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Steve Dudley, a bird guide and author of the Lesvos birding guide, once told me: “Greece is THE premier birding location in Europe for me [and for yours truly as well]. You can get to Athens from pretty much anywhere, and from Athens, you can access anywhere else in Greece easily enough by plane, ferry, or car. What’s not to love!”
Since I live not very far from Greece, I have often combined my vacation there with birding. I have a handful of Greece travel guides (not that I am happy with any of them), but what I always missed was a specialised bird-finding guide. Greece is visited by millions of tourists every year (over 19.5 I chose paper.
Finding Birds in Northern Greece (2015) covers the birdwise very best northeast of the country (provinces of Macedonia and Thrace), from the wetland border with Turkey all the way to the mountains and lakes at the triple border with Albania and North Macedonia.
Although I visit Greece every year, this is my first time in Athens. I am a birder in search of the feathery attractions of Greece. I was on a new birding tour well organised by Natural Greece and accompanied by their bird guide. Trips Europe Greece warblers' And customs. The sky over a new city. What am I doing there?
I was born and bred by the banks of the Lake Kerkini National Park in the north of Greece, one hour from the country’s second largest city Thessaloniki. The post Birding and Wildlife photography at Limneo Lodge, Kerkini Lake, Greece appeared first on 10,000 Birds. My name is Nikos Gallios. Best regards from Kerkini lake!
One simply has to love Greece. I told you – one simply has to love Greece. In a split second, the buzzard shows rufous tail and disappears behind some trees. Not a single driver honks his horn, no one reacts to my rude parking style.
The Prespa Lakes National Park in Greece is well hidden among the mountains at the triple border with Albania in the west and the FYRO Macedonia in the north. One of them has a satellite transmitter around its neck and quite a few have white collars marked with the letter “G” (for Greece?) and dual digits. 02, G04,06,07,40 and G74.
The sun rises over the village of Chrysochorafa, by Kerkini Lake in the north of Greece, not far from the triple border with Bulgaria and FYRO Macedonia. Before this trip, I asked Steve Mills, the author of ‘ Birdwatching in Northern Greece ’, which sites would he recommend at this time of the year. Trips Europe Greece pelicans'
Lake Kerkini National Park in the north of Greece is the very best birding area in the Balkan Peninsula and definitely among the top ten hotspots of Europe. Surprisingly, despite being on the site of a former marsh, Kerkini is an artificial reservoir with the purpose of irrigation of arable fields. The lake lies at a mere 35 m / 115 ft a.s.l.
While crossing Gramos Mountain in northern Greece, a Dendrocopos woodpecker flew over the road and landed in a pine tree. The next morning is for the Kerkini Lake, one of the youngest national parks of Greece, protected only ten years ago, in 2006 and inhabited by 11 amphibian, 27 reptilian, 44 mammal and 312 bird species.
“The estuary and the delta of the River Kalamas form the most important wetland of northwest Greece”, so the “ Birding in Greece ” guidebook claims for the area where I am heading, a bit late since I overslept this morning. I am checking the grass for any flash of white and soon my suspicion is confirmed: Cattle Egrets (cover photo)!
This will be the first time I find myself in Greece in winter. During the last decade, the numbers in Greece were “mostly stable”, fluctuating from 35 up to 75 birds – representing the total European Fennoscandian population. Both: “The Lesser White-fronted Goose in Greece” by Demertzi et al., The solution? The Kerkini Lake.
All around Porto Lagos (220 km / 140 mi east of Thessaloniki) lies the largest national park of Greece, Nestos Delta and the Vistonida-Ismarida lakes and lagoons complex, founded in 2008. The area is one of the most important in Greece for birds, comprising more than 270 species.
I was driving along the legendary eastern levee of the Kerkini Lake in northern Greece ( Google Map ) and, listening to the first Golden Oriole flute, was slowly getting closer to a wooded Mt. Out of some 4000 buffaloes still being kept in Greece, about 3000 are at this lake. I’m in Greece, after all. mi) above the lake.
