# The Văcărești wetland in Bucharest: which birds you hear each month

In 1989, four kilometres from the centre of Bucharest, Romania's capital, a dike more than 5 kilometres long was finished for a lake that never came to be. Reeds and ponds spread through the pit, and the people who go there and log what they see in birding apps have recorded 155 bird species. Pick a month and hear who is there.

October and April have the most voices: 48 and 44 bird species turn up on at least one checklist in ten, counting the neighbouring months. In winter the rooks arrive; in summer the reed warblers sing.

## What can you hear in Văcărești this month?

Each dot is a species recorded in the park in the chosen month and, counting the neighbouring months, on at least one checklist in ten. The more often it is recorded, the bigger the dot and the more often you hear it. Blue: in the air; green: in willows and scrub; ochre: in the reeds; teal: on the water. Underneath, all the time, is the city: the background is a recording made in the park on 27 April 2024, a red-backed shrike singing over the traffic.

The voices are recordings of each species, chosen for clarity: from Bucharest first, then the rest of Romania, and where we found no good one, from elsewhere in Europe. Only the background, with the red-backed shrike, was recorded in the park (Diana Tudor, xeno-canto XC962979). Checklists are made by day; of the observations with a time, more than half fall between 8 and 11 in the morning. What calls at night is not here.

## When do the birds arrive in Văcărești, and when do they leave?

### The rooks come to town

Rooks are absent from May and June checklists; in October they are on 14 of 19. In winter northern populations move south and rooks gather in cities (SOR, the Romanian Ornithological Society).

### Spring comes from the south

In April the cuckoo, the swallows, the reed warblers and the whiskered tern arrive; the tern is a marsh bird that hunts on the wing over the water, for insects and small fish. It is on 9 of 15 checklists in June and 8 of 12 in July, and is no longer recorded from September.

### The pygmy cormorant, all year

The pygmy cormorant is recorded every month, from 28% of checklists in May to 92% in July. With it all year are the mute swan and the coot, the most frequent overall: it is on 71% of all checklists.

### A rare duck

The ferruginous duck is on the IUCN list of near-threatened species. In Văcărești it is recorded mostly from February to October, on up to 55% of checklists (in March); the association that campaigned for the park lists it among the species that breed here.

A species appears in the table in the month it starts turning up on at least one checklist in ten, and drops out when it falls below that line. The number beside each month is how many species clear the line then.

- **January** (36). Arrive: Rock Dove, Fieldfare. Leave: European Robin, Eurasian Penduline Tit, Grey Wagtail, Bearded Reedling, Dunnock.
- **February** (30). Arrive: Ferruginous Duck, Common Starling. Leave: Common Blackbird, Gadwall, Common Buzzard, Northern Shoveler, Eurasian Wren, Eurasian Wigeon, Fieldfare, Long-tailed Tit.
- **March** (42). Arrive: Great Cormorant, Eurasian Collared Dove, House Sparrow, Common Blackbird, Gadwall, Garganey, Great Crested Grebe, Common Chiffchaff, Savi's Warbler, Northern Shoveler, European Robin, Eurasian Wren, Eurasian Penduline Tit, Western Marsh Harrier, Black Redstart, Water Rail. Leave: Rook, Grey Heron, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Redwing.
- **April** (44). Arrive: Whiskered Tern, Common Cuckoo, Red-backed Shrike, Barn Swallow, Great Reed Warbler, Eurasian Reed Warbler, Lesser Whitethroat, Common Swift, Eurasian Hobby, Eurasian Blackcap, Common Whitethroat, Black-necked Grebe. Leave: European Goldfinch, Common Reed Bunting, Gadwall, Eurasian Sparrowhawk, Eurasian Blue Tit, Eurasian Teal, European Greenfinch, Eurasian Wren, Black Redstart, Water Rail.
- **May** (42). Arrive: Eurasian Golden Oriole, Black-crowned Night Heron, Marsh Warbler, Spotted Flycatcher. Leave: Common Chaffinch, Rock Dove, Common Chiffchaff, Northern Shoveler, European Robin, Western Marsh Harrier.
- **June** (42). Arrive: Grey Heron, Rock Dove, Eurasian Blue Tit, Common House Martin. Leave: Red-backed Shrike, Garganey, Spotted Flycatcher, Black-necked Grebe.
- **July** (38). Arrive: Rook, Red-backed Shrike, Little Egret, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Common Tern. Leave: Great Tit, Common Blackbird, Great Crested Grebe, Common Starling, Savi's Warbler, Eurasian Blue Tit, Marsh Warbler, Eurasian Blackcap, Common Whitethroat.
- **August** (43). Arrive: Great Tit, Common Blackbird, Eurasian Sparrowhawk, Great Crested Grebe, Common Chiffchaff, Eurasian Blue Tit, European Greenfinch, Eurasian Blackcap, Spotted Flycatcher, Willow Warbler. Leave: Common Cuckoo, Great Reed Warbler, Common Swift, Eurasian Hobby, Eurasian Penduline Tit.
- **September** (38). Arrive: European Goldfinch, Common Starling, Eurasian Teal, Eurasian Hobby, Western Jackdaw. Leave: Whiskered Tern, Eurasian Reed Warbler, Eurasian Golden Oriole, Great Crested Grebe, Lesser Whitethroat, Common Tern, Black-crowned Night Heron, European Greenfinch, Eurasian Blackcap, Common House Martin.
- **October** (48). Arrive: Common Chaffinch, Common Reed Bunting, Gadwall, Common Buzzard, Northern Shoveler, Redwing, European Robin, European Greenfinch, Eurasian Wren, Grey Wagtail, Bearded Reedling, Common Kingfisher. Leave: Barn Swallow, Willow Warbler.
- **November** (39). Arrive: Dunnock. Leave: Ferruginous Duck, Red-backed Shrike, House Sparrow, Rock Dove, Little Egret, Common Starling, Eurasian Hobby, Spotted Flycatcher, Western Jackdaw, Common Kingfisher.
- **December** (39). Arrive: Eurasian Wigeon, Eurasian Penduline Tit, Long-tailed Tit. Leave: Great Cormorant, Eurasian Collared Dove, Common Chiffchaff.

