My family and I just recently visited Greece for the first time. We spent the first half of May 2023 traveling to several locations across southern Greece including Athens, the Island of Crete, and The Peloponnese. It was a really interesting trip with a lot of history, great food, delicious wine, beautiful landscapes, and some amazing birds! During our travels, several things struck me about birding in Greece and I wanted to put those down in writing. I also wanted to share the species that I saw, some species that I missed, and some of the picture I took. I hope you enjoy.
We landed in Athens and spent the first two days of the trip exploring the city and overcoming the jetlag that resulted form crossing 10 times zones. Right off the bat, the new birds started with Common Swifts circling over the city seen from the window of our Air BnB. We spent those first couple of days exploring the Ancient Greek Agora, the Ancient Roman Agora, and the surrounding city. The agoras both include green spaces. The Ancient Greek Agora, in particular, has a nice sized area of grounds surrounding the reconstructed Agora, the Temple of Hephaestus (which is spectacular!), and other temples and ruins. These green spaces attracts quite a few birds including Eurasian Magpie, Alpine Swift, House Martin, Common Blackbird, Hooded Crow, Eurasian Jay, Great Tit, Collared Flycatcher, Common Gull, Rose-ringed Parakeet (which are non-native to Greece), and most excitingly for me, Eurasian Hoopoe!
After we got our travel legs under us, we took the overnight ferry from Athens to the island of Crete where we spent several days. Crete is amazing! Wonderful history, incredible food, some of the nicest people, good wine, and nature that is wild and beautiful and right at your doorstep. The biggest birding treat of Crete (and my favorite bird of the whole trip) were the flocks of European Bee-eaters that flew past on a daily basis. I never saw these birds land, but I would hear their odd vibrating blip-blip calls from quite a distance. The calls would get louder and louder and soon a flow of birds would stream into sight, fly overhead, and then disappear to parts unknown. Sometimes they would be very high, but other times they would be low enough for me to get great looks at these stunningly beautiful birds!
On Crete, I added Sardinian Warbler, Blackcap, Wood Pigeon, Common Buzzard, Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Red-rumped Swallow, Golden Oriole, Western Jackdaw, Griffon Vulture, Common Kestrel, Eurasian Hobby, Common Redstart, Scops Owl, and more to the species list. On Crete, we also visited museums and aquariums, first played in the Mediterranean Sea, hiked down into a steep gorge where we found figures of beautiful women carved into the rock walls, and we wandered through local street markets. Unfortunately, one species that I did not get to add to the list was a Lammergeier. The Lammergeier, or Bearded Vulture, is a fairly rare species in Europe, but that has a breeding population on Crete. It has been one of my top bucket list species for a very long time, and I was hoping to see one during our visit. However, these birds generally stick to the high and rugged mountains of Crete, and we did not cross paths with one.
We once again crossed the Sea of Crete to return to Athens by overnight ferry, but did not stay in the city. Instead, we rented a car and drove through Corinth to The Peloponnese which is the southwestern peninsula of Greece. We spent most of our time in the small town of Epidavros, but also drove on day trips to other parts of the peninsula. The Air BnB we rented was right on the water in a small and sheltered cove surrounded by orange groves. We swam in the Mediterranean every day seeing all sorts of sealife, visited the breathtaking theater of Asclepius, enjoyed shopping at a local market, collecting shells along the beaches. One of the day trips took us to a terrific wetland at a place called Nea Kios on the outskirts of the town of Napflion.
We spent about an hour exploring this coastal wetland and the beach at its edge, and that hour provided the highest rate of lifers per hour than I have experienced in a long time! Kentish Plovers and Little Stints greeted us right away, and these were quickly followed by Little Egret, White-winged Tern, Common Ringed Plover, Black-winged Stilt, a Greater Flamingo, and many more! After we left the wetland, we found our way to an amazing Mycenean bridge that is one of the oldest and best preserved structures in Greece! This was a really special spot with a very narrow, magical little road that led through the hills and green meadows surrounded by singing Sardinian Warblers and colorful wildflowers. At the bas of the bridge, my wife found the most amazing Preying Mantis that I have ever seen. We looked it up later and found it to a species called Empusa faciata. This amazing mantis had really long antenna which marked it to be a male which use those antennae to detect and trace the pheromones released by the females. In The Peloponnese, I also added European Serin, Cirl Bunting, Great Spotted Woodpecker, European Shag, and other species to the list.
When our stay in Epidavros was over, we drove back across The Peloponnese, stopped at the very commanding and dramatic Mycenean Citadel at Midea, and returned to Athens for the last few days of our trip. Unfortunately, on our first evening back in Athens, a thief stole my wife’s purse in which was her cell phone, driver’s license, bank card, and all of our passports. That put a damper on the next few days as we got documents organized and then waited until Monday for the US Embassy in Athens to open. We did visit the Acropolis which was pretty amazing and definitely worth making the time for , and the National Botanical Gardens where I added what ended up being the last new bird species of the trip, Monk Parakeets (also not native to Greece).
