Jun

Bulgaria 2007: Emberiza Adventures

June 11 was a day of much driving, from the mountains of western Bulgaria all the way to the Black Sea. Our first stop, though, was the archeological site of Perperikon, where the haler and heartier of our group climbed the hill to see the ruins; still a bit wary of slopes and rocks, I stayed with others in the parking lot, and was glad I did!

Our stroll around the edges of the concrete pad gave us the best bunting day of the trip. “Bunting,” of course, not in any of the senses we give that word in North America, but in its primary European meaning: the “sparrows” (to fall into another dangerous polysemy) of the genus Emberiza.

Unlike most of our American emberizid sparrows, Old World buntings tend to be large, chunky, and sexually dimorphic, and most of them have the endearing habit of perching up in the open to sing. Perhaps my favorite bird of the entire trip was Black-headed Bunting, a true Balkan specialty that proved surprisingly common, its rich, throaty song a characteristic sound of open brushy country.

We also found Rock Buntings a couple of times, and a male Ortolan Bunting gave us good scope views in the Perperikon parking lot (sorry, Gerard: “car park”); both these species are very scarce now in western Europe, especially the Ortolan, still a delicacy in some Mediterranean lands….

Yellowhammer, with one of the most cheerful songs of any European bird, and Cirl Bunting, the male with one of the most elegant faces of any bird anywhere, were surprisingly uncommon on our trip, but we did see (or at least hear) them most days. And Common Reed-Buntings sang from a few of the marshy spots we visited.

But the most characteristic bunting of the Bulgarian countryside, indeed one of its most abundant birds overall, was Corn Bunting, a fist-sized bundle of brown with that odd sizzling song and the habit of flying around with drooping tarsi (whence, I assume, its species name calandra).