A Plea for Forgiveness: before I start, I sincerely apologise for the title… I just couldn’t resist.
Birding is a sport of highs and lows. Sometimes you see what you want and sometimes you don’t. This is an accepted part of the hobby we all love. Nature is always beautiful and there’s always something to marvel at, so dipping is never all that bad. That being said, continually failing to find what you are looking for, while knowing that it’s probably due to logistic limitations placed upon you, can be an incredibly frustrating experience. This I learned the hard way in Burgas, Bulgaria.
The city of Burgas, the fourth largest in Bulgaria, is a gritty, port city, filled with communist industry and high rises. While the city appears to be on the rise again, fueled by the EU, the lust of rich westerners for nice beaches, and Black Sea shipping, it nevertheless feels like a forgotten, crumbling corner of the Balkan Peninsula. It is however, excellent for birding. Located on the coast, hemmed in between the Black Sea and three lakes of varying salinity, Burgas is a mecca for migrating and overwintering waterbirds. This was what I had come to see, and in particular, I was seeking the small wintering populations of Pallas’s gull and white-headed duck, both charismatic and sought-after species.
The catch is that, as is standard for this year, I didn’t have a car or a scope. This is usually fine, with public transport taking me most places I need to go, and me muddling by scopeless. However, in the spread out and waterbird-heavy Burgas, I was at a distinct disadvantage. Despite this, on my first morning in Burgas, I set out enthusiastically by taxi for the Poda Nature Reserve, located along a bay and a series of pools.
Throughout my visit, I was blown away by Poda, for it is truly excellent, excellent birding. Common shelducks whirred into the air around me, reed buntings fluttered through the brush, and I was able to get brilliant looks at my lifer mustached warblers which I succeeded to pish up from a flock of the always-stunning bearded reedlings.
As the day warmed up, big flocks of pelicans started to soar. Mixed in with the majority of Dalmatians were a handful of great white pelicans, noticeable thanks to their black underwings and smaller size.
Dalmatian Pelican
Great White Pelican (top right) in a Flock of Dalmatians
A group of seven Eurasian spoonbills were also spotted in one of the pools, an increase from the recent reports of two.
Eurasian Spoonbills
However, despite searching through the big gull flocks loafing in the bay, I was unable to locate any of the Pallas’s gulls that have been frequenting the area (the lack of a scope hurt me here). A little disappointed, but still on a high from a good morning of birding, I headed to my next stop: Burgas Lake.
The three lakes which encircle Burgas are, as already stated, of varying levels of salinity. Lake Burgas is brackish and so attracts large number of diving ducks. In particular, it is home to huge numbers of pochard. Hundreds of these aythya ducks were crowded in along the shoreline. Mixed in were a few tufted ducks and a handful of my lifer smew, the most dapper of mergansers.
Burgas is a huge lake though, and upon arrival it quickly became evident that it was going to be hard to bird without both a car and a scope. After a couple hours of walking along the verge of a busy road trying to get new vantage points over the lake, I abandoned my hopes of finding any of the small raft of white-headed ducks that winters here.
Having dipped on my two biggest targets and growing weary from all the walking, my spirits were dropping fast. It was in this mood that I got a taxi to drop me at Atanasovsko Lake, the saltiest and shallowest of Burgas’s lake triumvirate. Here I was hoping for slender-billed gull, which, by my count, would be my 200th species for the Western Palearctic. I had planned for this milestone to be white-headed duck, but what can you do. I’m definitely not salty. I swear.
When I got to the lake, I discovered that I felt a little hungry. It was only then that, much to my chagrin, I realised I hadn’t eaten any food in the past 22 hours. Whoops. A nearby gas station remedied this minor setback (I can now say confidently that nothing tastes better than pre-packaged ice cream after a day of accidental fasting) and I returned to the birds. Pretty quickly I was able to spot some slender-billed gulls mixed into a flock of black-headed gulls. It was an awesome bird and a solid milestone, but I felt more relieved than anything after the two big misses earlier in the day.
Distant Slender-billed Gulls
The sun was setting by now, and I spent the rest of the evening enjoying the birds of the lake. Lots of dabbling ducks were milling about, the occasional pied avocet would fly by, and very distant greater flamingos and black-tailed godwits were slightly unusual. It was a needed bit of calm in what had been a hard and stressful day of birding.
The next morning, before I had to catch a bus to Varna for my next leg of Bulgarian birding, I opted to check back to Lake Burgas for another shot at white-headed duck. A couple more hours of fruitless, scopeless, and stiff-tailless searching, and I finally handed my sword over to the Birding Gods and surrendered.
Overall it was a day and a half reminding me how little is guaranteed in birding. Perhaps the even more valuable lessons however, was that I shouldn’t go a whole day without eating, and that next time I’m in Burgas, I should make sure to have a scope and a car with me!
As I boarded the bus leaving Burgas, thoughts of white-headed ducks and Pallas’s gulls swam about as I contemplated where I’d get these birds later in the year. Turkey, I assured myself. My redemption will be found in Turkey. In a couple weeks we’ll see if I was right.
The Birding Place 