Romania and the Last Frontier - Day 4: Sleepy until Sundown

I always think of my trips overseas as a 'holiday' but they are never really very relaxing. In fact they are a bit more like a survival course as they are always fairly punishing in terms of schedule and sleep deprivation. The early starts, combined with the time difference, and long days quickly take their toll with cumulative fatigue. I find it easier by trying to keep organised and sticking to a fairly strict regime whilst away.

On the morning of the 4th day the effects of lack of sleep were starting to take their toll. There was a subdued atmosphere on the boat that morning. Some were more subdued than others.

The boated gently chugged through the back channels of the soft pre-dawn light and we entered into the small western 'Grebe Lake' once more. We had barely entered the lake when the first bird, a Squacco heron,  was in front of us bathed in early light. The mosquitoes seemed to be out in force that morning.

We decided to try and get some tern flight photos, as everyone was keen to try and get some Black Tern shots, but it was never really going to happen as the gentle breeze was  completely in the wrong direction seeing the birds generally flying into the light. If the conditions are wrong it doesn't matter how hard you try, it will always be a struggle to get images. I managed to get my first couple of photographs of the Black Terns but could see it would have been so different if the wind had been blowing the other way.

In the end it soon became obvious it was fairly hopeless continuing, as the camera shutters progressively fell more silent, it was time for the boat of tired photographers to move on. A Hooded Crow flew lazily overhead on the look out for an easy food opportunity

We entered into a back channel and encountered a pair of Red-necked Grebe which we stayed with for a short while before continuing our journey.

A little further on a Squacco Heron preening amongst the emergent aquatic plants.

Onwards we traveled before entering the large lake where we had finished the previous evening and the boat came to rest amongst a large lily bed which groups of Whiskered Tern were hunting insects over. The same frustrating problem though of the wind being in the wrong direction persisted to thwart our efforts with few useful photos being produced.

While we were sat there I decided to make a short video which I thought you may find of interest. The video is not about what you will see but will be hearing so make sure you have some volume on before hitting play. Now you may think this wetland paradise is an oasis of tranquility? It is far from it and what you are hearing in the video, except for the occasional camera shutter, is the constant background chorus of thousands of frogs. The volume of these amphibians increases quite considerably at night.


Tranquility in the Danube Delta from Richard Steel on Vimeo.

The morning outing was over and it was time head back to our hotel. This has been our least productive session on the trip, partly due to making a wrong choice with the conditions and also due to a general lethargy amongst the photographers that morning. Hopefully a dose of carp broth for lunch and an extended siesta would set us back on track and raring to go for our final evening boat session on the Delta.

I had a good sleep and felt much more back on the planet when we assembled on the hotel jetty around 3 p.m. I put this down more to the curative properties of the afternoon nap than the fish and vegetable soup.
The boat slipped away from  the jetty and headed off downstream which meant we would be travelling to one of the large eastern lakes, and probably some pelicans which seemed to be showing a preference for those areas. I must admit I do like photographing pelicans as they always look great either stood on an accumulation of vegetation, swimming around or in flight. I was hoping we could get some more flight photographs during this session.

We encountered a solitary Dalmatian Pelican stood on the same area were we had encountered pelicans previously.

After a few photographs the bird took off and we moved across the lake to a small group of White Pelicans, which provided us with some good flight photographs. Photographing pelicans in flight is relatively straightforward as they are such large birds that they require a long run up to get airborne which allows plenty of time for the photographers to get locked on to the with the cameras.

The boat manouvered back around and we made our way slowly towards two more Dalmatian Pelicans. En-route we came across a male Ferruginous Duck in a patch of lilies, a new species for me. An attractive bird in its rusty plumage.

The boat eased up close towards the two Dalmatians Pelicans which also provided us with some good flight opportunities.

A bonus Purple Heron passed the boat with long slow wing beats  allowing opportunity for a couple of welcome bonus photographs.

On our travels we came across a Little Egret stood on a log mid-channel with the strong currents swirling round it. A fairly tough exposure with the sun still bright and the background relatively dark.

We were heading to the same destination as the previous evening and paused as we entered once more into the large lake for a loafing Pygmy Cormorant. If ever there was a bird species which reminds me of birds reptilian ancestors then this would be it.

The same cast of birds was set out before us as the previous evening, with numbers of herons and ibis picking their way through the large floating mass of weed . The sun was starting to soften down  now and we started with a Glossy Ibis. This bird was not looking as a good as the one from the previous evening with its guano splattered feathers where it had been sat on the lower branches of the roosting tree. An avian analogy of human lives really, with the lower your position on the ladder the more you tended to get dumped on!

A Grey Heron stopped by briefly which was a good reminder of how small both Squacco and Night Herons actually are.

Of course with the light becoming better by the minute the cameras turned back to both of these smaller herons until there was no glow to play with using sensible camera settings.

Another very enjoyable session had come to an end and as we headed back to the hotel, we were treated to a beautiful sunset as the grand ending to our final evening session.

We had one last boat photography session left the following morning, before we headed off to our new destination, deeper into the Delta, to a place known as the 'Last Frontier'. Would a overnight complete change in wind direction finally allow us to photograph the Black Terns the next morning?  Well  you will have to wait for the next instalment to find out :)

Romania and the Last Frontier - Days 1 and 2: Return to the Delta

Firstly apologies for the lack of recent blog updates as it has been a very busy time for me that has included a return trip to Romania which I will recount over the next several posts. Regular readers may recall my trip to Romania last year, which was so enjoyable I decided to repeat it this year. However, this year was going to be different as the journey of discovery would see me heading to the 'last frontier'.

For those of interest in the camera kit I took for  this trip I will get that over with straight away. Packed in my Gura Gear Bataflae bag were the 600mm F 4, 300mm F2.8, Canon 1DX and 1Dmk4 bodies, together with a 1.4x and 2 x teleconvertor together with the usual chargers, spare batteries, memory cards and other small bits and pieces. The Gitzo tripod and monopod went in the suitcase. The only real difference this year was that I did not take the Wimberley Gimbal head but took along the new Uniqball ballhead to try out. The obligatory netbook and two 1GB hard drives were also taken. There is nothing like travelling light!!

So the day had finally arrived and on Friday 16th May I left home at 12 noon and started out on the long journey to the heart of the Danube Delta. This year, having done the journey previously, the long hours of travel ahead seemed less daunting particularly given the lack of terminal change in London. Following the short flight from Manchester down to Heathrow, I met up in Terminal 5 with the three other photographers I would be spending the week with Rene, Paul and Kevin. We touched down in Bucharest after a three hour flight at about 11:15pm local time (2 hours ahead of the UK) and were collected by an airport hotel minibus. We arrived at the hotel after midnight which was a lot easier to access than the heavily guarded palace hotel where we had stayed the previous year. It was a perfectly good hotel and no complaints at 29 euros for the night and given they served breakfast from 3am it meant we would get some food before our 6:30am pick up.

Saturday morning saw us all assembled with our mountain of luggage outside the hotel although the driver was about 30 minutes late due to an accident down the road. We loaded the bright yellow taxi to capacity with people and luggage and headed off on a fairly unremarkable 4 hour drive, accompanied by some terrible music, eastward across Romania to Tulcea and the 'gateway to the Danube Delta'.

We met up with Zoltan and Romi and as we loaded up the boat with our luggage it was noticeable that there was a good deal of  flood water coming down the Danube.  The coffee coloured water swirled in powerful currents around the jetty and chunks of tree rapidly passed further out in the channel. Recent heavy rains across central Europe had caused the river to swell and the speed and volume of water passing was impressive.

The boat journey to our first destination of Mila 23, where we would stay for the next few days, took around two hours. As we were getting closer to the hotel, I began recognising places from the previous year which was surprising as you would think one reed and tree lined channel can look very much like another. Certainly it was noticeable that the colour in the water was reducing quickly as we moved further into the delta, as the huge wetland filtered the sediment from the water. 24 hours after leaving home and we were stepping on to the jetty of the Paradise Delta House Hotel which sits on its own island opposite the small settlement of Mila 23.

