Romania - Part 2 Sighisoara to Zarnesti

The next day saw us heading for Zarnesti and our dedicated wildlife watching part of the trip. Besides the occasional sighting unlike other trips our luck seemed to have run out on this one for casually seeing lots of good wildlife without purposefully looking. We hoped to find a couple of birdwatching sites on the way to Zarnesti, given our track record over the previous two days we didn’t hold out much hope.

Just north of the town of Rotbav, we managed to find the unmarked track to the old station halt, behind which lay a complex of heavily stocked and fished carp lakes – (Romanian for carp is Crap). We were fortunate here to find several good birds, once we’d negotiated detours around all the kennels of guard dogs – some on chains and some not. This meant much of what looked the most interesting areas we could not access.

We did manage to see lots of marsh warbler, singing river warbler, marsh frogs, great reed warbler and fieldfare carrying food to their nest, little bittern and purple heron. After spending an hour or so here we headed for our destination at Zarnesti in order to be there for late afternoon in time to be taken on an organised bear watching trip.

Our route to Zarnesti took us through Brazov where we experienced the best to date of our ‘Romanian driving incidents’. We had been given fair warning about Romanian driving prior to our trip and thus far this had proven true. Such was the highlight of our driving experiences I will save it for a blog of its own!

On arrival at Dan Marins’ Transylvanian Wolf abode we were treated to tea and homemade traditional Romanian cake. The directions given to find the accommodation was invaluable – we’d never had found it otherwise.

Our first evening was spent fruitlessly couped in a hide while a tub full of chocolate was deposited outside in the hope the local bears would visit. The beauty of wildlife watching is nothing is a certainty and once again, we managed to sustain our 100% record of not seeing a bear. Things probably didn’t help that it began to rain and the wind got up. Also, forestry operations were still taking place just before sunset which probably did not help. We returned to our accommodation a little disappointed but this was soon satiated by a fantastic spread for a late evening meal all laid on by Luminita Marin – a superb cook and host along with husband Dan.

(c Rotton yarns)

(c Rotton yarns)

Camberwell beauty  (c Rotton yarns)

Globeflower  (c Rotton yarns)

Heart flowered marsh orchid  (c Rotton yarns) 

Ragged robin  (c Rotton yarns)

Roe deer  (c Rotton yarns)

Silver studed blue  (c Rotton yarns)

Slow worm  (c Rotton yarns)

Spreading bellflower  (c Rotton yarns)

Yellow bellied toad  (c Rotton yarns)

Dusky cranesbill  (c Rotton yarns)

Breakfast the next morning picked up where the previous evenings meal had left off – amazing with enough spread to make a substantial packed lunch with to see you through the day ahead in the field with Dan. Once suitably gorged, we set of for a day in the lower alpine hills – stunning scenery and the plants were amazing. One that sticks in my mind most is the hillside cover in Globeflower, all about to break bud. In the UK this species is a rare plant restricted to a few sites. I have visited one of these near Bakewell, where I was fortunate to see a few plants eking an existence in the dappled shade of some scrub. The scene on that mountainside once again put it all into perspective.

We visited many sites with Dan. Some we had seen described in ‘where to watch’ guide books but I’m sure we’d never have found any of them had we not been with Dan. They are just in such obscure locations with no obvious indication of their presence.  After a busy day in the field our banquet of an evening meal once again proved scrumptious – Luminita is an amazing person! Breakfast the next morning followed the usual pattern. We were also given enough again to make our packed lunch for the day’s journey ahead to Brazov. 

Romania - Part 1 Cluj to Sighisoara

As I’m currently imprisoned due to inclement weather, it has given me time to catch up with my trip to Romania at the beginning of June! Was it really that long ago?  It was all part of a cunning ploy to avoid the media hype of a Diamond Jubilee celebration and to see if by visiting the country with more bears than the rest of Europe, we could rectify or misses in California the previous year.

