While I love this blog, I now pretty much only write on my other two blogs: BirdingBlogs.com and 10,000 Birds - I would love to see you there!

Thursday 4 December 2008

On families, birding, and lots of geese

The Hungarian birder and wader expert - Szimuly (Szimi) György - speaks about the annual Tatai Vadlud Sokadalom or Wild Goose Festival in Tata, western Hungary. The birding festival was initially conceived to develop awareness about birds, birding and conservation within the local community. Over the last 8 years, festival has grown to much larger proportions. This year, about 5000 enthusiastic birders of all ages braved the cold and drizzly weather to watch the spectacle of 10000 geese, learn a little more about birds, interact with other birders, and participate in the associated "bird race" (trying to see as many bird species as possible in one day).



The Hungarian Wild Geese Festival is quite possibly the largest winter bird festival in central Europe and it certainly is great. But probably the greatest thing about the festival for me was the huge number of children and teenagers actively involved in birding - something I have not seen anywhere else in the world. Well done Hungary!

p.s. follow this link to see Szimi's own blog in Hungarian and English.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully next year weather will be on our side and we can get more people to reach our conservation goals. Thanks for your support to introduce the festival to your nation :)

Kind regards: Szimi

Dale Forbes said...

well, Szimi, it was an honour to meet you and to find out about all that you and other Hungarians are doing for birding and bird conservation.

I would love to meet up again some time, so please keep in touch. btw, I am on the lookout for good Ptarmigan stake-outs. in the mean time, I have a GREAT spot for snow finches - had 30 of them around me yesterday.

happy birding
Dale