Yesterday was our last full day in the Balkans, and we drove from Dubrovnik, through Bosnia and Herzegovinian, back into Montenegro. We stopped at the spectacular Ostrog Monastery on the way, and ended up back in Podgorica. Early this morning we start our trek home via Vienna.

Before we hit the road, however, I had one more chance to look for critters in Croatia, and I found a male western black redstart who almost let me take a portrait. Boy, they are flighty!

At the Monastery, we opted to park in the lower lot, having had quite enough of the one-lane switchbacks, and we hiked the rest of the way up. I didn’t see anything to photograph on the first leg, but things got interesting on the way back down.

This first little rascal, who would not sit still for a second, is a goldcrest (Regulus regulus), who has the yellow head stripe of our golden-crowned kinglets and the light eye patch of our ruby-crowned kinglets. I had heard and glimpsed one in the park outside of Riga this past August, but this is my first picture, such as it is.

This next bird was quite a bit more cooperative. I did have to follow it off the path and into the woods a bit, but it eventually settled down and let me get a nice image. Say “hello” to our first white-backed woodpecker (Dendrocopos leucotos), whose red cap indicates that he’s a male. He looks similar to the great spotted woodpeckers I saw in South Holland, but his red cap extends farther forward on his head, he’s got dark stripes on his belly, and his range does not extend into South Holland.

He moved around a bit, and here he is on another tree trunk, letting us get a nice good look at him. I read that “it is the largest of the spotted woodpeckers in the western Palearctic,” Sweet!

That’s a wrap for this visit to the Balkans, and, with any luck, I’ll be back in Estabrook Park Saturday morning.

As I mentioned yesterday, today we drove into Bosnia and Herzegovina to visit historic Mostar and see its famous 16th-century Ottoman bridge over the Neretva River. It “was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557,” destroyed in 1993 by shelling during the Croat–Bosniak War, and reconstructed “with Ottoman construction techniques” from 2001 to 2004.

We found the bridge quite impressive, and after I crossed it, I was able to get a closer look at the black birds I had been watching soar over the city. I first thought they were crows, but the only crows there are supposed to be hooded, and these didn’t have the light band across the breast and back of hooded crows. Then I thought they were jackdaws, but I couldn’t make out the band of light grey that jackdaws have around their cheeks, nape and neck.

Thus, I was forced to dig out some of the glass I was carrying in my backpack. My first glance with the binoculars revealed that they had bright yellow beaks. “What the heck? Are they some kind of myna bird that I haven’t heard of yet?” At that point, I had to get out my camera and long lens for a better look.

At first, they kept their distance, and I wasn’t even sure I would be able to use the pictures I could get for a positive identification. But finally, one relented and perched on the facade of a building nearby. It really did look like a smallish crow with a bright yellow beak.

Then, it went after what it came for, and I was impressed to see such a big bird cling to an old masonry wall with just its claws, as a woodpecker does to a tree trunk.

Next, it actually dug a bit of aggregate out of the old mortar with its beak. Ha! I did not see that coming.

With that “morsel” in its gullet, it moved to another spot and dug out another nugget. Wild! How’s that for a building maintenance headache?

Anyway, once I got to the restaurant that Anne and the others had chosen for lunch, I was able to jump on their wifi and discover that there is such a bird as the alpine chough, aka yellow-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus). I read that it is pronounced “chuff”, they are in the crow family, along with jays and magpies, they “breed in high mountains from Spain eastwards through southern Europe and North Africa to Central Asia and Nepal, and [they] may nest at a higher altitude than any other bird.” In fact, they have been observed nesting as high as 6,500 m (21,300 ft), and their eggs are viable at this altitude because they “have fewer pores than those of lowland species, reducing loss of water by evaporation at the low atmospheric pressure.”

Oddly enough, Mostar has an elevation of only 60 m (200 ft), though we did drive over some mountains to get there, and Bosnia and Herzegovina has a maximum elevation of 2,306 m (7566 ft), so I feel pretty lucky to have gotten to see them at all. What a treat!

After the dunnock got me all excited yesterday, we drove farther up the coast to the picturesque little old port town of Dubrovnik in Croatia. Anne and I had been here before, so after a quick stroll and lunch, I excused myself from the group to go visit a nearby park, while they endeavored to hike the town perimeter atop the city walls.

I was still just getting my bearings, and I hadn’t even gotten my camera out, when this gorgeous creature, a red admiral, landed right in front of me to soak up some of that sun we all haven’t seen in a while. Thankfully, it was in no hurry, and it waited patiently while I got all the pieces out of their respective padded bags and assembled in time to capture this sight. Sure, it’s a little roughed up, but it’s a butterfly in January, and we’re farther north than Chicago! We could see snow on some of the peaks we drove by today!

For reasons I don’t understand yet, the black redstarts were thick here, and here’s another male sporting his dashing little black mask and playing coy with me.

Meanwhile, here’s a female, letting me get a nice portrait, but with an expression on her face that seems to ask, “what am I, chopped liver?”

Here’s a female Eurasian blackbird who also has a look on her face and appears to be wondering “doesn’t she look fancy enough for you?”

I was relieved to find this yellow-legged gull with a pretty blank expression on its face.

Finally, before I could get back to the group, one more female black redstart really gave me a good stare, as if to say “seriously, dude, what’s wrong with you?”

Anyway, we’re off to an early start this morning to go see that old bridge in Mostar, so I’m not sure if and when I’ll get any more pictures for you, but who knows, right?