Our winter visit to Romania and Bulgaria took to areas around the Black Sea and Danube Delta. We started off the tour with a little snow and chilly winds, but well prepared it wasn’t a problem and we were soon stopping at wetlands where big flocks of Black-necked Grebes were seen along side Smew and our first big flights of geese. All three swan species were seen, and we enjoyed a flock of Ruff and a nice Spotted Redshank. On the coast we found numerous gulls including Caspian, 5 Little Gulls and some people spotted Pallas’s Gulls from their hotel windows. A major highlight was a roost of 40 Long-eared Owls in a small town, shortly followed up by a Eurasian Eagle Owl well spotted by Gina on a cliff face. We had fly over Common Cranes and Dalmatian Pelicans as well as large skeins of Greater White-fronted Geese. Careful searching revealed our first Red-breasted Goose and a couple of Tundra Bean Geese. Common Buzzards were remarkably common, and we had good looks at Long-legged Buzzards and a lovely Rough-legged Buzzard spotted by Lesley. Good numbers of Western Marsh Harriers were seen daily, and we had wonderful views of both ringtail and male Hen Harriers. A real surprise and a highlight for ‘Dancho’ was the finding of two Bohemian Waxwings, a rare bird for Bulgaria and one he had been looking for 25 years. It caused a twitch for other Bulgarian birders! In the woodlands we found 6 species of woodpecker including the ‘Lilford’s’ subspecies of White-backed Woodpecker, Europe’s rarest and most difficult member of the family. Finally we connected with flocks of 10’s of thousands of Greater White-fronted Geese that held what we estimated to be 750 Red-breasted Geese, surely the world’s most beautiful goose.