By 5:15pm we arrived at Cape Kaliakra, one of the sites I was most looking forward to visiting during the trip, mainly for its Pied Wheatears. It very much lived up to expectation! I had a wonderful couple of hours, in lovely evening light, photographing what probably constituted 3 or 4 pairs of Pied Wheatear. I was able to get a decent variety of photos, focused mainly of course on the beautiful breeding plumage males. A selection of the best below:

There were also a couple of pairs of Northern Wheatear about. The Pied Wheatears were a new species for me, so I didn’t pay much attention to the Northerns to begin with. But once their novelty had worn off, I spent just as much time with them. For me they are the better looking of the two species, if slightly less flashy. Their habits were similar to the Pied Wheatears, but they appeared to stick more to the ruined buildings than the Pied Wheatears, and thus nearly all my photos are of them perched on tops of these.

Probably 95% of the time was spent with one of the two wheatears; the only other thing I dedicated any time too was a brief attempt at photographing Bee-eaters against the sea. The photos didn't come out as well as I hoped — with a little more luck I feel I could’ve done much better. During this time the only 2 Alpine Swifts we saw here spent a minute overhead with some Common Swifts, and I grabbed a couple of pictures. Otherwise the most notable birds were a few Calandra Lark, a single Rose-coloured Starling and a Hoopoe. I rather liked a photo I took of a Jackdaw.

Just after leaving Kaliakra, driving through the adjacent steppe, we stopped briefly to photograph a Tawny Pipit we spotted from the car. I crept out and approached slowly, but it turned out the bird was completely unmoved by my presence, and I came away with some very pleasing photos. Far better than I anticipated of this species, and a nice bonus for the day as it was tomorrow that I had scheduled a proper visit to the steppe. Overhead there were also still quite a few Calandra Larks active despite it being now 7:20pm. That ended what had been a very productive days birding, starting 12 hours ago with the Paddyfield Warbler. Tomorrow we would be revisiting the steppe for more lark and pipit action.