It is an early April morning and we are in the hills surrounding Lake Kerkini in the north of Greece. I was on a new birding tour well organised by Natural Greece and accompanied by their nature guide Georgos Spiridakis, who lives on the shore of this lake and specialises in this area, as well as wider northern Greece.
And here I am now, avoiding the two barking dogs trying to bite my tires while I am driving through pre-dawn darkness towards the delta of the river Styx, or Acheron , as it is known today at the Ionian Sea coast of Greece. On a wire by the road, one European Bee-eater awaits me.
Like many of you, I had plans for this year’s spring migration: to bird the very best tour of the Balkans, heading for northeastern Greece. First, 800 km of driving from Belgrade through Bulgaria to very NE corner of Greece and the Dadia Forest National Park with its 36 species of diurnal raptors, out of Europe’s 38.
I was a week into my trip to the Peloponnese, in south-west Greece, and my bird list had stagnated on 40 species. So one day, in search of new birds, I drove from my base at Agios Nickolas, south of Kalamata, to the Gialova Lagoon, on the west coast.
We are in the village of Finikas on the island of Syros in the Cyclades archipelago of Greece. Tha dropping numbers are suspected in Greece and Croatia, and confirmed in Italy, France and Malta. I was on a new sailing birdwatch tour well organised by Natural Greece and accompanied by their bird guide Andrea Bonetti.
(The Balkans, by the way, is a loose term for Europe’s south-eastern peninsula, covering the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece.) It is these Balkan specials that are the target species… Source
I was fortunate enough to spend the first 10 days of this month in Northern Greece, staying in the delightful village of Ano Poroia, overlooking Lake Kerkini. Since my first visit to this corner of Greece in 2008 I’ve been a regular visitor, drawn back by the abundance and variety of birds.
This time I was lucky enough to join a fam trip organised by Natural Greece, an ecotourism company from Athens, and spend a few days at my favourite Kerkini Lake, which you already birded through my bins ( April and September ). I travelled with: Natural Greece ( www.natural-greece.gr/en
The company works with the best guides of Greece, who are also excellent experts in their subject and its photography. The company’s trips are divided to destinations within Greece, with its very rich biodiversity, and some of the planet’s best-known and popular destinations, always with the central theme of wildlife and its creatures.
I haven’t done well with Golden Eagles, with just a single bird, seen briefly, in Greece, in May. Northern Spain also produced my best views of Honey Buzzards (I did see one briefly in Greece in May). I missed seeing Iberian Grey Shrike in Andalucia in February, but finally managed to see one in Castile y León last month.
It was a fun month with posts from places as varied as Greece and Uganda, Costa Rica and India. We here at 10,000 Birds dedicated the month of February to highlighting a variety of birding tourism companies, destinations, and guides. We did this to help our favorite industry come back, to some small degree, from the ravages of COVID.
Have you read my blogs on birding Greece ? Presuming that you live somewhere in Europe and plan a car trip to Greece, let me suggest a couple of routes that will increase your tour list. For the Ionian Sea, take the motorway exit for the town of Prilep, continue through Bitola and head for the Medzitlija – Niki crossing to Greece.
It’s a reservoir, not a natural lake, and was formed by damming the Striminos river, which flows into Greece from neighboring Bulgaria (unfortunately bringing with it huge amounts of plastic rubbish, creating problems for the National Park.) It gives comprehensive coverage of Lake Kerkini. The post Kerkini: Europe’s Best Bird Lake?
And here I am now, avoiding the two barking dogs trying to bite my tires while I am driving through pre-dawn darkness towards the delta of the river Styx, or Acheron, as it is known today at the Ionian Sea coast of Greece. Trips Greece wetlands' On a wire by the road, one European Bee-eater awaits me. Circaetus gallicus.
I also travelled to Kerkini in Northern Greece in June and Kefalonia in south-east Greece in October, so my overall year list was a more satisfactory 272 species. I only scored 43 in March, but that was because I was away birding in Portugal and Estonia. My overseas trips did boost the overall year list considerably.