## How did the Văcărești wetland form?

Before the works, the site of the park was gardens and spring-fed ponds; according to the study behind its protection, the owners were still working their gardens in 1988. Văcărești Monastery, founded in the 1720s on the hill beside it, was demolished in 1986; according to the Romanian daily Jurnalul, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania's communist leader, visited the site in December 1986, after the demolition.

The land was expropriated in 1988–89, and the dike and basin were finished in 1989: about 155 hectares of floor inside 26 hectares of dike, concreted on the inner face. The water was to come from the Argeș river, through Lake Mihăilești west of the city, along a 27-kilometre channel of which 14 kilometres were built. What the lake was for is still unclear: sources speak of water for a planned Danube port, irrigation for greenhouses, or a leisure lake; some texts, citing no source, add flood defence. We found no engineering document that settles it.

After the December 1989 revolution that ended communist rule, the site was abandoned. The water was already there: the spring-fed ponds, plus the pits dug for the dike's earth. The founding study says the basin was filled once, by pumping from the Dâmbovița, the river that runs through Bucharest, and that the water seeped under the dike into nearby greenhouses; we found no record of the episode from the time. In the images from July 1990 and August 1991, nearly a third of the floor shows wet or under shallow water.

In the years that followed, reeds covered almost everything. In 2002 the Romanian government approved leasing the land for 49 years to a company promising a culture and sports complex; in 2005 a court ruled the leasing decision illegal, and the government appealed. In May 2012 National Geographic Romania called the place "the delta between the tower blocks", and on 11 May 2016 the government declared it a nature park, Romania's first urban nature park. The Enache family, who lived in the marsh for nearly 20 years and had to leave once the park was declared, is the subject of the documentary "Acasă, My Home" (2020).

The satellite images also show what came next. Water visible from space covered 5–10% of the floor between 2001 and 2011 and fell below 1% from 2020. The park administration says the water level depends mainly on rainfall; the association blames drought and the reeds, which hold water "like a sponge". At the end of 2024 the administration said water had again covered the vegetation at the edges. The management plan approved in May 2025 provides for a channel from the Dâmbovița. Pixels 30 metres wide miss small pools and the water under the reeds.

## How do you get to Văcărești, and what will you hear now?

- **Hours.** Daily, 7 am to 9 pm, according to the park administration.
- **Entrances.** The administration's map shows two: in the north-west from Strada Glădiței, by Splaiul Unirii (Mihai Bravu metro), and in the south from Strada Săvinești, by Șoseaua Olteniței (Piața Sudului metro). The management plan lists a third, at the corner of Splaiul Unirii and Șoseaua Vitan-Bârzești.
- **Rules.** Dogs on a lead only. No fires, fishing or swimming; drones may fly below 100 metres only with the administration's consent. Dry reed catches fire often, mostly in late winter and spring; in February 2020 about 50 hectares burned.