This was a seven night trip which started by flying into Cluj and driving the 300 miles through Transylvania ending in Bucharest from where we flew home. The trip was split into three chunks, travelling about a 100 miles between each staging post. The majority of our time was spent with two nights in Zarnesti and two in Brazov each of which are just 20 miles apart.

After collecting the hire car at Cluj we set off for Sighisoara. We aimed to stop off at the Turda Gorge and at Medias. Wildlife wise it seemed to get off to a good start with stonechat and bee eater seen from the car soon after leaving the town.

Attempting to interpret instructions from the guide book, we got into Turda but found poor signage and the lack of detailed maps meant we couldn’t find the turning, ending up in Campia Turzii. On reaching a junction we attempted to loop back to retrace our steps. The road we found ourselves on was a comparatively new duel carriageway which we discovered had no exits for almost 60 km until you get back to Cluj!! We were able to see where we wanted to get to and from a distance the gorge looked very nice. 

Deciding now to give the gorge a miss, we tried to locate the historic town of Medias, one of the oldest in the country. We managed to get as far as Tarnaveni and once again managed to miss a turn and become horrendously lost. This was much to the amusement of the inhabitants of the town we decided we needed to turn around in and again found it difficult to relate what was on the map with what was on the ground. Detailed maps of Romania do not exist the best we could acquire was a 1:700,000 which are next to useless when trying to find anywhere off the main road.

Not wanting to waste more time, we tried retracing our steps back to a road that would, we hoped, lead us to our destination for the next two nights in Sighisoara. Eventually arriving, we found our accommodation to be right by the entrance into the historic city. After a well-earned rest from our long day, we headed into the town for a relaxing meal and quiet drink before turning in for the night ready for the following days exploration of the town. 

View from hotel room balcony to the Sighisoara clock tower  (c Rotton Yarns)

View from clock tower to hotel - my balcony canopy is in the centre of the picture and our hire car is the  first car on the right in the street below (c Rotton Yarns)

Our day in Sighisoara was spent slowly following the perimeter route of the towns old wall, taking lots of photographs en-route of the historic buildings. There were two notable things about the wildlife in the town; first there were no swifts but lots of house martins. Given the antiquity of the town, this seemed very odd. Also, it was odd to see common redstart sharing the rooftops with their relative, the black redstart. The latter was not a surprise to see, being quite the norm for any European town, but the common redstart was certainly a surprise.

The following are a selection of pictures from around Sighisoara.

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

Later in the day, we attempted to follow instruction in the guide book that would take us to the Brieti ancient oak wood pasture just two miles from the centre of town. Only ten years ago, the site was under threat of being destroyed to make way for a Dracula theme park. It was only after local, national and international objections were the plans shelved.

After several attempts, we eventually found what seemed to fit the directions. However, instead of an oak wood, we found ourselves in a hanging beech wood on the side of the hill with not an oak in sight! Foiled again. The only consolation was the sighting of a lesser spotted eagle which I’ve never seen before.

Part 2 ... and things get slower

Despite the poor weather and my car not having been discharged from the car hospital, I decided to continue my pursuit of attempting to awaken my dormant interest in natural history.
Unfortunately, I don't think this weekends activities done it any favours in the least. The only saving grace was the fact I'd taken my camera which helped keep my sanity and retain the will to live.

Having slowly walked somewhere in the region of a six miles circular route from home, over the period of about 3 hours, I only managed to find thirty species of bird. Its at times like this when you remember why one just cannot be bothered to make the effort anymore!

