Thursday 31 May 2012

Romania - Part 1 Cluj to Sighisoara


As I’m currently imprisoned due to inclement weather, it has given me time to catch up with my trip to Romania at the beginning of June! Was it really that long ago?  It was all part of a cunning ploy to avoid the media hype of a Diamond Jubilee celebration and to see if by visiting the country with more bears than the rest of Europe, we could rectify or misses in California the previous year.

This was a seven night trip which started by flying into Cluj and driving the 300 miles through Transylvania ending in Bucharest from where we flew home. The trip was split into three chunks, travelling about a 100 miles between each staging post. The majority of our time was spent with two nights in Zarnesti and two in Brazov each of which are just 20 miles apart.

After collecting the hire car at Cluj we set off for Sighisoara. We aimed to stop off at the Turda Gorge and at Medias. Wildlife wise it seemed to get off to a good start with stonechat and bee eater seen from the car soon after leaving the town.

Attempting to interpret instructions from the guide book, we got into Turda but found poor signage and the lack of detailed maps meant we couldn’t find the turning, ending up in Campia Turzii. On reaching a junction we attempted to loop back to retrace our steps. The road we found ourselves on was a comparatively new duel carriageway which we discovered had no exits for almost 60 km until you get back to Cluj!! We were able to see where we wanted to get to and from a distance the gorge looked very nice. 

Deciding now to give the gorge a miss, we tried to locate the historic town of Medias, one of the oldest in the country. We managed to get as far as Tarnaveni and once again managed to miss a turn and become horrendously lost. This was much to the amusement of the inhabitants of the town we decided we needed to turn around in and again found it difficult to relate what was on the map with what was on the ground. Detailed maps of Romania do not exist the best we could acquire was a 1:700,000 which are next to useless when trying to find anywhere off the main road.

Not wanting to waste more time, we tried retracing our steps back to a road that would, we hoped, lead us to our destination for the next two nights in Sighisoara. Eventually arriving, we found our accommodation to be right by the entrance into the historic city. After a well-earned rest from our long day, we headed into the town for a relaxing meal and quiet drink before turning in for the night ready for the following days exploration of the town. 
View from hotel room balcony to the Sighisoara clock tower  (c Rotton Yarns)

View from clock tower to hotel - my balcony canopy is in the centre of the picture and our hire car is the  first car on the right in the street below (c Rotton Yarns)

Our day in Sighisoara was spent slowly following the perimeter route of the towns old wall, taking lots of photographs en-route of the historic buildings. There were two notable things about the wildlife in the town; first there were no swifts but lots of house martins. Given the antiquity of the town, this seemed very odd. Also, it was odd to see common redstart sharing the rooftops with their relative, the black redstart. The latter was not a surprise to see, being quite the norm for any European town, but the common redstart was certainly a surprise.

The following are a selection of pictures from around Sighisoara.

 (c Rotton Yarns)

 (c Rotton Yarns)

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 (c Rotton Yarns)
Later in the day, we attempted to follow instruction in the guide book that would take us to the Brieti ancient oak wood pasture just two miles from the centre of town. Only ten years ago, the site was under threat of being destroyed to make way for a Dracula theme park. It was only after local, national and international objections were the plans shelved.

After several attempts, we eventually found what seemed to fit the directions. However, instead of an oak wood, we found ourselves in a hanging beech wood on the side of the hill with not an oak in sight! Foiled again. The only consolation was the sighting of a lesser spotted eagle which I’ve never seen before.

Sunday 20 May 2012

Part 2 ... and things get slower

Despite the poor weather and my car not having been discharged from the car hospital, I decided to continue my pursuit of attempting to awaken my dormant interest in natural history.
Unfortunately
, I don't think this weekends activities done it any favours in the least. The only saving grace was the fact I'd taken my camera which helped keep my sanity and retain the will to live.

Having slowly walked somewhere in the region of a six miles circular route from home, over the period of about 3 hours, I only managed to find thirty species of bird. Its at times like this when you remember why one just cannot be bothered to make the effort anymore!

Although I did find lots of nice plants to photograph, it was so slow that I even resorted to taking pictures of a slug! But it was a particularly big one.

a slug (c Rotton Yarns)
For the record, below is the mornings species list. The highlights for me were undoubtedly the whitethroats and kestrel:

Blackbird
Blackcap
Blue Tit
Carrion Crow
Chaffinch
Chiffchaff
Coal Tit
Cuckoo
Dunnock
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Green Woodpecker
House Sparrow
Jackdaw
Kestrel
Linnet
Long-tailed Tit
Magpie
Mistle Thrush
Pied Wagtail
Robin
Skylark
Song Thrush
Starling
Swallow
Swift
Whitethroat
Willow Warbler
Woodpigeon
Wren

Sunday 13 May 2012

A slow day in the field part 1

The middle of the month always heralds the moth trapping and bird ringing sessions at nearby Beeston. The May session, due to the poor weather was particularly slow and I only managed to find seven species of moth in the trap that had been left out overnight. They were:

Green carpet
Muslin moth
Shuttle shaped dart
Hebrew character
Iron Prominent
Common swift
Waved umber

The bird ringing wasn't much better and in fact was so dull that while the ringers were away checking nets at one point, myself and one of the ringers took to playing with two hapless millipedes we'd found lurking in a crevice of the plastic patio table we use to work from. 

