10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

In the chill morning of late January, I am driving east of Belgrade towards the Two Towers section of the Danube and the best waterfowling bonanza in the whole of Serbia. The post Going Medieval: Waterfowling the Two Towers of Serbia appeared first on 10,000 Birds. Cover photo : Ram Fortress by Ilija Jacanovic.

Serbia 264

Serbia Geese Eagles Louisiana 264

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 6, 2015

Twenty years ago, flocks consisting of a thousand European Turtle Doves were a common sight in Serbia in spring. As we speak, in Serbia these birds are still hunted in August and September. In all European Union countries to the north and east of Serbia (except Romania), Turtle Doves are strictly protected. What happened next?

Serbia 270

Serbia Slaughter Slaughtered Turtles 270

10,000 Birds

APRIL 11, 2019

Where to find shorebirds around Belgrade, Serbia? So far, 33 species have been eBirded in Serbia. Let me add that the only ever ringed Critically Endangered (yet, possibly extinct) Slender-billed Curlew was ringed in northern Serbia (Carska bara Ramsar site) in the 1970s. Common Redshank. Collared Pratincole.

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Serbia New Jersey Europe Hunters 151

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 16, 2018

Serbia has 317 eBirded species so far, or 89% of the 356 in the national checklist. Among travel guides, due to its extensive coverage of natural history and birding sites, recommendation goes to Laurence Mitchell’s Serbia: The Bradt Travel Guide (5th edition, 2017). Every few years, Rosy Starlings appear – this was one such year.

Serbia 150

Serbia Owls Geese Macedonia 150

10,000 Birds

APRIL 26, 2018

Our destination lies further west, along the Drina River, which marks the border between Serbia and Bosnia. Due to mass wolf poisonings in the 1960s and the 1970s, Griffon Vultures in Serbia suffered a dramatic population crash. Povlen, a quick stop filled with a song that sounds familiar, but I haven’t heard it since last year.

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Serbia Herzegovina Bosnia Sheep 105

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 12, 2023

The night temperatures in Belgrade, Serbia, were already below minus 10 Celsius / 14 degrees Fahrenheit for two weeks. Up to the mid-20th century, Pygmy Cormorant was a common breeding species of wetlands around Belgrade until most wetlands were drained and the birds were lost, at one moment – from the entire territory of Serbia.

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Protection Serbia 2004 Legislation 278

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 25, 2018

We were heading to the Djerdap (Iron Gates) Gorge National Park, stretching along the south bank of the Danube in eastern Serbia, to do the 400 km / 250 mi bird tour interconnecting possibly the very best sites around Belgrade reachable within a day. Michael’s summer birding along the Danube in Serbia appeared first on 10,000 Birds.

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Serbia Woodpeckers Birds Bears 118

10,000 Birds

JUNE 17, 2021

Also, it is a part of the international ecological corridor and the “Confluence of the Sava and the Danube Rivers” Important Bird Area (IBA), already proposed for a nature reserve by the Government’s Institute for the Protection of Nature of Serbia. White-tailed Eagles in Beljarica. mi2 of the Danube Backwaters in 2014 (cover photo).

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Serbia Boars Protection Deer 274

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Testing the BTX at Vlasina Lake, South-east Serbia (note the forehead rest and finder) As an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer I am quite familiar with binoviewers and employ them frequently for visual work with telescopes. BTX mounted on PTH tripod head at Beljarica, Serbia Now enough with all the praise and good stuff.

Serbia 224

Serbia Austria Elephants 2017 224

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

In Belgrade, Serbia, winter months offer surprisingly good birding possibilities. Also, a rare Greater Spotted Eagle was spotted here in December (only about a dozen of them overwinter in Serbia). Winter is a season of extremes – opt for the very top and the very bottom of the city.

Serbia 296

Serbia Birds Ducks Woodpeckers 296

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

These birds have already left my native Serbia, further north, and this is not just the only one I have seen in Greece, but my last bee-eater of the season. From their point of view, I suppose, they are putting those marshes to a good use (to be completely honest – pretty much like birding Serbia).

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Greece Serbia Hunters Cows 162

10,000 Birds

MARCH 6, 2022

In February 2022, the Collaborative submitted 127 checklists in 7 countries ( Costa Rica , United States , Mexico , Trinidad and Tobago , United Kingdom , and Serbia ). The 2022 year list stands at 888 and the life list is now at 4,112.

