Bulgaria 2007: An Airport Pond

It’s a long trip from Tucson to Sofia, longer when you’re flanked, as I seem always to be, by overactive children and their underactive parents. But on June 8, twenty-six hours after leaving the house, I was getting off the plane in Bulgaria, where I found waiting for me most of the DVOC group I would be joining for a fast tour of the country’s many birding high points.

Mine was not the last plane to land, so we early arrivals had a couple of hours to look around the airport and to enjoy some of the common birds of southeast Europe, from Hooded Crows to Eurasian Kestrels. We were delighted to find that a small marshy pond next to the parking garages was accessible on foot, so we clambered down to it. A Little Grebe and a few Common Moorhens floated out on the water, while a Great Reed Warbler perched up to yell ut as. A single Black Stork soared in the distance, and the little patch of woodland harbored European Goldfinch, Common Greenfinch, and the first of many Common Nightingales we would see and hear on our trip.

Off to a good start!