Bob's Butterfly and Bird Blog: Bulgarian Specials.

As well as all those dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies we saw on our epic Bulgarian trip, which can be seen on my previous 3 posts, there were also other special insects and birds that we saw during the 9 days of the trip.

There was probably none more special than my very first sighting of the splendid Wallcreeper. This was a bird that Matt and I used to talk about quite a bit, and was our dream bird. Of course, he has since had sightings on his trips, but I had never set eyes on them before. We stopped in a layby in a gorge that was a well known site for this epic species. For the first 10 minutes or so, we waited in hope, when suddenly one was seen in the distance flying away from us. This in itself would have satisfied myself. However, we soon had sighting across the gorge of a pair of Wallcreepers. Some long distance shots were taken, but they were never going to be much more than poor record shots. We were near to moving on when one of our group spotted a Wallcreeper on our side of the gorge, not more than 30 feet away. It was shortly joined by its mate, and then after that we had 20 minutes or so of some close views of both birds. The light was not particularly good, being in heavy shadow, and few of my photos were particularly good, but a small number were very satisfying for me.

Wallcreeper

Wallcreeper.

As I was concentrating mainly on insects, I didn't photograph that many birds, but on an early morning walk we did get a Serin on an overhead line which I photographed.

Serin.

There were however several other class birds that we saw including a stunning male Montague's Harrier that flew past the van while we were travelling along. We also had a Roller, many Bee-eaters and several different types of Heron around Kerkini Lake.

Whilst checking out many of the lakes and rivers for odonata we did see many frogs. These were mainly Marsh Frogs, although some of the lakes did have some Oriental Tree Frogs, which had escaped, or set free many years ago, and had multiplied in great number!!

Marsh Frog.

Oriental Tree Frog.

Another escapee was the European Pond Terrapin, that was probably let loose in Bulgaria after the Mutant Ninja Turtle craze, where pets were released into waterways all over the place!!

European Pond Terrapin.

There certainly were some weird and wonderful insects seen. Two of these were members of the Cricket family. We were driving merrily along a road when Dansko braked suddenly. He had spotted a Bradyporus dasypus. This is an enormous cricket covered in armour shell and it almost feels that it would leave a massive dent in the van if you drove into it!! The cricket was actually walking across the road in front of us. We managed to get out the van and photograph it before it had finished crossing the road. After seeing this chap, we did spot a few flat ones on the road, so clearly not all of them make it across the road safely.

Bradyporus dasypus.

Another amazing cricket we saw was the Balkan Predatory Bush-cricket. This one was even bigger and feeds on other crickets including the large Wart-biter. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't give an impression of size, but including the ovipositor they can grow to around 120mm.

Balkan Predatory Bush-cricket.

One of my favourite insect we saw was the Sinuated Spoonwing, another bizarre looking creature. Fortunately, the insect was resting in the open on a tall grass. I just managed a quick photo before it realised we were there and it flew away.

Sinuated Spoonwing.

We also had many moths, a moth trap set most days did catch a few moths, but most of the ones photographed were taken out in the field. However, a couple of special moths that were caught in the trap included the Spurge Hawk-moth and Pine-tree Lappet.

Spurge Hawk-moth.

Pine-tree Lappet.

On the last day the beautiful tiny moth Eucrostes indegnata was also caught.

Eucrostes indegnata.

Out in the field we saw many Hummingbird Hawk-moths, Black-veined Moths and a few Passenger. A beautiful Lewes Wave I found in the front meadow of one of the hotels. This is quite a special moth to me as it's named after Lewes in Sussex, the town I was born in and was once the only British site for this now extinct UK moth. Fortunately, it is still quite widespread in parts of Europe.