I first visited Kerkini and this bird-rich region of northern Greece 15 years ago, and have been returning regularly ever since. For more information, I strongly recommend Birdwatching in Northern Greece, the third edition of which was published recently.
An afternoon is already growing old while I am driving downhill to the Livadi marsh at the island of Kefallonia, Greece. Trips falcons Greece' Behind the marsh is a quarry, in front of it the Gulf of Argostoli, a small pine wood to the right and some eucalyptus trees to the left.
And here I am on vacation in Greece, turning off the alarm at 5.30 Trips Greece partridges' I don’t like to wake up if it’s still dark outside – I hate it! am – too early, as it will turn out, but I had no clue when the sun rises. At the crack of dawn, I am driving along sharp curves through the olive groves.
Here we go: Guest-authors: Deborah Jean Cohen, Eric DeFonso, James Wolstencroft, Joshua Stuart Rose, Marcel van Driel, Mike Black, Natural Greece, Paul Oliver, Rockjumper – Worldwide Birding Adventures, Sandra Paci, Susan Soloyanis, WorldBirders. Natural Greece: “Empathy is important too. Language skills too.”.
On my last trip to Greece, I carried and studied this book, hoping for the Audouin’s Gull (no such luck yet, actually I saw very few gulls). My first impression is that the book is somewhat large and heavy (2.05 pounds, and 6.7 inches), not the user-friendly type to carry around.
The Archelon rescue centre in Greece previously looking after Homer believes this is what happened to him. Fishermen in Greece deliberately blinding turtles? Tags: UK greece animal rescue turtles. Dangers include fishermen deliberately blinding the animals to protect fishing equipment.
Other than birding equipment, I’ll bring a hat, a bandana or two, sunscreen, refillable water bottle, mosquito repellent, pocket knife (I am thinking of downsizing to Victorinox Super Tinker, and should remember to pack it into a checked-in luggage – it was a painful lesson at the Athens airport, Greece), 4-5 metres of a prusik (a thin climbing rope) (..)
Out of my total of 15 observations ever, this is only the third within Serbia (the rest were half in India, the other half in Greece). This is an uncommon species here – only about a dozen birds overwinter in the country annually.
A Greek Wild Cat , photographed near Lake Kerkini I’ve had a few encounters with wild cats, too, in both France and Greece. These cats are quite numerous around Lake Kerkini in Northern Greece, and I’ve encountered them there several times, including the individual above that allowed itself to be photographed.
More productive areas of the Balkans have January eBird lists from 105 to 115 species (but I combined several areas in two countries, Greece and Serbia), so I have every reason to be satisfied. How does it compare within the region? Am I satisfied?
It is one of the most range-restricted of European birds, breeding only in Greece, Turkey and adjacent areas. Unlike the GSC, which is the most obvious of the birds of the Cypriot hills, the Cretzchmar’s Bunting is the most unobtrusive, though it is common and widely distributed.
While tracking brown bears in Greece some time ago, B. The story goes, after the coffee at the first homestead, he visited the neighbour’s, where he had a tsipouro (or two – in itself, a reason enough to travel to Greece). My Spanish certainly wasn’t any better. from London was part of my group. forgot about his ankle.
Greece (346 / 411 – just to give you a clue, the Greek-published checklist I have has 449 species). Namibia (595 / 690). The Neotropics. Costa Rica (857 / 903). Brazil (1753 / 1832). Ecuador (1590 / 1641). Venezuela (1365 / 1383). Peru (1807 / 1761). Plus – Western Palearctic. Turkey (390 / 459).
And so, I was driving from Greece to Serbia… in central Macedonia, two birds were circling not far from the motorway… black and white (above)… perhaps White Storks on migration? The work is expected to take two months, after which the killer line will be removed.
I bought my first 20 years ago from some Russian on the seashore in Greece, but have not used it much because of rather dark images (I even took it to India with me – and didn’t use it even once). And this year I carried it to Greece twice, both by plane and by car. This is not my first spotting scope.
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