We had arrived and were warmly greeted by some familiar faces bearing flammable Ribena in shot glasses and the crazy small white dog (which I think is half canine and half Tasmanian Devil). By strange coincidence I ended up in exactly the same room as last year over looking one of the Danube's  Channels.

I spent the next hour or so settling in and sorting out the camera gear as we would be heading out after a lunch of a rather grim carp and catfish soup on our first photo session.

We boarded onto Sakertours specially adapted hide boat around 3:30pm. It was agreed that we would rotate position on each trip out so everyone got to try a different place in the boat each of which had its own advantages and disadvantages. We had only travelled around 100m from the hotel when our cameras were trained on to their first feathery subject, a Caspian Gull (which is effectively a herring gull with a few minor differences).

Nearby a Common Tern was perched on a small rock that was just breaking the water surface.

A gentle start to get the shutter finger warmed up. Nearby was a solitary Dalmatian Pelican and it was not long before this large bird was also gracing the viewfinder.

Now every one was warmed up and a bit more settled in the boat it was time to leave the area around the front of the hotel and head deeper into the delta's wetlands. We passed along several wide reed fringed channels before entering into one of the vast eastern lakes. Again I quickly recognised this from the previous year where we had spent a morning photographing a Whiskered Tern colony.  The lake did look slightly different though as the abundant surface vegetation that was there the previous year had not fully developed, a subtle difference from our trip being 3 weeks earlier. We paused briefly to photograph a Great Crested Grebe that was gently swimming around and occasionally preening.

In the distance we could see a couple of pelicans standing on a narrow spit of what appeared to be accumulated floating vegetation close to a small island. Pelicans are generally quite wary and we took a wide circular route using a small island as cover to get closer and into a good photography position. The White Pelican was going through the daily ritual of preening and was looking magnificent in the softening late afternoon light.

and then went for a full flapping wing stretch. It felt good to be back here.

A second White Pelican flew in. It is not until you have a pelican flying right at you  that you fully appreciate the size of the huge vulture like wings on these heavy birds. During the middle of day it is common to see large swirling groups of pelicans spiralling upward on thermals to great altitudes.

The incoming bird nearly landed on top of the other one which was followed by a short period of  pelican 'greetings'. I was thinking when taking these photographs that the clump of reeds was slightly annoying and the photograph would have been better without it. However, photographing birds in the Delta involves nothing that is set up you take the birds as you find them in the wild and try and make the most of the situation. This is why I find a trip to the Delta so enjoyable as you never really know what is waiting around the next reedy corner and you know that the images will be unique and different from every day and year. Personally I will always prefer this mobile approach to the that of the fixed hide.

We spent quite a while with these pelicans taking a variety of photos.

Eventually the preening was over and the pelicans drifted off.

Of course what you cannot see in the photographs is about 2 metres to the right of the White Pelicans was one of the rarer and less colourful Dalmatian Pelicans.With the departure of the White Pelicans this soon rose from its slumber and took to the water before eventually taking off and ending a very enjoyable mini pelican photo session.

The sun was beginning to drop quickly now as we continued our journey through the lake and it was inevitable that the first heron species that we were going to photograph on this trip was a Squacco heron which seem to be the most common in the Delta. This one at full stretch having spotted some potential prey.

We left the large lake and moved through some small back channels and into a very small lake. Suddenly there was a synchronised 'stop the boat' call from all four photographers as we all seemed to have spotted at the same time a beautifully lit common tern on a piece of floating lily tuber.

The sun was disappearing very quickly now and in the small lake we managed to find a Red-necked Grebe, drifting around the patches of yellow water lilies, which simply glowed in the last of the warm evening light. In 2013 we only had one encounter with these small grebes in some overcast conditions. This was going to be the first of several over the next couple of days. Another subtle change in the photography from being in the Delta earlier this year. A wonderful way to finish our first session.

The light had gone now so we headed back in the boat towards the hotel and into a beautiful sunset and unfortunately the inevitable waiting meal of carp or catfish in some form or other.

It was great to be back in the Danube Delta, and although it had been a very long and tiring day, the first session had been excellent.  Anticipation was high for the following days to come and the further avian treasures this vast wetland area would reveal to us.