Although I did find lots of nice plants to photograph, it was so slow that I even resorted to taking pictures of a slug! But it was a particularly big one.

a slug (c Rotton Yarns)

For the record, below is the mornings species list. The highlights for me were undoubtedly the whitethroats and kestrel:

Blackbird

Blackcap

Blue Tit

Carrion Crow

Chaffinch

Chiffchaff

Coal Tit

Cuckoo

Dunnock

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great Tit

Green Woodpecker

House Sparrow

Jackdaw

Kestrel

Linnet

Long-tailed Tit

Magpie

Mistle Thrush

Pied Wagtail

Robin

Skylark

Song Thrush

Starling

Swallow

Swift

Whitethroat

Willow Warbler

Woodpigeon

Wren

A slow day in the field part 1

The middle of the month always heralds the moth trapping and bird ringing sessions at nearby Beeston. The May session, due to the poor weather was particularly slow and I only managed to find seven species of moth in the trap that had been left out overnight. They were:

Green carpet
Muslin moth
Shuttle shaped dart
Hebrew character
Iron Prominent
Common swift
Waved umber

The bird ringing wasn't much better and in fact was so dull that while the ringers were away checking nets at one point, myself and one of the ringers took to playing with two hapless millipedes we'd found lurking in a crevice of the plastic patio table we use to work from. 

First we attempted to see if they would fight each other, this was to no avail. They also seemed disinterested in trying to perform any kind of errr, hum, errr, cough .... anyway I don't suppose I'd be too keen on that kind of thing in front of an audience. The best we could muster from the poor creatures was to race them against each other across the table - it successfully seemed to keep us amused for ages. 

Another wet Bank Holiday

As I'm having to produce a series of posthumous posts, I thought I'd amalgamate my attempts in May to do some natural history.

My first efforts came over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend. This was the 6th and 7th of May. On the Sunday I visited the gravel quarry at Broom which was interesting and productive given the weather wasn't at all conducive and rather living up to what one always expects from a Bank Holiday - cold, wet and miserable.

I managed to find a few warblers including managing to see a lesser whitethroat before a common whitethroat this year. Walking alongside a hedge, I was aware of a common whitethroat singing from within and patiently waited for it to perform its aerial song flight. After a few minutes, nearby, there was a sudden out burst of the distinctive song of lesser whitethroat and the bird broke from its cover and  flitted rapidly away to hide itself further along the hedge. Around the reed fringed pools nearby came the songs of reed warbler, no doubt recently arrived from their Trans-Saharan migration. 


The usual array of waders were present as ever, those being Redshank, Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Ringed and Little ringed plover. 


The following day's walk was cut abruptly short by rain, having only been out for an hour walking the fields closer to home. But just before the rain did set in I was fortunate enough to at least find three migrant Wheatears. Unfortunately, the prospect of a photograph put the birds into panic mode and by the time I'd got my camera ready they had vanished almost as quickly as they'd appeared! How strange as a similar thing occured last autumn at the same place when I found a Whinchat. 


The following is a species list for the two days

06-May	07-May
Blackcap	Blackbird
Black-headed Gull	Blackbird
Buzzard	Blackcap
Buzzard	Blackcap
Canada Goose	Blue Tit
Canada Goose	Blue Tit
Chiffchaff	Carrion Crow
Common Swift	Carrion Crow
Common Tern	Chaffinch
Coot	Coal Tit
Coot	Collared Dove
Gadwall	Dunnock
Goldfinch	Goldcrest
Great Crested Grebe	Goldfinch
Great Crested Grebe	Greenfinch
Green Woodpecker	Jackdaw
Grey Heron	Jackdaw
Grey Heron	Linnet
Greylag Goose	Long-tailed Tit
Greylag Goose	Long-tailed Tit
House Martin	Magpie
Lapwing	Robin
Lapwing	Rook
Lesser Black-backed Gull	Skylark
Lesser Whitethroat	Starling
Linnet	Wheatear
Little Grebe	Woodpigeon
Little Ringed Plover	Woodpigeon
Mallard	Yellowhammer
Mallard
Moorhen
Moorhen
Oystercatcher
Redshank
Reed Warbler
Ringed Plover
Sand Martin
Sand Martin
Shelduck
Song Thrush
Swallow
Swallow
Swift
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Whitethroat
Willow Warbler
Yellowhammer

   

A strange tern of events

This weekend saw a worrying development in my mental well being. I went birding locally on two consecutive days. Normally I have better things to do with my time than waste it trying in vain to struggle with finding a handful of birds or other wildlife. But, I have recently felt my lack of natural history is not good and I should make an effort to get out as it can't really be all that bad.