Costa Rica 213

Costa Rica United Kingdom Trinidad United States 213

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

In 2022, the 10,000 Birds eBird Collaborative submitted 1,837 checklists from 9 countries ( Australia , China , Costa Rica , Mexico , Saint Lucia , Serbia , Trinidad and Tobago , United Kingdom , and the United States ) and observed 1,273 species. The Collaborative life list increased to 4,140.

Saint Lucia 193

Saint Lucia Costa Rica United Kingdom Trinidad 193

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Last month, I birded my favourite local patch, Beljarica – the best eBird hotspot in Belgrade city and the 3rd best in Serbia – four times. Some days ago, one impressive flock of more than a thousand Barn Swallows , Sand and Common House Martins greeted me from the wires. Photo: Gordan Pomorisac. And I felt… relieved?

Serbia 266

Serbia Birds Boars Otters 266

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

Belgrade City Environmental Secretariat accepted the initiative and the Institute for the Protection of Nature of Serbia produced the study and the official proposal for the protection of 18.6 It took 12 years to reach this point. The initiative to protect this area was launched in 2010. sq km / 7.2 sq mi of the Danube Backwaters in 2014.

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Protection Serbia Protest Protesting 263

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2015

Serbia has a large number of pigeon fanciers and a long history of lack of law enforcement in the field of wildlife crime ( Newsweek on poaching in the Balkans ). This time it is not in Serbia, but in Zurich, Switzerland, where this particular Serbian pigeon fancier / blogger lives. Painting (c) by Paschalis Dougalis.

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Switzerland Serbia Feral Falcons 191

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 3, 2020

mi2 of the Danube backwaters in Belgrade, Serbia. Out of my total of 15 observations ever, this is only the third within Serbia (the rest were half in India, the other half in Greece). Now, that fits the bird I saw, but soon I will realise another issue: in Serbia, this species was recorded only once! My favourite poplar tree.

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Birds Serbia Ducks Cyprus 266

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

In January 2022, the Collaborate submitted 209 checklists in 5 countries (Costa Rica, United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, and Serbia). (This post will return to its usual Saturday time next month.). The 2022 year list stands at 665 and the life list is now at 4,105.

United Kingdom 203

United Kingdom Costa Rica United States Puffins 203

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 24, 2015

Here is a joint media release: WWF, Decembar 11, 2015 – This December, 3,800 Pygmy Cormorants are wintering by the river Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, representing 2 percent of the global population and 5.4 “The Pygmy Cormorant is a strictly protected bird species in Serbia, as well as in the European Union.

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Serbia Protection Europe 2007 180

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia, offers several great birding spots and here are some recommendations for areas to go birding in and around the city, how to get there by public transport, and some of the bird species you might expect to see.

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Transported Woodpeckers Birds Serbia 254

10,000 Birds

MARCH 23, 2023

It has never visited these parts of Serbia before. A Bulgarian conservationist Emilian Stoynov told me that this vulture hatched in 2021 in Spain and, rehabilitated, was transferred to neighbouring Bulgaria, acclimatised and released in Vrachanski Balkan Nature Park in 2022. And the Cinereous Vulture is a lifer to me!

Bulgaria 262

Bulgaria McDonalds Eagles Serbia 262

10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2022

Once upon a time, vast forests of Quercus robur , known as common, pedunculate, European or English oak blanketed the Sava River floodplain, all the way from Croatia down to the river’s confluence in Belgrade, Serbia.

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Croatia Shelters Serbia France 223

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 17, 2020

along the Carska Bara Nature Reserve, Serbia, a Common Reed Bunting awaits me on a low branch… and then performs a real dance, twitching its tail sideways and following it in a series of quick steps! A way to beat the cold?

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Serbia Birds Deer Woodpeckers 261

10,000 Birds

APRIL 14, 2023

How long that circumstance would obtain if Serbia were (for example) in the European Union, with its agricultural monocultures, is questionable, she says.

Barn Owls 113

Barn Owls Owls Finland Serbia 113

10,000 Birds

MARCH 5, 2015

Two years ago, I was counting active nests of Rooks in the flat agricultural landscape north of Belgrade, Serbia. In the northern Backa region of Serbia, in the mid-1970s there were more than 37,000 active nests of Rooks, while in 2009 there were less than 8500, indicating a loss of more than 76% over a time span of 35 years ( source ).

