We flew direct from Dublin to Dubrovnik via Croatian Airlines. Car hire was basic to say the least with Hertz (never again) driving is difficult as the roads are poor, a average of 80 Km per hour is a good pace!

We based ourselves in Dubrovnik in the Old City. We birded Blace not noted as a site but we found it to be a super site 100 Km north of Dubrovnik, birds of note here Night Heron, Little Bittern, Black-winged Stilt, Wood Sandpipers, Little Stint, Black Tern, Yellow Wagtail and a family of Little Ringed Plover In the mountain area above Blace called Opuzen we had,Tawny Pipit, and our only sighting of Rock Partridge sadly no images as these are difficult to see well if one can find them at all, we spent a lot of time looking for them at several sites but only chanced upon them in the end. We spent a day on Mljet Island and saw very little except for two Eleonora's Falcons and Honey Buzzard While juvenile Yellow-legged Gulls appeared to form a creche here. We did not see a single Shearwater on the crossing.

We drove to Lake Skadar in Montenego and found it hard to bird the northern part of the lake but did find a nice area just passed the tourist information area to the right which got us onto a good reedbed and open water, here we saw Dozens of Whiskered Terns and Pygmy Cormorants, Zitting Cisticolas, Purple Herons, Squacco,

Birding in general produced Sardinian, Subalpine, Olive-tree Warblers along with Bee-eaters, Golden Orioles, Lesser Whitethroat, Woodchat and Red -backed Shrike. The only Wheatear of note was Black-eared.

Bird of the trip must be Alpine Swift as they just provide outstanding views in the Old City daily and indeed every night as they gathered to roost, often feeding well into the early hours using the city lights to catch moths perhaps?

Once again we would like to thank Dave Dillon for getting gen out of nowhere considering how little is written about birding in Croatia/ Montenegro. We used Birding in Eastern Europe by Gerard Gorman (new edition) although this was very limited for Croatia and did not cover Montenegro.