Birds
 

In all the years I have visited Hungary I have never seen many birds or hardly any at all. I was only thinking about this yesterday because I have had two bird boxes attached to my garage and not seen a single bird make them as their home! This experience is from the North East region of Hungary around Miskolc. At this point in time I'm wondering is it worth bringing these bird boxes over to Hungary or not? Here in Orpington, Kent, UK I see alot of birds, in the early morning I can hear them cooing .... probably making a mating call ..... we have herons around here, as well as wood pigeons ..... in the nearby pond swans, geese (not uk variety!) .... various other small bird varieties .... etc. I should add every day at dawn I see geese flying over our house!
just got to add ..... the state of my car when these geese fly over my house .......not very pleasant.

Re: Birds
 

Just a guess, but maybe this is partly because Hungary is not a migration destination, migrating birds merely transiting rather than settling?

Have seen plenty of birds while cruising on the river but obviously that's a fairly narrow sector. Even saw Cranes up near Visegrád as well as Herons, etc.

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I have some Grackles if your interested and a few Pigeons. :) :) :)

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I would imagine that it varies depending where in Hungary you look as in any other country ... my garden has many birds of different types as does the surrounding areas in Zala County and every year there are new nests around the house and garden !

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that's a new one Grackles which are native to South America.

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To be honest I don't mind having birds around but not when they poo on my car! Happens alot to my poor car in the UK I'm thinking of buying one of those covers to protect the roof.

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Hobgoblins is correct - here around the Balaton we have masses of birds, right now black crows in the fields e g.
Every village has at least one stork's nest - some have dozens of them!
Doves are always sitting on our electric lines.
And of course there are others like swallows.
They often build their nests on the walls under the roofs - even our Interspar has some, ok cleaning is necessary. Some people want to get rid of them on their walls, what a shame!
I'll never forget:
A swallows couple wanted to build a nest on a wooden plank - in our garage!
The first time they did not succeed, it fell down, so when they started again I put a small wooden board below the plank - and it worked. And I also put some newspapers below the nest - you know those droppings. I regularly changed those, put the old ones on the compost heap - birdshis a very good fertilizer.
It was funny when we went near our garage and the parents would look at us while feeding their little ones ...
The next year we got a tomcat and he also was very interested in that nest or rather its inhabitants - they would fly at him like Stukas to defend their nest but in the end they gave up and looked elsewhere ...
PS:
Our tomcat Moritz (now 4 years old) still catches birds and eats them too - I tell my wife that this is part of the natural selection process and has to be ...

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my wife's family live in Malyi, near Miskolc. There is a man made lake, Malyi-to, and I have never seen any "water" birds like herons or cranes around here. Nearby is Nyekladhaza and I can't remember seeing any birds around there either.
Wolfi - are you sure they are doves? Maybe they are white pigeons. Some Brits when they get married like to release doves but what they don't know is they are actually white homing pigeons. On release they fly home to wait for their next wedding booking.

Re: Birds
 

Loads of birds around here near Dombovar, Baranya. Herons, egrets,
ducks, swans and storks (in summer) on the fishing lakes. Plenty of sparrowhawks and other birds of prey on fence posts by the roadside. My wife has all on to keep the bird feeders topped up with sunflower seeds, nuts and corn for the blue tits and sparrows. Plenty of jays, doves, pigeons and woodpeckers around too. We love it.

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DickyB, yes - we have them too, I only mentioned the most prominent I know.
Fentiger:
You had me there for a moment! I had to look this up - in German we say Taube and google says:
There's no difference between a pigeon and a dove in scientific nomenclature, but colloquial English tends to categorize them by size. Something called a dove is generally smaller than something called a pigeon, but that's not always the case. A common pigeon, for example, is called both a rock dove and a rock pigeon.

Totally forgot to mention starlings which like to eat all kinds of fruit - from cherries to grapes. Some wineries at the Balaton have loudspeakers installed in their fields that every few seconds produce the sound of a shooting to keep them away.

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A friend of ours often fishes at Nyekladhaza. He's never mentioned birds in this area. I've been a passenger going past the lakes at Nyekladhaza many times and not seen a single dicky bird!

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Should mention magpies and the occasional robin. One of our neighbours has a pond and its been designed so the fish can go to the bottom to avoid being caught by herons.

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Well somebody has had more luck. https://ebird.org/checklist/S33401331 :thumbsup:

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I think I have found a new hobby for when I eventually move to Hungary .... bird watching and photography. I might have to upgrade my digital camera lens. It will be good to be out and about in the fresh air. I just hope that our dog/s will be quiet enough to allow me to take photos from a long distance!

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Lots of birds around my neck of the woods, particularly raptors. And Ialwaysknow when spring has arrived by the stork which nests on a pylon in in of villagesontheway to Miskolc!

Hungary is known as a bird watchers paradise:flypig: