Tour Leaders: Dave Smallshire (Naturetrek Leader)
Tihomir (Tisho) Stephanov (Local Guide)
Yordan (Dancho) Kutsarov (Local guide)
Participants: Colin Adams Lancashire
Rosemary Blasdale Buckinghamshire
Steve Blasdale Buckinghamshire
Lorraine Ellison Leicestershire
Richard Ellison Leicestershire
Summary: This circuit of central and southern Bulgaria gave us a good insight into both the dragonfly fauna and abundant other wildlife of the region. After visiting streams in the Sredna Gora Mountains, we moved south-east to the low mountains of the biodiversity-rich Eastern Rhodope. Here, two days looking at varied habitats produced a good range of dragonflies and other insects, including the extraordinary Odalisque – a damselfly that looks rather like a dragonfly. Our next two days were spent in the higher Western Rhodope Mountains, where a select range of dragonflies were found, including lots of Spearhead (Northern) Bluets at their southernmost locality in the world. After exceptionally close encounters with Wallcreepers feeding young and good numbers of the beautiful little Banded Darter, we arrived at Melnik, the base for our final two nights. At Rupite Hot Springs, we were greeted by a small flock of wandering Eleonora’s Falcons while the final climax to a superb trip was seeing Black Pennant at a new, third location for the species in Bulgaria. The group saw an excellent total of 47 species of dragonflies (excluding possible Brilliant Emerald, 71 butterflies and 120 birds, not to mention a wide range of other animals and plants that the combined talents of the group helped to find and identify.
After an uneventful flight from London Heathrow, we met our Bulgarian guides and drivers, Tisho and Dancho, at Sofia airport. We continued on to our first scheduled dragonfly site, a small stream running into the Topolnica River. We arrived at our destination, a small, family-run hotel in the historic village of Koprivshtitsa, in good time to relax before a splendid Bulgarian dinner.
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The rustic nature of Koprivshtitsa was very apparent as we became accustomed to seeing horse-drawn carts as often as motor cars. Finally, as rain and thunder set in for the evening, we arrived at a new venue in Krumovgrad, a very comfortable small hotel which supplied most welcome drinks and a hearty meal.
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Before breakfast, with low cloud still hanging over the hills, a walk down to the Krumovitza River yielded dewy Small Pincertail and White-tailed Skimmer still at their roost sites in low vegetation.
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The next dragonfly site was a reservoir near Zhelezhari. We soon located Blue-eyes, egg-laying Robust Spreadwings, Lesser Emperor, Green-eyed Hawker and a beautiful and exceptionally persistent hovering Blue-eyed Hawker, that after ten minutes was the subject of several gigabytes worth of flight images!
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