We waited passionately for this moment to come. The male Lesser Kestrel BFZ (the letters on its colour marking ring) really made us all happy. For the third year in a row, in early spring the team of Green Balkans working in the village of Levka, Sakar Mountain, impatiently await the return of the Lesser Kestrels from their wintering grounds. They do so with a mixture of excitement, emotion and some anxiety too. This year BFZ brought a pleasant surprise to us all with his exceptionally early arrival. Since the ‘launch’ of the new Lesser Kestrels colony by Green Balkans, the first birds normally arrive back in the area in early to mid-March; this year, however, the pioneer came almost half a month earlier. This is probably due to the warmer weather this year but partially the reason is that birds in the colony are already fully grown adults with enough experience and they know better their wintering grounds, their migration routes and, of course, the area surrounding the colony. As is the case with BFZ, an adult male that was released in the area in 2013, after arriving from far-away Spain. Later, in 2015, he started breeding in the colony and raised successfully his first offspring. And now BFZ is back with us to give life to the next generation contributing to the restoration of a species that was once extinct from Bulgaria!
All this is great but BFZ’s arrival puzzled the team a bit. They wonder what they should do with their martenitsas – a traditional woven adornment from red and white yarn exchanged on March 1st and worn until the arrival of our typical spring migrants. Lesser Kestrels, like White Storks, swallows and even Egyptian Vultures, are classic migrants; they fly away in autumn and come back to Bulgaria in spring. The team has a tradition: they take their martenitsas off with the arrival of the first kestrel. But now… The birds started arriving even before March 1st, and the exchange of the martenitsas! Actually, all nature-lovers in Bulgaria are faced with a similar puzzle, as storks have also been observed in many places – some are early arrivals, others chose to spend the entire winter in Bulgaria.