My first trip on Saturday, was to drive the other side of the A1 to visit the Broom complex of gravel pits. There are, so I was recently informed, two areas of interest. Those being the main lake just off the Stanford road which should be good for passage terns and gulls. The other is the new workings nearby along Gypsy Lane which seems to be more popular with passage waders. My first port of call was the main lake where the 30 or so common terns looked most impressive as the hawked over the water for fish. I scanned them quite intensively with both binocular and telescope in the vain hope of finding an arctic tern, but my luck was not to be. There were good numbers of tufted duck, great crested grebe and coot present. There were also breeding lapwing, redshank and oystercatcher.

Yes - you did just read that right, surprisingly enough I even got my telescope out of the cupboard to use. I thought I might need to mug up from some beginners guide instructions on how to use it at first. But I soon got the hang of it after initially wondering why everything at first seemed further away until realising I needed to look through the end with the smaller diameter lens.

The short drive along to Gypsy Lane was new territory for me. They new workings seemed to be fairly quiet with just a small handful of common tern, lapwing, redhank and oystercatcher again present. There were also a couple of shelduck, but nothing really in the way of wader passage. 

The next day, I decided to take a long walk around the fields and woods closer to home. I set off first toward some horse paddocks, then along some farm hedges past ploughed fields before turning back into the woods and emerging by the TV transmitter mast. I then wandered around there before heading along the road which meets up with bridleway that runs in a west-east direction just north of my house, before heading off it along the track and road home. There was very little to see on the walk but the wonderful song of skylarks were a treat. Its such a lovely sound and is certainly one of the most evocative of sounds, synonymous of the English countryside. I also managed to see an orange tip and a brimstone butterfly.

A Good Friday for Vale

Usually once or twice a season my friend Del and I exchange trips to see our respective teams play. This season I was to be entertained with the Good Friday match at Aldershot.

It's rare my appearances at a Port Vale match have the same good luck as Del's reciprocal visits to Craven Cottage. However it has to be said my visits are, with one exception usually, to Port Vale's away matches. I expect, given their chronic away form, the outcomes would not be too dissimilar were we to try a Fulham away match.

However, on this occasion I was treated to an all too rare Port Vale victory. Louis Dodds was the hero of the day scoring both goals in the two - one victory. The Aldershot consolation came from a deflection late in the game. At least with Port Vale having the run of play it silenced the incessant beating of drums coming from the away fans stand. Its was enough to make you want to beat your head against a wall. 

Being used to visiting a Premier League ground does spoil you in that many of the teams from the lower divisions can barely survive financially. This often shows in some of the grounds I have visited which are part way through renovations they've not been able to afford completion of. Aldershots ground being no exception to that with only having about two and a half usable stands.

(c Rotton Yarns)

(c Rotton yarns)

(c Rotton Yarnns)

The trip down to Aldershot on the train was quite interesting, just running into Kings Cross we saw the first of three foxes we were to see on the trip. It was the second leg of the journey from Waterloo to Aldershot via Woking that was the most interesting. Due to Bank Holiday engineering works, the train had to take on convoluted route via local branch lines for much of the way. This entailed it travelling so slowly that butterflies were easily identifiable as the fluttered along the track side vegetation in the warm spring sun. We managed to see a few orange tips and brimstones, along with another couple of foxes on the trip.

Though I walk these thousand miles .....

Even if using home as a holiday base, to catch up with all those things you've been putting off doing, it means you get time to relax and take five. It also gives the chance to take the odd day out to go and do something else.

