In the flight path

For a country its size, Montenegro’s biodiversity is nothing short of extraordinary, encompassing a multitude of habitats from mountains, grasslands, forest and steppe to deep canyons, wetlands and coastal habitats. Not surprisingly, it is a fantastic place for birdwatching. Some 330 species of bird have been recorded in Montenegro (over 200 of them breeding species) and several locations have been designated as Important Birding Areas (IBAs) – not bad for a country with a surface area less than that of either Connecticut or Northern Ireland.

Montenegro’s top birdwatching spots include the mountainous landscapes of Durmitor National Park (an IBA) and Prokletije National Park in the north and north east of the country, where the number of species recorded is 175 and 161 respectively. The forests of Biogradska Gora National Park, also an IBA, are home to 150 species of bird. Other significant districts include Lake Šas (another IBA) and Lake Plav, the Slano and Liverovići reservoirs at Nikšić, the lagoon at Tivatska solila on the coast, and Ćemovsko Polje, a dry steppe-like habitat at the outskirt of Podgorica.

Unquestionably the two best birdwatching sites in the country, however, and two of the finest in Europe, are Lake Skadar and the Ulcinj salt pans. The largest lake in the Balkans, Lake Skadar (Skadarsko jezero) covers an area of over 400 square kilometres and stretches some 44 kilometres from end to end, straddling the border between Montenegro and Albania. A national park since 1993, it was declared a Ramsar site (a wetland of international importance) in 1996, is also an IBA and a key biodiversity area, and, since 2013, has been tipped as a potential Unesco Man and the Biosphere Reserve. It’s an astonishing place, surrounded by vast tracts of reed beds, its surface carpeted with floating vegetation – water lilies and water chestnuts. The first glimpse of Lake Skadar is like stumbling upon a chunk of China’s Guilin, just inland from the Adriatic.

Over 280 species of bird have been recorded at Lake Skadar, including the rare Dalmatian pelican, emblematic of the region, the glossy ibis, the squacco heron, and huge numbers of pygmy cormorant (well over 2,000 of them, making this one of the largest colonies in Europe). It is of particular importance as a stopover on winter migration routes, lying as it does on the Adriatic Flyway, one of Europe’s key avian migration routes, passing over the Balkans between northern Europe and Africa. The number of birds wintering here regularly tops 200,000.

It’s not hard to see birdlife at Lake Skadar – standing by the waterfront in Virpazar, I’ve seen purple and grey herons, cormorants and little egrets in the shallows, without even looking for them. However, if you want to stand a decent chance of seeing species like the Dalmatian pelican, you should obviously time your visit to coincide with the best months for birdwatching, and join a local bird watching tour. Bear in mind too that a pair of good binoculars will be of more use on a boat than a spotting scope.

The best times of year for birdwatching at Lake Skadar are spring and winter – in particular April and May, when the annual presence of huge numbers of migrating species coincides with the breeding season. The summer months don’t offer anything like the diversity of species on offer in winter or spring.

Undiscovered Montenegro (undiscoveredmontenegro.com) is run by English couple Emma and Ben Heywood, who have lived by Lake Skadar for more than a decade and are at the forefront of promoting local, sustainable tourism on Lake Skadar. The company runs specialist birdwatching tours in April and May. ‘If someone comes to the lake wanting to see birds, they can do that easily on a boat tour run by one of the many family-run local boat companies that operate out of Virpazar and Vranjina,’ says Emma Heywood. ‘Anyone wanting a deeper, more informative experience should spend time with one of our professional ornithologist guides, who all speak excellent English. These are the people who go out there and research the birds of the lake – they have a huge amount of knowledge, and great personalities, laced, of course, with typical Montenegrin warmth and humour.’

The tours last for one week, and are led by Andrej Vizi – one of Montenegro’s leading ornithologists, and curator of the National History Museum of Montenegro – and Mihailo Jovičević, who works in the faculty of natural science at the University of Montenegro, and is also an active member of the Montenegrin Ecologists Society. As well as Lake Skadar, the tours also visit Durmitor National Park.

