But we went there and for half an hour tried unsuccessfully to conjure Stone Curlews from rocks and clumps of grass. For some reason Laszlo thought that it would be worth looking amongst the crops of kale, and amazingly managed to find a pair of birds sitting in the open, but with their heads only just showing over a ridge the best part of two hundred metres away. We watched patiently and eventually one of the birds got up and walked stiffly around to give us a good view. We moved to another wetland area and my wife said she would like to see a Roller. “Not many about here” said Laszlo, when one flew past us and perched in a tree fifty metres away. On the way through the reedbeds to a hide a Savi’s Warbler (which we had tried so hard to see at Tata) perched on the reeds and sang for so long that we could get the scope on him for a frame-filling view. We heard a Bittern call, and Laszlo was just saying how they were hardly ever seen at this time of year when one flew past, and it was only our fixation on that bird that prevented us from seeing a Little Bittern that Laszlo spotted at the edge of the reeds. Our run of luck continued on the way back to the tanya when a Nightjar flew in front of the car. We stopped and jumped out in time to hear the churring call and see it fly past us once again. Just one of those days. And I should say that we had an excellent dinner at a roadside czarda on the way home. Then it was our last day on puszta and the last of the tour. After we had made the acquaintances of some horses and very friendly, if a little unkempt, Hungarian Puli dogs we had breakfast and Janosz arrived to take us to our last area, the Hortobagy national park. During the longish drive Janosz told us a lot about how Hungary is shedding its problems from the communist era and the time passed quickly. We stopped briefly at one of the park visitor centres, then to the very large Hortobagy fishponds, a Ramsar site, well-supplied with viewing towers and even a narrow-gauge railway, which provided very welcome transport back after we had walked two or three kilometres along the dykes. This was one of the few places where we met other birdwatchers, a group on a tour from Germany, but the area was so large that it easily absorbed us all. Looking out from the towers we saw many of the birds typical of the Hungarian wetlands: Great White Egrets, Grey and Purple Herons, Marsh Harriers, Black Terns, and closer to hand Bearded Tits and Penduline Tits. Another very pleasant picnic lunch (we were beginning to get a taste for those Hungarian peppers) we visited a working tanya alongside a patch of black locust woodland of a hectare or so in which lived a huge colony of Rooks. Laszlo reckoned 500 pairs, but with the associated birds it could have been two or three times that number. They were cawing continuously and flying up in towering spirals. Most impressive. They shared their patch of woodland with several pairs of Red-footed Falcons and a pair of Storks, which had solved the inquisitive birdwatcher problem by building their nest on top of the observation station. White Storks were almost our last impression of the tour. We had been seeing them regularly in towns and villages, nesting on platforms built on the top of power poles, but Laszlo and Janosz took us to see the village of Nagyivan, which must be Stork Central. In the village street almost every power pole has a stork’s nest, at one point we could see nine in a row. On yet another warm sunny evening we drove back into Budapest, looking at the mountains to the north and wondering what else we might have seen if we had had time to go there. We farewelled Laszlo outside his place of work, the Budapest Zoo and finally returned to the Hotel Hold, where Karoly met us with a parting gift of a book of Hungarian national parks and another with recipes for goulash. We thoroughly enjoyed this tour, the opportunity to see so many birds with such skilled guides, and to see a sample of Hungary that we would never have covered on our own. Many thanks to Karoly, Janosz, the two Laszlos and Norbert for a wonderful trip. Bird List (*: not seen on tour) Little Grebe Great Crested Grebe Great Black Cormorant Pygmy Cormorant Bittern Night Heron Squacco Heron Little Egret Great White Egret Grey Heron Purple Heron Black Stork White Stork Spoonbill Mute Swan Greylag Goose Shelduck Gadwal Teal Mallard Garganey Shoveler Red-crested Pochard Pochard Ferruginous Duck Tufted Duck Ruddy Shelduck Honey Buzzard White-tailed Eagle Marsh Harrier Goshawk Buzzard Imperial Eagle Kestrel Red-footed Falcon Hobby* Pheasant Moorhen Coot Great Bustard Black-winged Stilt Avocet Stone Curlew Little Ringed Plover Kentish Plover Lapwing Dunlin Black-tailed Godwit Curlew Redshank Wood Sandpiper Turnstone Mediterranean Gull Black-headed Gull Common Tern Whiskered Tern Black Tern Rock Dove Stock Dove Woodpigeon Collared Dove Turtle Dove Cuckoo Little Owl Long-eared Owl Nightjar Swift Kingfisher Bee-eater Roller Hoopoe Green Woodpecker Black Woodpecker* Great Spotted Woodpecker Syrian Woodpecker Crested Lark Skylark Sand Martin Swallow House Martin Yellow Wagtail White Wagtail Robin Nightingale Bluethroat Black Redstart Stonechate Wheatear Blackbird Song Thrush Savi’s Warbler Sedge Warbler Marsh Warbler Reed Warbler Great Reed Warbler Lesser Whitethroat Blackcap Wood Warbler Chiffchaff Spotted Flycatcher Collared Flycatcher Bearded Tit Long-tailed Tit Marsh Tit Blue Tit Great Tit Nuthatch Treecreeper Penduline Tit Golden Oriole Red-backed Shrike Lesser Grey Shrike Jay Magpie Jackdaw Rook Hooded Crow Raven Starling House Sparrow Tree Sparrow Chaffinch Serin Greenfinch Goldfinch Linnet Hawfinch Yellowhammer Reed Bunting Corn Bunting |
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