Still recovering from the weekends Joe euphoria, I set off with my friend Derek for a days birding. We'd been planning this trip for a week or two but had been undecided at to where we should head. The debate was not over what birds we might see, but which of the two venues, Titchwell in Norfolk, or Minsmere in Suffolk had the best tea room. Both places are about the same distance and travelling time away. The debate also centred around where we might easily purchase fresh fish.

The decision was finally made on a chance visit to the pub the previous Thursday. There, a colleague mentioned a pending family holiday to the Suffolk coast the following week and he'd heard Otters were being seen frequently from one of the hides at Minsmere. I've never seen Otter in England. I stopped in a cottage a year ago right near the path to that very hide mentioned and two colleagues, keener to leave their beds one morning than me, saw two Otters a few yards away from them, at the side of the road and within sight of the cottage.

So, Minsmere it will be, we also decided the tea room there does have the edge. Readers will note, still no mention has been made of what birds we might like to see on our little trip.

Setting off not too early, we arrived at the reserve just after it opened at 10:00am. We failed our first intelligence test in actually how to get into the place from the car park. They've had some building done since my last visit and linked the visitor centre to the toilet block with a new reception area. In order to get to the toilets, which is where we first wanted to head and subsequently the shop, tea room and reserve, you have to go through the new reception.

Once suitably relieved, we headed off through the reserve woods and alongside reedbeds, stopping at hides to overlook the marshes. The Marsh harriers were in fine fettle, putting on some superb courtship displays between fetching bits of materials to build their nests. There was an occasional grunt and boom from Bittern's lurking in the depths of the reed, but disappointingly no sign yet. Bearded tits were also somewhat elusive as it was a little on the breezy side. Understandably they were keeping their heads down, showing only occasionally when their incessant 'pinging' calls gave them away. The other thing we'd become aware of was the lack of migrants, in fact there were more blackcaps (3) singing at home that morning than at the reserve (0)!

After visiting the last hide which is where the Otters have recently been seen, needless to say not today, we headed back to the visitor centre for lunch. At lunch, we met the colleague and his family who'd mentioned the previous week about the Otters. As they were leaving to explore the reserve more, they were somewhat amazed when we said we're about to head off to Aldburgh to buy some fish before the they sold out and closed. Its nice to know we take our birding so seriously.

Just before leaving we decided to visit the conveniences, here we had the first comedy moment of the day and the subsequent theme for this blog title.

While using the urinal, there was someone in one of the cubicles, with one of those pedometers that talk to you, telling you how far you've walked, how fast you are travelling now and how many calories you've burned off, etc. Well Derek and myself, along with another chap who'd been in there found it extremely difficult not to snigger loudly at the robotic voice of the pedometer.

Our second comedy moment was to come on our shopping trip.

Having arrived at Alburgh, we headed for the parade of sheds selling their freshly caught wares. Armed with a shopping list from two colleagues back home and not decided about our own choice, we set about checking prices and availability so we could contact our friends and they could confirm their orders and quantities based on our information. Sole and Seabass were the main targets, very little of which we found at the first two sheds, although the second shed did have some Herrings at £5 for 5 pounds in weight. At the third shed we found our quarry, more available Seabass and importantly lots of Sole of three different sizes. We discussed costs with the people and as they don't take credit card we said we'd be back shortly while we went to get some cash from the town, now we'd found what we needed. We passed a forth shed on our way. This had lots of fish but was a little more expensive than the previous one.

When we returned about 15 minutes later the shed selling all the Sole had closed and gone home! Doh!! Why oh why on earth did they not say to us that they would be closing after we'd told them what we were after. Luckily for us, shed four had what we wanted and we were able to recover the situation, I just nipped into shed two for my herrings on the way back to the car. It was while walking back to the car we saw our only Swallow of the day heading in off the sea to fly up the coast.

Having been shopping for about three hours, more than we'd spent so far birding, we finally got back to Minsmere at 15:30 with a sudden realisation and panic that the tea room would be closing in 30 minutes! Heavens above, we cannot go without our afternoon tea and cake.

