Bulgaria 2007: Christmas Card Birds

For a while in the 1980s, birders were playing a new and slightly perverse listing game: the Christmas Card Bird Count. If rightly I remember, Birding even published a few of the more impressive tallies. What struck me most at the time was how few Nearctic species made those lists. Once you’d ticked Northern Cardinal, Cedar Waxwing, and Eastern Bluebird, nearly every Hallmark bird was an Old World species.

That’s part of the reason that a birding visit to Europe, even a first birding visit to the continent, is so filled with déjà-vu moments. In Bulgaria this summer, time and again we ran across “familiar” birds that were in fact new to many on the bus, but whose colorful images had been impressed on memory for years.

European Bee-eaters were common enough in the appropriate habitats, at colonies in rough banks or charrupping in pairs and small flocks high overhead.

Perhaps the most abundant of European passerines, Chaffinches gave some in our party a run for their money, singing everywhere from invisible perches in mixed forests. But a few individuals were more accommodating.

Eurasian Hoopoes whooped along the roadsides every day, but for some reason I was never ready with the camera when one showed itself. Earl got great photos of this individual, but I was satisfied with a distant shot taken while I was busy enjoying Greater Short-toed Larks (much the better bird than a “mere” hoopoe!).

I’ve always been fond of Christmas cards that are “seasonally inappropriate,” with bright yellow American Goldfinches or Magnolia Warblers atop the tree. House Martins leave Europe in the winter, but they are one of the most abundant and most conspicuous of Bulgaria’s summer birds.

I’m very proud of this picture, accidental though it may have been.

The Palearctic fringillids are always good for a winter greeting. Linnets are Alison’s favorite, and every one reminded me of her excitement at seeing her first in France years ago.

The CCBC lists always tallied good numbers of European Rollers, and we did too on our Bulgarian trip. Again, though, I was always watching something rarer, like a Montagu’s Harrier, when a roller would have let me take its picture, so the best I got was this rather blurry shot. But still, blurry or not, you’ve got to admit that this is one improbably beautiful bird!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Eurasian Thick-knee on a Christmas card, but they certainly deserve to be. We saw this species only a couple of times in Bulgaria, but each time it was worth the screeching of bus brakes.

And this picture resembles a Christmas card itself, with a bright male European Stonechat perched among the flowers. It would have been better, but I was watching a Black-eared Wheatear up the slope. (Excuses!)

As I look back through this selection of “pretty birds,” it occurs to me that all of them can be seen elsewhere in Europe, in Provence, for example. But Bulgaria has them all in an abundance I had never seen elsewhere, making every day of our trip a birder’s Christmas present.