Birding in Hungary XII
28 July 2026
Today, my mum and I woke up at 5:00am to cycle down to Szabadkígyós, to look for Black Woodpecker and other birds.
When we arrived, we soon heard a woodpecker tapping on a tree near the path, but it simply refused to show itself. We kept walking seeing Syrian and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, but no Black Woodpecker.
Eventually, we reached a bit where an unofficial path went off, deep into the woods, without walking 50m, I heard the call of Black Woodpecker. I decided the best idea would be to walk straight through the thick foliage, full of upturned roots, brambles, bracken, and nettles, to reach a nearby clearing, where, after playing the call of Black Woodpecker for just 5 seconds, a large adult female landed on a tree a mere 3 metres from me.
Sadly though, my mum didn't get to see the bird before it flew away, but we did eventually get eyes on it again, albeit further away.
As we rolled down towards the lookout tower, we started getting attacked by what we thought were flatflies, they were sort of like spiders but flat and had wings. They kept landing on us and crawling all over us! It was worth it however, since we did see my lifer Honey-Buzzard fly over. If you know what these strage insects were, you can post it in the comments, at the bottom of the page.
We then kept cycling, until we reached the lookout tower where we had a break. I spent some time photographing a male Red-backed Shrike, which was hunting for food for its chicks, which seemed to have just fledged.
We decided to go a bit further, to see what was beyond the tree line, we found another lookout tower, which seemed like it wouldn't be able to hold our weights for more that 2 minutes, as well as an Eastern Bath White.
After that, we started cycling back, but we decided to not go through the forest and instead go to look for Roller in the puszta/grassland. We saw some birds perched on some posts infront of us, which I dismissed as Red-backed Shrikes, before they flew away, revealing large white wing patches, they were Lesser Grey Shrikes! We got terrible views later of one of them, which landed not quite far away, and we also saw a female/immature Roller, on a haybale, as they always are.
We then saw a Buzzard and, a good bird for these parts, Hooded Crow. Despite being a daily sight over in Budapest, it was the first time I had seen them here in Békéscsaba
We had a quick stop at the pools at Csaba-tó, where we saw a few cool birds, such as more Bee-Eaters, but the highlight was a patch tick Greenshank
Once back home, around midday, we saw many butterflies, including Queen of Spain Fritillary, nectaring the flowers in the garden.