## How do we know who is there?

There is no monthly census of the birds of Văcărești. There are, however, people who go there and log what they see on eBird, Observation.org and iNaturalist; their data are public through GBIF. We kept everything that falls inside the dike: 9,342 observations, 7,669 of them birds, of 155 species.

We grouped them into outings (same observer, same day) and kept the 276 outings with at least five bird species. These are the "checklists", made by 115 observers between 2009 and 2026. For each month we worked out the share of checklists on which each species appears, with the month before and after given half weight, so that a single outing does not swing the result. A species shows on the page in a month only if it clears one checklist in ten and was recorded at least once in that very month. The percentages shown are that month's own, unsmoothed.

What the data do not say: how many birds there are, and what calls at night. Outings are made by day; of the observations with a time, more than half fall between 8 and 11 in the morning. Some months have few checklists: 9 in February, 12 in July, 15 in June. Shy birds, heard rather than seen, are probably recorded less often than they occur. The list kept by the association that campaigned for the park has 176 species, seen over the years (2021); the public data from inside the dike have 155.

Frogs are not on the checklists. The fire-bellied toad and the marsh frog were photographed in the park in spring, and the founding study lists them among the park's four amphibian species; you hear them here from March to May. They are not counted among the bird species.

## Whose voices are these?

- Pygmy Cormorant (*Microcarbo pygmaeus*)
- Eurasian Coot (*Fulica atra*)
- Common Pochard (*Aythya ferina*)
- Hooded Crow (*Corvus cornix*)
- Eurasian Magpie (*Pica pica*)
- Mute Swan (*Cygnus olor*)
- Black-headed Gull (*Chroicocephalus ridibundus*)
- Common Wood Pigeon (*Columba palumbus*)
- Whiskered Tern (*Chlidonias hybrida*)
- Mallard (*Anas platyrhynchos*)
- Great Cormorant (*Phalacrocorax carbo*)
- Little Grebe (*Tachybaptus ruficollis*)
- Rook (*Corvus frugilegus*)
- Common Moorhen (*Gallinula chloropus*)
- Grey Heron (*Ardea cinerea*)
- Common Cuckoo (*Cuculus canorus*)
- European Goldfinch (*Carduelis carduelis*)
- Syrian Woodpecker (*Dendrocopos syriacus*)
- Ferruginous Duck (*Aythya nyroca*)
- Red-backed Shrike (*Lanius collurio*)
- Great Tit (*Parus major*)
- Yellow-legged Gull (*Larus michahellis*)
- Eurasian Collared Dove (*Streptopelia decaocto*)
- House Sparrow (*Passer domesticus*)
- Common Blackbird (*Turdus merula*)
- Common Chaffinch (*Fringilla coelebs*)
- Common Reed Bunting (*Emberiza schoeniclus*)
- Barn Swallow (*Hirundo rustica*)
- Great Reed Warbler (*Acrocephalus arundinaceus*)
- Eurasian Reed Warbler (*Acrocephalus scirpaceus*)
- Eurasian Golden Oriole (*Oriolus oriolus*)
- Gadwall (*Mareca strepera*)
- Rock Dove (*Columba livia*)
- Eurasian Sparrowhawk (*Accipiter nisus*)
- Garganey (*Spatula querquedula*)
- Common Kestrel (*Falco tinnunculus*)
- Little Egret (*Egretta garzetta*)
- Great Crested Grebe (*Podiceps cristatus*)
- Common Buzzard (*Buteo buteo*)
- Common Chiffchaff (*Phylloscopus collybita*)
- Great Spotted Woodpecker (*Dendrocopos major*)
- Common Starling (*Sturnus vulgaris*)
- Savi's Warbler (*Locustella luscinioides*)
- Common Pheasant (*Phasianus colchicus*)
- Eurasian Blue Tit (*Cyanistes caeruleus*)
- European Fire-bellied Toad (*Bombina bombina*)
- Marsh Frog (*Pelophylax ridibundus*)
- Lesser Whitethroat (*Sylvia curruca*)
- Northern Shoveler (*Spatula clypeata*)
- Redwing (*Turdus iliacus*)
- Eurasian Teal (*Anas crecca*)
- Common Tern (*Sterna hirundo*)
- European Robin (*Erithacus rubecula*)
- Common Swift (*Apus apus*)
- Black-crowned Night Heron (*Nycticorax nycticorax*)
- European Greenfinch (*Chloris chloris*)
- Eurasian Hobby (*Falco subbuteo*)
- Marsh Warbler (*Acrocephalus palustris*)
- Eurasian Wren (*Troglodytes troglodytes*)
- Eurasian Wigeon (*Mareca penelope*)
- Eurasian Blackcap (*Sylvia atricapilla*)
- Spotted Flycatcher (*Muscicapa striata*)
- Common Whitethroat (*Sylvia communis*)
- Eurasian Penduline Tit (*Remiz pendulinus*)
- Grey Wagtail (*Motacilla cinerea*)
- Bearded Reedling (*Panurus biarmicus*)
- Fieldfare (*Turdus pilaris*)
- Willow Warbler (*Phylloscopus trochilus*)
- Common House Martin (*Delichon urbicum*)
- Western Marsh Harrier (*Circus aeruginosus*)
- Long-tailed Tit (*Aegithalos caudatus*)
- Dunnock (*Prunella modularis*)
- Black-necked Grebe (*Podiceps nigricollis*)
- Western Jackdaw (*Coloeus monedula*)
- Black Redstart (*Phoenicurus ochruros*)
- Water Rail (*Rallus aquaticus*)
- Common Kingfisher (*Alcedo atthis*)

