26.05.2007 - Hortobágy National Park

It has been a very nice day! A bit tiresome as we departed at 3AM without any sleepin but we wanter to avoid travel in extreme hot weather. The target was to find some birds for Szandra she had neved ever seen before. Finally collected a few for her country and life list. We visited the Hortobágy National Park in the morning and late evening time skipped the hottest times of the day. It was amazing to see how dry year we already have. The grasslands or as we cal it "puszta" is already shoving the characteristics of an August puszta. Dried grass colored the landscape by faded orange. No water on the grasslands since weeks. On some part we had a feeling as we were somewhere in a semi-desert. Birds were typical for the region and nothing extreme was found although we so much expected to find some Rose-colored Starlings as several flocks were reported in the previous days countrywide. We could not find any and only one flock reported from yesterday a bit far from the Hortobágy region. The unclomplete birdlist from our trip (the interesting ones): Squacco Heron Purple Heron Ferruginosus Duck 3 European Honey-Buzzard 2 White-tailed Eagle 1 Red-footed Falcon 100+ Europen Kestrel 1 Eurasian Thick-knee 2 Little Owl 2 European Bee-eater 4 European Roller 5 Lesser Grey Shrike 10+ On the way back heavy thunderstorms crossed the Hortobágy and also the highway.