Day seven

Day seven, we were down at the Burgas lakes soon after dawn with a slight mist rising, unfortunately the boat we were promised was not as large as it ws supposed to be, so the group was split into two with myself the two Johns and Mladen on the first trip, and, as seen above, from the left, Paul, Harry, (in one of his famous hats) Janos and Mladen with the navigator in the camouflage coat on the second. The 'jetty' was a perilous Heath Robinson construction of old pallets and bits of tree trunk on top of the old metal pilings, but we all managed to get aboard without mishap. We had hoped for pelicans but the spring passage had been held up and there were none on the lake but there were plenty of other birds to keep us interested.
 Squacco herons were plentiful, sitting posing in the reeds until their nerve gave out and they flew off to where they felt safer.
There were lots of mute swans and I caught the one above nicely with its progress marked with the splashes behind it.
 The juvenile night heron pictured (image 4) was the only one that I got close enough to to do it justice, they must have bred early here.
The Great reed warblers were very common and kicked up quite a din, and are always a pleasure to see, this was the 'show off' above calling from a reed in the early morning light with its huge gape.
I tried hard to capture an image of the golden oriole that was singing in the boat keepers compound but it refused to show but it was more than compensated for by the Savi's warbler that emerged from the reeds after I was made aware of it's presence by its 'reeling' song, my only other view of this difficult bird was a glimpse of one in the Lee valley some years before through someone elses scope 100 meters distant, so I was elated to get a series of images the best two are above.
We spent the next four hours driving back to Sofia, for our final night and did some birding at a marsh nearby but a dry spring had left it difficult to get close enough to the waterbirds which were plentiful. We did however get reasonable images of the 'black headed' Feldegg subspecies of yellow wagtail and a first year Ortolan bunting, annoyingly marred by a branch across it but that is part and parcel of nature photography and it was a very smart bird apart from that.

Day eight

Our final morning found us on top of Mount Vitoshi, just a twenty minute drive from our hotel. Up there the overnight freeze was just thawing and our first birds were nutcrackers, it took a while to get them in the sun but eventaully perseverance paid off with some good images, then we went after the ring ouzels, not the same subspecies as ours, these were alpestris and the females have superb markings as seen in the pictures, unfortunately I did not get an image of the male that was worth adding. The final picture is a misty view across the neighbouring valleys and ridges.

Ring Ouzel

This was my best effort, digiscoping in a bitterly cold northerly with my eyes streaming taken at 100 yards distance, so all in all I am quite pleased with the effort. This was one of twelve birds on site, far exceeding my previous best of four birds

Tree sparrows

The tree sparrow is now a bird in decline in the south of England so it is always a delight to see them when we visit the northerly counties, these were around the visitor station at Bempton cliffs.

Peregrine falcon

Our fastest raptor did not look at its best all scrunched up in the rain, but we had superb views through our binoculars

Puffins and Fulmars

A small selection of the birds we saw at Bempton, the puffins on their ledges were too distant for photography but some obliged with fly pasts. the fulmars were patrolling the updrafts along the cliff face effortlessly. 

Guillemots and kittiwakes

The first two birds show the variations we get in British waters of the guillemot, the  bird on the right is of the 'bridled' morphism, picture two is a guillemot in flight and picture three a kittiwake and a guillemot sharing a ledge, picture four shows typical kittiwake nests, some even nest on the sides of buildings in some cities, picture five is the elegant kittiwake in flight, these birds spend large periods of the year far out at sea.