When Monday morning rolled around, we got to he US Embassy bright and early. We were worried because Monday was scheduled to be our final day in Greece, and our flight out of Athens International Airport was at 3:50am on Tuesday, so that did not leave a lot of time to get new passports organized so that we could go home. But, every member of the State Department we interacted with at the Embassy was fantastic! Not only were they really well organized and impressively multilingual, they were also very reassuring and confident that we would have our new passports in plenty of time to get to our scheduled flight. They were correct, and after submitting documents to them and then waiting for a few hours in a very nice café with excellent pastries, we returned to the Embassy and picked up our new emergency passports! We had a final dinner in Athens which was delicious, headed to the airport, and flew back to the USA with no problems.
All in all, though the trip included some bumps and complications and stressors, it really was an amazing trip filled with extraordinary experiences. We saw things and touched things and tasted things and heard things that will stay with us for a lifetime.
One thing that surprised me about birding in Greece was how little attention the birding seemed to get. In preparation for this trip, I looked into the bird books and was surprised as how few there were. The best guide for birding in Greece was a bird book that covers all of Europe! There is a slim book on the Birds of Greece, but it is brief and only focuses on the most common species found in the country. And there seemed to be no bird books exclusively focusing on specific areas of Greece such as Crete, The Peloponnese, any of the other islands, etc. In North America, one can find numerous books discussing in detail the birds of the whole continent, the USA, each of the states on the USA, specific cities or counties, specific parks or nature areas, etc., etc. There was definitely nothing close to this level of detail that I was able to find relating to the birds of Greece. Social media is similarly bereft. Look through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. for things like “#BirdsOfNorthAmeria” or “#BirdsOfCalifornia” and the like, and you will find results numbing in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions! A search for “BirdsOfGreece” or “GreekBirding” and the like will yield results in the hundreds or maybe thousands. And birding guides tell the same story. I searched for birding guides in Greece, and only found a few websites, and several of the organizations I did find were no longer active. This all leads me to suspect that Greece is a generally under-birded area which makes it exciting to visit as it feels like more of an unexplored frontier. However, I wonder what explains this lack of birding attention. Maybe it is just that the birders of Greece are not plugged into social media very much, so they are active, just not where I was looking. And maybe the guides work more by word of mouth, and do not need websites. However, this seems unlikely to me. Greeks are plenty tech-savvy, and so Greek birders would be just as likely to be active online as other birding populations. Maybe it is more that Greek is known for its history and amazing Mediterranean beaches and coasts, so the tourist attractions are mostly focused on these types of activities and not genuinely not on the birds and other wildlife.
Overall, I saw a total of 48 bird species on this trip, 35 of which were lifers for me. These birds were beautiful and exciting. I loved finding each and every one, and the photos and memories that I returned with will stay with me and enrich me for a long time to come. If you ever get the chance to visit Greece (and Crete in particular), I highly recommend it!
I will be sharing more experiences, thoughts, photos, and information about Greece and the birds I saw there on my Instagram account and YouTube channel (links at the bottom of this post), so feel free to follow along if you are interested.
Bird Species List (+ indicates lifer):
Rock Dove
Eurasian Collard-Dove
Common Swift +
House Sparrow
Eurasian Magpie +
Collard Flycatcgher +
Eurasian Jay +
House Martin
Eurasian Hoopoe +
Rose-ringed Parakeet +
Barn Swallow
Common Gull +
Alpine Swift +
Common Blackbird +
Great Tit
Yellow-legged Gull +
Hooded Crow +
Sardinian Warbler +
Blue Tit
Chaffinch
Indian Peafowl
Common Buzzard +
Wood Pigeon
Eurasian Hobby +
Common Kestrel +
Blackcap +
Western Jackdaw
Red-rumped Swallow +
Golden Oriole +
Griffon Vulture +
Common Redstart +
European Goldfinch
European Bee-eater +
Scope Owl +
European Shag +
Cirl Bunting +
Great Spotted Woodpecker +
Little Egret +
Grey Heron
Black-winged Stilt +
Common Ringed Plover +
Kentish Plover +
Little Stint +
Common Term
White-winged Tern +
Black-headed Gull +
Greater Flamingo +
European Serin +
Monk Parakeet +
Other Fun Species of Note:
Peloponnese Wall Lizard
Empusa faciata (a species of preying mantis)
Marbled White (a species of butterfly)
Marginated Tortoise
White Butterfly (yes, that is actually the accurate species name)
Violet Carpenter Bee
Mediterranean Damselfish
Rainbow Wrasse
Saddled Seabream
Atlantic Purple Urchin
Greek Poppy
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