Lake Neusiedl/Fert�-Hansag, 9th June 2012

Sometimes I wonder whether everything sounds just that little bit too rosey, when reporting from Wildlife Travel's trips... surely it can't always be so great? Well, at the moment I'm in the hotel in Illmitz, listening to the rain hitting the roof. After superb weather in Romania and in Spain, it seems like that oft-predicted rain has finally caught up with me, and alas it looks set to stay with us for the next couple of days. Ah well...

Meanwhile, our first few days in Austria (and this afternoon just across the border in Hungary, where Lake Neusiedl suddenly becomes Fert�-Hansag) have been pretty successful! We had a couple of days of beautiful weather, all blue skies and fluffy clouds, with butterflies in profusion, soaring raptors (including a thirty minute period with 2 White-tailed Eagles over one way, a first year Eastern Imperial Eagle over the other way, four Common Buzzards, a Honey Buzzard, a couple of Montagu's Harriers, numerous Marsh Harriers and Kestrels, and finally a sub-adult Eastern Imperial Eagle over as we tried to leave...), Nightingale singing out in the open, Icterine and Barred Warblers, a pair of Penduline Tits and, ironically, a definite shortage of water in the shallow lakes...

This morning we were up early, and headed south towards the Hungarian border where we found two enormous white balls of fluff, displaying male Great Bustards (with at least two females showing an interest), before yet another Eastern Imperial Eagle drifted over, being vigorously mobbed by a male Marsh Harrier.

From the top: Eastern Imperial Eagle with Marsh Harrier; Anagalus onobrychis; Paraplagionotus floralis; Marbled White; and Hungarian Grey Cattle, a very impressive, almost pre-historic looking beast.