Delta takes flight

Tolkien in Romanian, right?

Our stop in Constanta, Romania was just like a ship passing in the night since we just stayed about 14 hours as we were catching an early train to Tulcea, Romania    Our exposure to the town limited to walking along the  same 2.9 km between the  bus/train station and our place.  We had enough time to learn that the town really seemed to like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as these were everywhere. 

The train left the city passing seemingly endless fields of wheat and sunflowers. Romania is still a primarily agrarian country with 45% of the population living in rural areas.  We also saw lots of herds of sheep, cows and goats with everyone having an actual shepherd and dog overseeing the flock. 

Our visit to Tulcea, the entrance to the Danube Delta,  was first a "oh, maybe we should go there" which quickly transformed into a highly anticipated stop  as we read more and more about it.

Black to Black: The Danube River, Europe’s second longest river (after the Volga), begins in the Black Forest , flowing south east for 1770 miles  through 10 countries (more than any other river in the world) before ending at the Black Sea in northern Romania into a complex extensive Delta.

The Delta is a huge wetland, minimally developed, with three main water channels and a marshy forest (Letea).  Over 350 species of birds live here, some year round, others migrate through.  An unexpected pleasure during the year of traveling has been seeing wild birds. Birds seen from trains, buses and when walking through fields and parks and along rivers and seashores. Flushing pheasants and quail in UK, surprising a bunch of guinea fowl in Cyprus, observing flamingos in salt water lakes of Cyprus, bonding with seagulls in Burgas, passing wild turkeys in Santa Rosa and watching the distinct Saar pigeons on a square in Saarbrucken.  In Bulgaria and Romania we have been seeing storks (and stork nests)  through bus and train windows. 

Most of the bird encounters have been serendipitous, but this time we were going on guided tour in a boat! So we were pretty excited. 

Our Delta tour began at a little after 6 am (Delta Dawn) with just us and our guide Carmen, who learned English from watching Cartoon Network, with his favorite show being Yogi Bear.  He was very animated.

Pictures/video don’t do justice to the serene beauty and wonderful sounds  

We were able to see kingfisher, ibis, pelicans, mute swans (with babies), ducks, 4 species of herons, 2 species of cormorants, spoonbill, egrets, and an eagle.  This picture, literally has almost all of these, but here are some more

Spoonbill

Cormorants

Parent and baby swans

Egrets 

Pelicans

As well as frogs, fish and dogs.

We just use an older basic Iphone as a camera so if you want to see better pics of the birds, look here
https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/danube-delta-birds?license=rf&assettype=image&mediatype=photography&phrase=danube%20delta%20birds&sort=mostpopular
or
https://www.wildplanetblog.com/travel-blog/danube-delta-a-birders-paradise/

This is a bit of what it was like

An incredible indescribable morning

Topping off a great day, we did not want to eat the same old...

Crap is carp in Romanian, which sounded equally disgusting

We opted for watermelon (with seeds!) and local beer

.  

Finally, hot dog is apparently a pastry

This week's photo of topless old man looking out window contemplating his life: Romanian beer run.