FEATURE
DEBRECEN
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2012
WIZZ MAGAZINE
25
T
here’s nowhere else in Europe like this,” says
Hortobágy district ranger Zsolt Végvári.
Speaking in impeccable English learned on
the wilds of Dartmoor, Végvári guides many of the
birdwatchers who visit the Hortobágy, a significant
number of whom come from abroad, in particular the
United Kingdom. “This is a kind of English-speaking
hobby,” he laughs, describing the life-long interest in
birds that brought him here. It also regularly takes
him to the park’s partner establishment of Dartmoor,
where he stays with a professor in Bath as part of a
long-term staff exchange programme.
You don’t have to be a seasoned twitcher to
appreciate the wetlands and their wildlife. “In
spring or autumn, even the casual visitor should be
able to observe 100 species of bird in a single day,”
says Végvári. Otters and other small mammals
also populate the fishponds, but it’s the spoonbills,
Red-footed Falcons and cranes by the thousand that
give the Hortobágy its main draw.
Created in 1973, the Hortobágy is the country’s
oldest and largest national park. Little more than
half an hour’s drive from Hungary’s second city of
Debrecen, it is a vast expanse, sprawling across some
82,000
hectares of grassland, meadows and marshes.
Almost 350 of Europe’s 500 bird species have been
spotted here, and October is the prime time for
human visitors eager to glimpse some of the more
unusual varieties as they migrate south towards the
warmer climes of North Africa.
As well as guiding visitors, Végvári’s responsibilities
include logging bird numbers. It’s a task best carried
out at an observation station close to Halastó, the
system of ponds where autumn’s duck and crane
migrations are concentrated. “You can see all the
breeds of European heron and egret here,” he explains.
He’s keeping a particularly watchful eye out for the
yellow-brown plumage of visiting Aquatic Warblers –
now a globally threatened species, and the subject of
an international conservation project he and his team
have taken on this year.
It may be a birdwatcher’s paradise, but for
Hungarians the Hortobágy has other connotations.
For them this is the Puszta, the Great Plain; salty
