Birds
The wide variety of habitats attracts a lot of nesting birds. Spruce forests high in the mountains attract the Capercaillie, while Golden Eagles soar above the mountain tops. Romania’s great broad-leaved woods are home to many songbirds. Skylarks sing over the meadows and pastures. Scrub offers nesting places for Red-backed Shrike, Yellowhammer, Thrush and Nightingale. From the end of May, mainly at night, the repeated rasping notes of Corncrake (a globally-threatened species) can be heard in water meadows. On sunny days, when it’s getting warmer, birds of prey appear. Common Buzzard is the most numerous, and you can often see Kestrel. But Transylvania has one of the highest numbers of nesting pairs of Lesser-spotted Eagle, especially in areas with a mosaic landscape, away from cereal monoculture, and in places where human activity has a low-impact, such as the Saxon villages. Another striking bird that appears on warm days is the colourful Bee-eater: it colonises clay or sandy cliffs. The villages are often full of birds; the most spectacular are the White Storks which like to make their nests on top of chimney pots, towers and telegraph poles. Hay meadows filled with multicoloured flowers, buzzing insects, fluttering butterflies, buzzards sweeping overhead, widespread orchards embroidered with fruit trees, sheep or cattle with their herders and dogs, horses and carts...this is Transylvania, one of the last places in Europe where you can see traditional pastoralism and extensive, mixed farms.