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Experience Experiments Science Serbia 240

10,000 Birds

JULY 30, 2020

Opening my eyes in the Kastel Mariette eco-lodge in the Deliblato Sands Nature Reserve, Serbia, I wondered was the sound coming from outside the window or was it merely a dream. Soon, loud wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips came just out of the window – I never heard it from such a close range.

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Phoenix Serbia Birds 241

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

More productive areas of the Balkans have January eBird lists from 105 to 115 species (but I combined several areas in two countries, Greece and Serbia), so I have every reason to be satisfied. Am I satisfied? Yet, checking my remaining January targets, I realise that I could have easily had 4 or 5 more species.

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Owls Greece Serbia Woodpeckers 104

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 31, 2013

Hence, in land-locked Serbia, it has been recorded only three times: in 1857, one was shot at the Morava River; in 1993, one was observed by a bird photographer Rastko Aleksandrov at the Centa fish farm, north of Belgrade; and in 2012, a team of Croat and Serbian ornithologists found one at the Belgrade city rubbish dump.

Serbia 186

Serbia Croatia Hungary 2012 186

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2023

Why should something so unimaginable in Germany be possible in Serbia? Now, try to imagine Germany having Joseph Goebbels as a Chancellor around the year 1970, more than quarter of a century after WWII – unimaginable, isn’t it? Protest indeed!

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Protest Protesting Protesters Germany 174

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 2, 2017

The other day I watched a TV ad for a local mobile network provider showing a bright young free climber Stasha scaling a wall somewhere in the hilly heart of Serbia and immediately posting it at Instagram or wherever. A sound of a species never before recorded in the wilds of Serbia. It wasn’t Stasha who caught my attention.

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Bald Eagle Serbia Eagles Species 110

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 3, 2019

The next specialty was the Great Bustard at the Pastures of Great Bustard Nature Reserve in the north of Serbia: “The Association for the Protection of the Great Bustard had just about enough counters to cover the reserve and the neighbouring areas (birds often spend the winter in arable fields outside the reserve).

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2018 Serbia Falcons Greece 117

10,000 Birds

APRIL 9, 2020

Part of the Labudovo okno Ramsar Wetland and protected within the Deliblato Sands Special Nature Reserve , this section of the Danube, downriver from Belgrade, Serbia, is unique for its wide shallows, before the river narrows downstream from the village of Ram.

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Mali Serbia Eagles Birds 264

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 11, 2014

The night temperatures in Belgrade, Serbia, were already below minus 10 Celsius / 14 degrees Fahrenheit for two weeks. Up to the mid-20th century, Pygmy Cormorants were a common breeding species of wetlands around Belgrade… until the wetlands were drained and the birds were lost, at one moment – from the whole of Serbia.

Serbia 191

Serbia Protection Legislation Europe 191

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

Wigeons are only migrants and not a breeding species in Serbia and August is a bit too early for any longer distance duck movements. Among them are 3 to 4 breeding pairs of White-tailed Eagles, the largest density per square mile anywhere in Serbia. Only two years ago, in the spring 2014, Serbia had catastrophic floods.

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Serbia Protection Eagles Ducks 164

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

The city of Belgrade, Serbia, has about 1.7 Less than two years ago, I wrote here how I found the 4th GBBG for Serbia. Organisations involved in the research: Bird Study and Protection Society of Serbia, League for Ornithological Action and the Birds of Prey Protection Fund. Birds city birds Europe gulls Serbia'

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Serbia Birds Ukraine Europe 166

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2014

These days I am busy with something called the “avitourism product“ of Belgrade, Serbia. Okay, that choice is something to be expected, but how about this: some seven years ago I was guiding another British couple to a nearby fish farm where I was happy to show them the Great White Pelican – the only one I have ever seen in Serbia!

Serbia 174

Serbia Eagles Birds Sparrows 174

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 17, 2013

Most perching birds have already left us sometime from late August and September; soaring birds do migrate over Serbia, but there is no known bottleneck site to observe them (it is believed that they follow the main river valleys to the east and south); while waterbirds will start arriving in a month or so. Birding city birds Europe Serbia'

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Serbia Europe Netherlands Eagles 224