WILD LIFE

16.10.2014

Birds, bears and history

Brown Bear mother near the Central Balkan National Park

We have just finished an autumn tour focused on birds, bears and culture&history. As it is a bit late in the season now, and due to the cold spell at the begging of September, most of the birds have moved south, but we still had good sightings, including Long-legged Buzzard, Middle and Lesser Spotted woodpeckers while at the sea coast we have seen both Dalmatian and White pelicans, Pigmy Cormorants and Spoonbills as well as fair number of migrating Steppe buzzards, Hobbies and Red-footed falcons.

The wildlife highlights however was a female bear with her two cubs which we have observed for two consecutive evenings, some 25 to 30 meters away from our hide. Wild boars have also showed up.

The other accents of our tour were few historical sites. We have visited – Koprivshtitsa, the old towns of Sozopol and Nesebar – all three are declared architectural reserves. We have also visited 3 of the Thracian tumuluses in the Rose valley near Kazanlak – a unique antic treasures created 2500 years ago! On our first and last days of the tour we have also visited few sites in Sofia and at the very end we devoted half of day to the Boyana church, a Unesco World heritage Site, as well as the National Museum of History. Bulgaria’s ancient history is almost unknown to the public but it is very rich and interesting with some really unique treasures and settlements, left by the Thracians, Romans and proto Bulgarians .

The overall success of the tour made us decide to offer again our birds and culture tour. We have run it successfully back in the years, but we will now modify it a bit, by including few more recently discovered Thracian tombs and treasures.