The Rhodope mountain range straddles the border between Greece and Bulgaria, rising to a little over 2000m at its highest point. While the bulk of the range is in Bulgaria, the more sheltered southern parts on the Greek side have an interesting range of habitats. I was particularly interested in the mountain beechwoods when we visited in 2023, where I hoped to come across a Semi-collared Flycatcher in song.
In a Rhodope valley with hillsides of mixed woodland.
The beechwoods tend to be found above 1000m. Here the bird life was quite sparse but interesting and though we didn’t have any encounters, we were aware that there were bears and lynx in the area. And sure enough, singing in the galleries beneath the beechwood canopy a song rather like a Pied Flycatcher but different – Semi-collared Flycatcher – a very local bird. A speciality of this region.
While I could see the bird flitting about rather high up and in dim light, I never got a good enough look to see the species’ diagnostic features or for a photo. Semi-collared Flycatchers look very similar to both Pied Flycatcher and Collared Flycatcher; as the name implies they are somewhere between their two sibling species. The song too sounded to me to be intermediate between Pied and Collared.
This is a Pied Flycatcher photographed in a Northumberland beechwood the previous year.