## Sources

- GBIF.org (1 October 2026), observations inside the dike of Văcărești Nature Park: eBird (CC BY 4.0), Observation.org (CC BY-NC 4.0), iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0), Pl@ntNet https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/search?geometry=POLYGON((26.1249%2044.3995,26.1423%2044.3919,26.1423%2044.4069,26.1249%2044.4069,26.1249%2044.3995))
- Outline: OpenStreetMap, "Parcul Natural Văcărești" (way 88105780), © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/88105780
- xeno-canto: species recordings, Creative Commons licences (see the table) https://xeno-canto.org/
- Landsat 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 Collection 2 Level-2, USGS, via Microsoft Planetary Computer https://planetarycomputer.microsoft.com/dataset/landsat-c2-l2
- Stoican F., Lascu C., Ignat H. et al., Scientific foundation study for the protected area Văcărești Nature Park (2013, updated 2015) https://main.components.ro/uploads/0a90a3b699e57186656238381eadbc74/2017/12/PN_Vacaresti_Studiu_de_fundamentare.pdf
- Government Decision 349 of 11 May 2016 declaring the "Acumulare Văcărești" natural area a nature park, Official Gazette 371/13.05.2016 https://legeaz.net/monitorul-oficial-371-2016/hg-349-2016-parcul-natural-vacaresti
- Anastasiu P. et al. (2017), Nature reclaiming its territory in urban areas. Case study: Văcărești Nature Park, Acta Horti Bot. Bucurest. 44: 71–99 https://parculnaturalbucuresti.ro/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/AHBB-44-2017-Page-71-100-1.pdf
- Văcărești Nature Park management plan, approved by Environment Ministry Order 1363/2025, Official Gazette 456/16.05.2025 https://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/298192
- Văcărești Nature Park Administration, draft management plan (November 2023) https://apnv.ro/planul-de-management/
- Văcărești Nature Park Administration, access to the park https://apnv.ro/accesul-in-parc/
- Park regulation, draft (ANANP, 2021): visitor rules https://parculnaturalbucuresti.ro/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Regulament-Parcul-Natural-Vacaresti.pdf
- Cristian Lascu, "Delta dintre blocuri", National Geographic Romania no. 109, May 2012 (per Wikipedia) https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parcul_Natural_V%C4%83c%C4%83re%C8%99ti
- Asociația Parcul Natural București (formerly Văcărești), list of birds observed in the park (2021) https://parculnaturalbucuresti.ro/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Avifauna-PNV.pdf
- HotNews, 13 February 2006, on the "Acumulare Lac Văcărești" concession https://hotnews.ro/?p=865128
- Europa Liberă Romania, 7 September 2024, drought in Văcărești Park https://romania.europalibera.org/a/parcul-vacaresti-seceta/33109718.html
- Puterea, 26 December 2024, water returns to the park https://www.puterea.ro/?p=427869
- Jurnalul, 29 May 2020, the Bucharest delta https://jurnalul.ro/special-jurnalul/reportaje/delta-bucurestiului-locul-unde-paradisul-a-venit-singur-846551.html
- Romanian Ornithological Society, birds of the month for November: crows https://www.sor.ro/pasarile-lunii-noiembrie-ciorile/
- SOR Ornitodata: Romanian names of the species https://pasaridinromania.sor.ro/

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