Lake Tisza, a man made lake

This morning was spent at 2 places where we been to before. I asked Zoltan to go back to the Hoopoe sight because I felt that the early morning light must be the best time there and I also wanted to go back to the Bee-eaters one last time to redo some photos but also to take some movies.

The afternoon should then be spent in a boat on Lake Tisza.

I will not ramble on about the European Bee-eaters or the Hoopoe but instead talk about Lake Tisza.

Lake Tisza is an artificial lake that they started to build somewhere in the early Seventies but it wasn´t finished until 1990. It is a shallow lake and that usually means it attract birds and other animals.

I can´t say that I had any expectations regarding the trip as I didn´t know anything about Lake Tisza. What I can say is that it was a most pleasant boat trip on a lake that was much bigger than I thought. My first impression was that it was a little similar to the Okavango delta but I soon realized that this lake had many places with open water and that ended the comparison.

What I did expect when I saw this huge body of water was Gulls of all sorts. This was of course not true but instead one could find colonies with Terns. The made for really interesting models as they are quick, agile but also not so shy. We saw many different kind of interaction and I got some decent photos of one Tern coming to the nest leaving a fish to its partner. This was a much nicer behavior than when they attacked each other with high speed dives.

Whiskered Tern couple feeding, Lake Tisza — Whiskered Tern couple feeding 120614

I was also surprised to see Coot groups that probably were around 40 individuals or how the skies were filled with Marsh Harriers. I didn´t see that many Ducks but there were a few to be seen.
The sighting of the day was the cute Red Fox that I discovered at the water’s edge on one of the islands. That was a true pleasure to see.