The third week of my OpWal adventure, visiting the Angofa Wildlife Center - a very different landscape to the previous two weeks.
13th July - Day 16
Transfer day 2.
Fortunately, there was no rain this morning as we packed up the camp, although, to quote Douglas Adams "the dew had fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning". As a result, my tent was still damp as I packed it down and stuffed it into its bag. A large coach arrived to collect us and all of the kit. As well as bags and rucksacks for the 20+ people on the trip, there are tents and survey equipment to contend with, which ranges from things like butterfly nets to 8-foot poles used to hold up mist nets for bird and bat trapping. It took a while, some loading, unloading and re-loading, but eventually, we managed to get everything and everyone on board.
Once the loading was complete, we set off for Angofa. The coach stopped off at Kaufland again and we all stocked up on snacks and treats. Angofa, unlike Meșendorf and Richiș, does not have a local shop so people loaded their bags with as much as they could fit in.
We arrived at Angofa at around midday and set about putting up the tents before lunch. This time I waited to see where the worst snoring offenders were pitching and then found a flat spot as far away from them as possible.
We went for a walk after lunch to see the landscape. I'll describe the Angofa site properly at some point, but in summary, I think I'm going to be very happy here. Oh, and there's a Scops Owl (Otus scops) nest with four chicks in camp. Paul ringed them today and showed the group the chicks. Once they were ringed and returned to the nest a cordon was set up so that no one could get too close and they would be undisturbed. They were unbelievably cute. Apparently, at night the adults make a ping sound like a submarine. Could make sleep interesting, although an improvement on the snore chorus.
14th July - Day 17
"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was". These words, again from Douglas Adams, have crossed my mind a few times as I wake up each morning in a tent, with just a thin cushion of air between me and the ground. This morning the alarm went off at 5 am as I went to give Holly a hand on the small mammal survey. The early start turned out to be worth it as we caught a juvenile Yellow-Necked Mouse (Apodemus flavicollis). Pretty good start to the day.
As we got back to camp at 6:45, one of the new students ran down the stairs of the school building that they'd been sleeping in saying that their alarm hadn't gone off. They, along with another student, had missed the large mammal team leaving. The result was that I had two extras on butterflies. In total, there were seven students, three staff, Adina (our FA for the day), and myself. A large group, particularly when you've never seen the site before.
The survey started mostly in sheep or cow-cropped grassland, but it got better as we went on. We ended up seeing more swallowtails than fritillaries, and more blues than browns. Very odd.
The afternoon back at camp was very relaxed. The temperatures were nearing 30C again, so other than having a cold shower, doing very little is the best way to not melt - especially after a few hours in the field. One of the students is a very good birder (and I expect all-round naturalist) and he pointed out a juvenile collared flycatcher in camp.
After dinner, one of the new staff (Hannah White) who has joined us for the second half of the trip, gave a presentation on the work she's been doing with the OpWal Romania bird data. It turns out there's a bit of overlap with my PhD (chapter 2) so we had a good chat afterwards.
15th July - Day 18
Today's group of new students was very quiet. It took until about lunchtime for them to engage in proper conversations with each other. The survey itself was largely uneventful, with no new species to add to the list. Maybe they were just bored? Most of the sites are either pasture or former meadows that have recently been cut for hey. I have no doubt that if we'd come a couple of weeks earlier, we'd be recording much higher levels of butterfly biodiversity. The patches of beautiful meadow that we walked through to get to our sampling points in the pastures were proof of this.
We had to cut the survey short as two of the students started suffering from the heat and dehydration. The stupid thing was that they both had half a litre of water in their bags that they hadn't drunk. They spent the afternoon sleeping with headaches. They won't make the same mistake twice. I hope not anyway. In those situations, there is not much I can do. We tell them that they should be drinking three litres or more when out on a butterfly or botany survey. I remind them constantly to drink and we take regular breaks in the shade so as to not spend too long in the sun. You can take a student to water…
There was a glorious sunset that bathed the evening in a rich crimson glow. The camp largely emptied as everyone moved to get a good spot for a photo. Later on in the evening we set up the moth trap, brought all the beanbag chairs from the schoolhouse, sat down and waited for the moths. All very civilised. We wrapped up around 1 am with a good species list. By 1 am the cloud was just starting to break and with it came the light of the full moon. Continuing with the moth trap beyond this point would only have seen diminishing returns, as we'd have been in competition with the moon. Time for bed.
16th July - Day 19
The alarm went off at 6 am. Bird ringing was happening, but I'd agreed with Paul that if anything interesting turned up he'd let me know. I get on really well with Paul and he's been a bit swamped with new staff arriving and joining the ringing sessions over the last couple of days. Seeing as I'm a regular at ringing I was happy to hold back and give the students (and Paul) a bit more space. I kept resetting my alarm every fifteen minutes. This was fine, because all the tents around me were empty, with everyone out on early surveys anyway. At 7:30 my phone buzzed with news of a bird. 7:30 is my normal wake-up time, so that's an hour and a half missed. The bird in question was a wryneck though, so well worth the lost time. In my excitement to get there, I lost my footing on the rocky path and smashed my knee into the ground quite painfully. After a quick check to make sure no one had seen, I hobbled around the corner to join the bird ringing.
