Are you a fan of birds and like birdwatching (obserwacja ptaków)? Have you ever wondered if birding in Poland is really a gem for birders?
Białowieża Forest and Biebrza Marshes are the most famous birding hotspots in Poland. That’s true, but these are not the only ones!
There are plenty of other places, excellent habitats (siedliska) and real wildlife sanctuaries (sanktuaria przyrody) filled with birds. Unfortunately, most of these locations are unknown to foreign birdwatchers. Fortunately, there are a lot of experts in Poland who know them all because they were born, live and watch birds there throughout the year. Their expertise and years of experience can help you find the common birds of Poland and the rarities.
Don’t know when to go?
March is simply the best time ever for all species of woodpeckers (gatunki dzięciołów). Also massive flocks of geese and ducks (ogromne stada gęsi i kaczek).
April for woodpeckers (dzięcioły), owls (sowy) and April adds plenty of migrating waterfowls (ptactwo wodne) and raptors (ptactwo drapieżne).
Early May has all of the above (but worse for woodpeckers) plus displaying ruffs and great snipes on the lake! And mid-May brings late warblers: especially aquatic, river and barred. Plus flycatchers (muchołówki) – collared and red-breasted, 4 species of marshy terns (rybitwy bagienne), bee eaters (zjadacze pszczół), rollers etc.
June or late May is still good for raptors, terns (rybitwy), aquatic warbler (wodniczka) and bee-eaters but you may miss great snipes and woodpeckers, as they will be hardly visible, because of dense foliage and tall grass at this time of year.
Excellent birding tours have been designed to get the most from birding in Poland. You will enjoy unforgettable days. Great opportunities for nature sound recording and wildlife photography (nagrywanie dźwięku przyrody i dzikich zwierząt)!
Tours like that are quite a lot and you can just google them. A lot of them will pick you up from the airport, take care of the transport, food and places to stay (usually great homemade meals from local products). A lot of times everything is included in a tour like that and you can get it for about EUR 100 per person (including transport, place to stay, guide, all the tickets for entering paid areas). Highly experienced, english speaking local guide will lead you to all the best birding spots in the area, showing you the birds you wish to watch.
One thing to remember – May is the peak season and it is very busy for such tours, so you should probably book it in advance!
If anyone has been on a tour like that in Poland – we would love to hear what your experience was:)
Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)
Comments:
Kuba:
Your emails are not including all the text of the subject. I have to come to the site to view it.
David Honley:
I’m having same problem as ‘Kuba'(see comment above)- am not receiving the whole text. This was the same for the blog ‘powiedzenia’. Hope this technical glitch will soon be resolved.
Pozdrowienia z Anglii 🙂
Transparent Language:
Greetings,
Just wanted to address the switch back to a preview only of the blog article in RSS feed emails. We understand that it can be more convenient for readers to get the entire post in an email, and that’s why we gave it a try. The problem that arose was that, instead of commenting on the blog article itself, readers were hitting reply to the email. The comments we were getting were useful, insightful information, and not only was the blogger not receiving these comments – other readers could not benefit from them either. Many such cases included questions that would have been valuable to discuss as part of the article, for all readers (who likely had similar questions) to see.
For these reasons, we went back to a preview format of the RSS email. I just wanted you to know that we don’t make these decisions arbitrarily, and there was a specific reason for it.
Regards,
– Lorien, Social Media Manager
Transparent Language, Inc.
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Czarny kapturek:
Down here in Lower Silesia, I visited the Barycz valley lakes last year. There I saw many white-tailed eagles, a hoopoe, spotted redshanks (passing through Poland), white storks, deer walking neck deep in water, common widgeon and garganey. A most incredible time for bird-watching.
That the area is also on the old German-Polish border, there’s plenty of interesting history there as well.