First we attempted to see if they would fight each other, this was to no avail. They also seemed disinterested in trying to perform any kind of errr, hum, errr, cough .... anyway I don't suppose I'd be too keen on that kind of thing in front of an audience. The best we could muster from the poor creatures was to race them against each other across the table - it successfully seemed to keep us amused for ages. 


Wednesday 9 May 2012

Twang!

This is a classic Mildrew moment of gargantuan proportion but one which ultimately must have been a relief to the driver of the recovery vehicle I called out.

While on the way home from work, my car suddenly lost all power. Fortunately I was able to cruise it into a nearby entrance and walk the 400 metres to my house and phone the RAC. There was an irony to this in that it happened a mere 30 metres from the Cemetery at the edge of town.  

On calling the RAC, it seems they were busy and were not able to get out for a good hour. Wanting to get my monies worth of subscription I decided at the time to tough it out and turn down an offer of a tow up the road to the garage, despite I was supposed to be going out for a meal at 19:30. 


After almost two hours a contract vehicle arrived at 19:30 to assess the problem and rescue the dead car. It seems, as suspected the cambelt had broken - ouch!! He loaded me on and must have been quite relieved at my general joviality despite the long wait and ultimate terminal news. He must have been especially pleased when it also transpired the reason why he was so long 
at his previous job was the police had to be called out help him recover the vehicle. 

Apparently, rumour has it, he went to recover a car that had been put in a ditch. The owner had seemingly got the car out and was able to park in a nearby pull-in while awaiting recovery. However, the story has it a woman living in the house told him he couldn't park it there and whatever he'd told her elicited a call to her relatives who appeared mob handed and started to smash the car up! This happened just as the recovery vehicle arrived and apparently had to call the police so he could recover the vehicle. All very bizarre and whether true or not is quite an elaborate tale!


After he'd dropped the vehicle off at the car hospital, I was able to persuade him to act as a taxi and drop me off at the venue I was supposed to be eating in only half an hour late and in time to get my order in.


As this is a posthumous post, the cost for getting the car back on the road was not quite as expensive as feared. The bill was more of a redshank rather than a snipe. I prefer goldcrests, but in the light of things, one mustn't complain - redshanks are quite nice too. 

Monday 7 May 2012

Another wet Bank Holiday

As I'm having to produce a series of posthumous posts, I thought I'd amalgamate my attempts in May to do some natural history.

My first efforts came over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend. This was the 6th and 7th of May. On the Sunday I visited the gravel quarry at Broom which was interesting and productive given the weather wasn't at all conducive and rather living up to what one always expects from a Bank Holiday - cold, wet and miserable.

I managed to find a few warblers including managing to see a lesser whitethroat before a common whitethroat this year. Walking alongside a hedge, I was aware of a common whitethroat singing from within and patiently waited for it to perform its aerial song flight. After a few minutes, nearby, there was a sudden out burst of the distinctive song of lesser whitethroat and the bird broke from its cover and  flitted rapidly away to hide itself further along the hedge. Around the reed fringed pools nearby came the songs of reed warbler, no doubt recently arrived from their Trans-Saharan migration. 


The usual array of waders were present as ever, those being Redshank, Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Ringed and Little ringed plover. 


The following day's walk was cut abruptly short by rain, having only been out for an hour walking the fields closer to home. But just before the rain did set in I was fortunate enough to at least find three migrant Wheatears. Unfortunately, the prospect of a photograph put the birds into panic mode and by the time I'd got my camera ready they had vanished almost as quickly as they'd appeared! How strange as a similar thing occured last autumn at the same place when I found a Whinchat. 


The following is a species list for the two days


06-May
07-May
Blackcap
Blackbird
Black-headed Gull
Blackbird
Buzzard
Blackcap
Buzzard
Blackcap
Canada Goose
Blue Tit
Canada Goose
Blue Tit
Chiffchaff
Carrion Crow
Common Swift
Carrion Crow
Common Tern
Chaffinch
Coot
Coal Tit
Coot
Collared Dove
Gadwall
Dunnock
Goldfinch
Goldcrest
Great Crested Grebe
Goldfinch
Great Crested Grebe
Greenfinch
Green Woodpecker
Jackdaw
Grey Heron
Jackdaw
Grey Heron
Linnet
Greylag Goose
Long-tailed Tit
Greylag Goose
Long-tailed Tit
House Martin
Magpie
Lapwing
Robin
Lapwing
Rook
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Skylark
Lesser Whitethroat
Starling
Linnet
Wheatear
Little Grebe
Woodpigeon
Little Ringed Plover
Woodpigeon
Mallard
Yellowhammer
Mallard
Moorhen
Moorhen
Oystercatcher
Redshank
Reed Warbler
Ringed Plover
Sand Martin
Sand Martin
Shelduck
Song Thrush
Swallow
Swallow
Swift
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Whitethroat
Willow Warbler
Yellowhammer