Due to going to the ringing session and sorting through moths we'd captured last night, I was a little unorganised for my survey start. Fortunately, the survey itself went very well, although it was the second day in a row that I didn't see a new species. I hope this isn't going to be a trend.
I feel absolutely shattered this evening. I've got a slight headache and my knee hurts, so I'm avoiding people so that I don't come across too grumpy. I've used the time to input the last three days of survey data, so at least I've been productive. I think an early night is needed. I'll be up at 6 am again, just in case Paul messages that they've caught a hoopoe or an oriole, or who knows what else.
17th July - Day 20
There was an adult and juvenile green woodpecker at bird ringing this morning. It was interesting to see the comparison of these side by side. There was also a whole flock of juvenile blackbirds and an Icterine warbler.
It was another quiet day of butterfly surveys. The third day in a row with no new species. I had one of the new groups again today. For some reason, the new students all seem younger and less mature than the four-week group, and the previous two-week groups.
I went for a walk on my own this afternoon and spent a while chasing a clouded yellow in the hope that it was a Danube clouded yellow. It wasn't. On my way back I met Sally, Sherina, Adina and Mark also out for a walk. We all agreed that it's nice to be out but not have to do a survey. I joined them on their stroll. There were lots of raptors flying, but they were impossible to ID from a distance. This was a reassuring experience as Sherina is the Bird Point Count survey lead and a very good birder. If she can't ID them from afar, then I don't need to feel bad about not being able to either.
We set up the moth trap again in the evening. It was a clear, cold night, so we had far fewer species than last time. A few nice ones though, so still worth staying up for.
18th July - Day 21
The best day of the trip so far. At bird ringing there were some nice birds in the net, including a Marsh Tit (Poecile palustris) and Garden Warbler (Sylvia borin). What really made the early start worth it thought was the view of four or five golden orioles in a tree close by. They are the yellowest yellow, so vivid and bright.
After breakfast, I teamed up with Mark (the botanist) to go and check out a patch of Great Burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis) that he'd found. This is the host plant of the Scarce Large Blue (Phengaris teleius), a butterfly species not found in Romania according to the Collins guide, but does according to Wikipedia. In 2019 they found one individual at Criț which caused a lot of excitement.
Erica McAlister from the NHM has joined the trip for a week and came with us on the hunt, along with all the four weekers. Zuni even joined us for a bit, on a rare escape from camp for him. As soon as we arrived at the site, one student caught a butterfly which turned out to be the very species we had expected to spend all morning searching for. It turned out that they were everywhere in this patch of meadow. We caught 22 separate individuals and counted over 1000 greater burnet plants. Zuni is going to contact the Romanian butterfly expert – he knows him through the biodiversity credit surveys they've been doing – and he'll come and take a look. It's the first time they've been recorded at this site, so it was a real win for everyone involved.
From 11:30 (ish) onwards we went on a butternical or boterfly jolly, depending on your preference. Essentially, we went around just looking for interesting species, with no actual plan of action. Mark was excited by some Heleborines in the woodland and I found a Sooty Copper (Lycaena tityrus) and Lesser Marbled Fritillary (Brenthis ino), all new species for me.
We arrived back at camp at around half-three. I was happy, Mark was happy, the students were happy. It's really nice to go out and not have to survey and just enjoy the environment. Back at camp, Paul asked if I was doing anything this evening and asked if I wanted to go on an unofficial adventure time with him, Bobo, Mark and Erica. He knows a good spot for bears, but there are also large numbers of turtle doves and bee-eaters which he thought I'd be interested in.
We left after dinner and drove for about half an hour. As we neared the site there were about 100 turtle doves just sitting on the phone wires across the road. This would have caused an absolute frenzy back in the UK. We parked up in a field and set up camp, with two telescopes and Paul's thermal camera looking across the valley to where the bears had previously been spotted. A flock of about 40-50 bee-eaters flew around above our heads, their colours reflecting beautifully in the evening light, whilst on the horizon the Carpathians were illuminated by the setting sun. One of our group spotted a 4x4 on the other side of the valley, which, slowly but surely, made its way towards us. When it eventually arrived three men got out. After a long discussion with Bobo in Romanian, Bobo told us that we had to leave. No one is really sure if what he was told was bullshit or not, but apparently to view bears in the region and other "quarry species" we needed a permit and we'd be fined if we didn't move on straight away. This is all very strange because bear hunting is illegal. The men, who we weren't entirely convinced weren't poachers rather than officials, left and we packed up the gear very slowly. Just as we got back in the car and were about to set off, Paul did a final scan of the landscape and spotted a bear. We all jumped back out of the car and watched as the bear disappeared into the scrub. Two smaller bears then appeared, presumably a mother and two large cubs around two or three years old. They were a long way off, but we watched them for five minutes until they disappeared. Despite the drama, we had been successful.
