I love a trip that give me a good sentence.

I was editing some photos and enjoying a drink in the outdoor cafe of my hotel in Budapest when a fox wandered in, looked at us and then went about its night.

And that is one of my favorite memories of a trip to Hungary a few years ago, I love the random and unexpected. I loved that fox on that trip. Well, that fox and the very distance ural owl we saw at Bukk. Some of the best stuff was right around our hotel in Budapest in late May. I’d never planned on going to Hungary in my life, but when life hands you an opportunity, you take it. It was a wonderful trip.

Since spring was heading into summer, blooming poppies were still abundant.

I spent a few days in this cozy hotel near the airport called Sarokhaz Panzio.

Red and white are popular themes in Hungary. This is the sort of thing I love to see and live in on the road and when I try to bring it into my home it makes my place look like an interior designer’s nightmare.

The great thing about birding is that it can be done pretty much where ever you are. I share this hotel with my buddy Clay Taylor from Swarovski and Jessie Barry from Cornell. This was one of my first opportunities to bird with her and she was hell bent on recording sounds of birds to at to the Macaulay Library. She has the enviable ability to hear a bird song once and have it down. I need to hear a song several times and in habitat context to get it down. Case in point, one of the few birds I know well by song in Europe is the crested lark. I was relieved to be able to id that one on my own.

The three of us basically walked the neighborhood around our hotel and to a nearby abandoned (or so I thought field loaded with poppies and larks. As Jessie grabbed recordings and I tried to give her space so as to not mess it up, a man started yelling at us in Hungarian. None of us spoke the language well and he didn’t speak English.

“Parlez-vous français,” I asked.

He shook his head now and asked, “Deutsch?”

Not really, well enough to get me slapped and find a bathroom. But between his German and my French we figured out the issue. We were near a construction site and trucks would be hauling. They didn’t want people wandering around. We showed him pictures from my camera to show we seriously were “vögel beobachten” and he told us we had a little more time before we really had to leave.

European goldfinch that sang over us at the cafe in our hotel.

There were many green finches in our neighborhood.

Clay going for images of crested lark singing on one the trucks we were warned about.

The crested lark Clay was watching. I took the video with my iPhone 7, PhoneSkope case and Swarovski ATX 65 mm scope.

Lesser whitethroat. Jessie was working overtime to get songs for the Macaulay Library.

Delicious soup and some pepper spread for fresh bread at the cafe at our hotel. Delicious!

Jessie and I did take time to wander around downtown Budapest and see the bridge. We climbed the hill overlooking the city to see the statues. My one regret in Hungary is that we did not visit the Columbo statue in Budapest, but we saw several others. It’s a beautiful city in the spring with poppies and birds.