The most iconic inhabitant of Lake Skadar is the Dalmatian pelican. The species all but disappeared from the lake in the early 1990s, but with careful management and conservation measures, in particular the building of nesting platforms at the special reserve of Pančeva oka in 2013, the pelicans have since returned in increasing numbers, so that there are now nearly 200 of them at the lake.

I saw my first Dalmatian pelican on the lake near the little island of Grmožur, while on a boat trip aboard the Milica, whose owners Andrija and Jelena often work with Undiscovered Montenegro. It sat perched on a rock for a while, before flapping off just above the surface of the lake, framed by the Prokletije mountains on the border with Albania. More recently I was lucky enough to join local conservationists, and see and photograph these beautiful birds further out on the lake. ‘Conservationists have observed that the pelicans are dispersing further from the reserve at Pančeva oka – an indication that the population is relatively stable,’ Bjanka Prakljačić, project coordinator of the Conservation of Pelicans of Skadar Lake Project at Noé Conservation, tells me.

South of Lake Skadar, just inland from Montenegro’s Adriatic coast, the Ulcinj salt pans (Ulcinj salina) cover an area of just 14.5 square kilometres, yet within that limited area 241 species of bird have been recorded, including the Dalmatian pelican. Around 3% each of the entire global population of black-tailed godwit and spotted redshank can be found there, not to mention a few flamingos. Like Lake Skadar, it’s on the Adriatic Flyway, and during the winter it attracts up to 20,000 water birds. The temperatures, however, are notably higher and the landscape, a series of man-made, saline basins, is completely different.

‘Especially in October, November and the first days of December, Ulcinj salina is a place where you can easily see Dalmatian pelicans, in large flocks which can number more then 100 individuals,’ says Bojan Zeković of the Montenegrin Centre for the Protection and Research of Birds. ‘In the winter months you can see curlews, lapwings, golden plovers and dunlins, and all kinds of duck species, the most numerous being Eurasian wigeon and northern pintail. In recent years, at the end of the winter you can also see greater scaup in mixed flocks, and in March there are impressive numbers of garganey on migration.’

The salt pans, he says, are also a very important site for migrating, nesting or wintering waders. ‘From the end of April you can see more than 100 nesting pairs of collared pratincole, as well as Eurasian stone curlew and Kentish plover.’ During the spring and summer months, he adds, you can see spoonbills and the Eurasian bittern, which also nest in the surrounding area (although, as he points out, the latter can be difficult to find). ‘Ulcinj salina always has something to offer, when it comes to birdwatching.’

Despite their astonishingly rich bird life, both Lake Skadar National Park and the Ulcinj salt pans face ongoing environmental threats. Lake Skadar is subject to pollution from the River Morača and the huge Plantaže vineyards. That the lake remains so clean is due largely to the huge amount of spring water coming up through the lakebed’s numerous karst springs, and the fact that it drains into the River Bojana.

Over the past couple of years, it has also been threatened by a controversial development project. ‘It is hugely important that tourism in such a precious ecological environment is conducted responsibly and sustainably,’ says Emma Heywood; Undiscovered Montenegro has deliberately gone out to build strong links with the local ornithologist community at Lake Skadar, among other initiatives. As for Ulcinj salina, salt production stopped in 2013; since then, there has been no appropriate water management in place, and, incredibly, the site remains unprotected – threatening the continued existence of this habitat and therefore the presence of the species which depend on it.

Still, the Dalmatian pelicans continue to be the great success story of Lake Skadar and, indeed, of avian conservation anywhere in Montenegro. ‘I remember just a few years ago it was actually pretty rare to see a pelican here because species numbers had plummeted due to human and environmental threats,’ says Emma Heywood. ‘Since then, their population has increased rapidly, and last year, for the first time, pelicans were regularly spotted near tourist areas such as Virpazar and Vranjina during breeding season, delighting visitors who saw them.’ It’s a trend we all hope will continue.