After finishing that, and seeing a Mediterranean gull pass over head, which we first picked up on call, we headed out to visit the famous scrape. It was here that I finally got to start taking some pictures at last. Not before finding about 100 or more Red throated divers on the sea, many of which were in beautiful summer plumage. Too far away to photograph.

The following is a selection of shots taken from the hides on the east of the scrape. I was unable to take any pictures of Avocet. The only things vaguely resembling them had bodies and looked nothing like those depicted on the RSPB logo.

Black-headed gulls (c Rotton Yarns)

Shovelor (c Rotton Yarns)

Black-headed and Mediterranean gulls (c Rotton Yarns)

After our walk along the coast, we headed back into the reserve to visit the hides on the west of the scrape, where I took the following snaps of views across the scrape. The second shot shows the cliffs at Dunwich in the distance, if you look hard enough you might even see the Dartford warblers.

(c Rotton Yarns)

(c Rotton Yarns)

Then, while listening to a booming Bittern, I also took some atmospheric reedbed and sky shots.

(c Rotton Yarns)

(c Rotton Yarns)

(c Rotton Yarns)

As we left the marshes to head through the wood and back to the car, the willow weavers was just packing up for the day having nearly finished a willow house which looked pretty awesome.

(c Rotton Yarns)

As we were about to leave the car park for home I suggested we should take a convoluted route past the back of the reserve and out through East Bridge in the hope of seeing the Barn owl which hunts regularly in that area. We arrived by the bridge where a couple with binoculars were hanging around, while another couple sat a short distance away in the field looking like they were staking it out for the owl. Typically, I'd packed my binoculars away - something I never used to do. However, Derek, with a little more sense had his to hand and randomly decided to look at a pool that had been dug out near the reed bed. There, much to our surprise was a Glossy ibis which we were aware of being in the area. Although neither of us have seen them in the UK, we were not to fussed at making an effort in seeing it, as it could have been anywhere over such a vast tract of land. As far as we could tell the couple by the bridge were not aware of its proximity to them, but did tell us the barn owl had done its rounds half an hour before we'd arrived.

Over the whole day, we managed to see a total of 64 species in about six hours birding and walking several miles - don't ask how many coz I don't posses one of those talking pedometers.

This leads one to harp back to 'The beauty and the beast' post from January in which I made the point about why I can never be bothered to go birding in UK. Our attitude there remained the same lackadaisical approach we always take and yet by comparison, we saw 39 species - that's only 25 less, in half the time and barely walking half a mile if that!

Grrr, why is our wildlife becoming so depleted?

Below is the list of birds seen on the day. If you think I'm going to link each with the RSPB A to Z bird guide, think again! I've got better things to do so I'm afraid you'll have to do it yourself :o)

Species List for Minsmere (02/04/2012)
Red-throated Diver
Little Grebe
Great Crested Grebe
Fulmar
Great Cormorant
Great Bittern
Little Egret
Grey Heron
Glossy Ibis
Mute Swan
Greylag Goose
Barnacle Goose
Common Shelduck
Eurasian Wigeon
Gadwall
Eurasian Teal
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Common Pochard
Tufted Duck
Eurasian Marsh Harrier
Common Pheasant
Water Rail
Common Moorhen
Common Coot
Eurasian Oystercatcher
Pied Avocet
Northern Lapwing
Black-tailed Godwit
Common Redshank
Ruddy Turnstone
Mediterranean Gull
Black-headed Gull
Mew Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Herring Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Black-legged Kittiwake
Common Wood Pigeon
Green Woodpecker
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Meadow Pipit
Winter Wren
Hedge Accentor
European Robin
Mistle Thrush
Cetti's Warbler
Common Chiffchaff
Bearded Tit
Long-tailed Tit
Marsh Tit
Coal Tit
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Wood Nuthatch
Eurasian Treecreeper
Black-billed Magpie
Jackdaw
Carrion Crow
Chaffinch
European Greenfinch
European Goldfinch
Common Linnet
Reed Bunting