Bulgaria 2007: Hookbills

June 11 was truly a red-letter birding day. Raptors were the theme, and thanks to Mladen’s excellent local scouting, we got great looks at Asian Imperial Eagle and Lesser Spotted Eagle, both lifebirds for me and both seen impressively well. I was especially pleased to see the Lesser Spotted in the expert company of Mladen and Gerard; even given the excellent views, I would have puzzled over the identification much longer.

The day also produced the more expected accipitrids, including Black Kite, Western Marsh-Harrier, a fine male Montagu’s Harrier, and Common Buzzards, along with the usual Common Kestrels.

But for me, all these hawks paled next to their smaller partners in predation, the shrikes. In all my European experiences before this trip, I had seen only two species (and only a single individual of Northern Gray Shrike, in Switzerland); our Bulgarian expedition produced four, and several days turned up tallies of no fewer than three shrike species.

It was extremely gratifying to find Red-backed Shrike a common and conspicuous feature of the rural landscape. In several small towns and villages, in fact, the birds were nesting in unkempt gardens, something I had not seen in western Europe before. Hurray for extensive agricultural practices and sloppy yards!

Woodchat Shrikes were nearly as common some places, and nearly as beautiful; my day’s high count was 15, a figure virtually impossible to conceive of in western Europe.

Shrikes are earnest birds, it seems to me, but I could never shake the feeling that the Woodchats were smiling back at us.

Even rarer than Woodchat and Red-backed is Lesser Gray Shrike, a stunningly elegant gray-and-black shrike with an extensive mask. We were fortunate to have great views of this bird several times on the trip.

But the real prize was Masked Shrike. Mladen had two pairs staked out, and the second performed beautifully for us in a shade-dappled oak grove. It quickly became apparent that they were attending a nest, and we withdrew to a respectful distance, from which we watched them hunt and perch. Another of the fantastic birds I had never dreamed of actually getting to see. Tick!