20th of September together with 4 British birdwatchers we spent a full day on the Harghita Mountain to find some special forest birds. The weather was excellent, sunny and little bit windy in the higher elevation.
We started the morning with roaring Red Deers around our accommodations than continued to reach the Three-toed Woodpeckers habitats as early as possible. On the way we stopped several times and easily found feeding Nutcrackers, two Black Woodpeckers, a Dipper, several Grey Wagtails and a Ring Ouzel.
Birding just below the highest peak of the Harghita produced a single male Three-toed Woodpecker in short time. We saw it for a quite long time while feeding and preening just above our heads. (Here the Eastern “alpinus” subspecies live which has barred back – does it???)
Three-toed Woodpecker (Photo: Paul Wilson/tour participant)
On the way down we were lucky to see a fine male Hazel Grouse just at the edge of the forest road. We saw it briefly first but later it flew across the road in front of our car. Brief but definetely tickable views of this rather shy bird!
Male Hazel Grouse (Photo: Zoltán Baczó)
Other highlights of the day were 3 Crested Tits, 2 Hawfinches, 1 Firecrest, 1 Osprey above the nearby reservoir, 1 Great Grey Shrike and the 3rd Black Woodpecker of the day just flew overhead.
Crested Tit (Photo: Paul Wilson/tour participant)
Later in the afternoon we have visited a bear hide where we saw 1 Brown Bear and 9 Wildboars. Next day we tried again the bears and this time we got very good views of 2 Brown Bears and a female Red Deer!
Carpathian Brown Bear in the Harghita (Photo: Zoltán Baczó)
Yours sincerely,
Zoltán Baczó
Sakertour team
