THE FIRST RED-BREASTED GEESE ARE HERE!

Posted on November 13, 2014

November 2, 2014: Late October was unusually cold along the northern and western coast of the Black sea, with rains and snow. So we were looking forward to the weather to improve and to check what has arrived in Coastal Dobrudzha, the northernmost Bulgarian Black sea coast.

On the 1st Nov we did one of the regular bird monitoring in this area, together with colleagues from Neophron Tours, we were lucky to have found the first 24 Red-breasted Geese (Branta ruficollis) for the season – in a flock of about 900 Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons), feeding in a corn stubble field.

This observation surprised us, because this time of year the arriving wintering geese usually concentrate and stay for a while in the Danube wetlands and only towards the end of November they head to their traditional wintering grounds in Coastal Dobrudzha.

Apart from the Red-breasted Geese we had also a flock of 7 Tundra Swans and 14 Whooper Swans, all of them having arrived unusually early this year.

There was an active raptor migration all day round, including hundreds of Common Buzzards and Eurasian Sparrowhawks, plus a Lesser Spotted Eagle.