On the drive home, Paul was a bit deflated as that's one of the areas where they do Biodiversity Credit Surveys. They have permission to survey there, but he was concerned about what the men would mean for that. In the back of the car, Erica, Mark and I were buzzing. Three bears! On the drive back we saw fleeting views of a Ural, Little and Tawny Owl (Strix uralensis, Athene noctua, Strix aluco) Not a bad drive.
Easily one of the best wildlife-watching days of my life and I will be amazed if anything on this trip tops it. Let's see.
19th July - Day 22
Last day in Angofa.
I set out at 9:00 am with two students and a field assistant. There were only two sites to do so we were back by 11. We then headed up with Mark to another point where he'd found Great Burnet. We found a good number of the plants spread out over a much larger area than in the first location. Interestingly, there were none in the slightly wetter habitat at the bottom of the hill (where they should be), but there were lots on the dry, sheep-grazed pasture slope (where they shouldn't be). We were able to confirm that Scarce Large Blue were present here too. Another very successful morning.
We came back to camp for lunch and a short break. At half 2 we headed out for a third time, this time to explore the woodland edge at the top of the hill behind camp. After a while searching I caught a Woodland Grayling (Hipparchia fagi), a butterfly that just melts into the background when it sits on a tree branch.
Back at camp, I delivered a lecture on butterflies to the four weekers which was a better length than last time. Afterwards, I was finally able to relax for a bit. The day wasn't over yet though. After dinner, I joined a group of students going back up the hill to watch the sunset. They chose a terrible spot as a base where the horizon was completely blocked by trees. I convinced them to move to a better viewpoint. As the sun eventually set both literally and figuratively on our week in Angofa, I took a moment to myself and moved 30 meters away from the students. I skidded down and climbed up a small slope to a nearby knoll to what happened to be an absolutely perfect viewpoint. No one followed me, it was bliss. As the sun went down, I saw four roe deer and the noise of the students, who were having a great, but noisy time, was muffled by the hillside. After three weeks of making sure the students have a great time and see as much as possible, I selfishly enjoyed this view to myself. I have no regrets. As the darkness gathered around us I re-joined the students and we prepared to head back to camp. As we were setting off several large bats emerged from the woods to feed above us and a fox ran past in front of us. A perfect evening to end the week.
Before bed, I mentioned to Zuni that I expected he'd have a busy day tomorrow removing tics from all the students who, as they were not on survey and could therefore wear whatever they wanted, had chosen to wear shorts and sandals through the meadows up the hill.
A Description of Angofa
Angofa is an odd one. Superficially it's a stunning landscape at this time of year. A patchwork of meadows banded between the two forested sides of the valley. The meadows are split by paths of hedgerows and woodland, creating a mosaic of habitats and corridors, an almost perfect template for wildlife-friendly farming. The land is owned by ADEPT who are working to use it as an example of how low-intensity farming can be maintained in Romania.
I say it's superficially for two reasons. Firstly, after the 1st of July, farmers no longer receive a subsidy for not mowing the meadows. As the week has progressed more and more of the meadows have been reduced to short stubble. The subsidies are the reason the meadows are there for so long into the year, and the purpose of the meadows is to produce hay, but it's still very jarring when they get mowed.
The second reason is that there is a large amount of grazing on the site. As you would expect, the grazed sections have a much-reduced biodiversity compared to the pockets of meadow that remain. These remaining pockets are truly beautiful and some of the best plant diversity occurs on the drumlins that are scattered across the valley. The combination of mowing, sheep (and sheepdog) dodging means that many people (myself included), have mixed feelings about Angofa. The surveys, which are in fixed locations year on year have been disappointing, but when we've been able to go wherever we please have been some of the best experiences of the trip. For me, I think it's a timing thing. Angofa would be every bit as amazing as Meșendorf had we been here before the first of July and if the surveys were all in the hay meadows rather than the pasture.
Our accommodation for the week has been an old school building which has been renovated into a wildlife centre. It comprises an entrance hall, leading to a set of stairs. Before the stairs, on the right-hand side is an entrance to the main hall in which we have all of our meals and lectures are given. Upstairs are two bathrooms and two large rooms which act as dorms for the students. We're all in tents outside which suits me just fine. I'd rather be a bit uncomfortable in my own space than have to share with a large group. In the grounds of the building are a number of trees, currently festooned with hammocks. In an ingenious move, the centre purchased lots of beanbag chairs which have been put to good use outside over the week. As I write this I can hear the scops owl at the top of camp calling away. The only issue I have with the campsite is that I placed my tent under a dead tree which one, or a number, of birds clearly use as a toilet.