NatureTrek’s Birdwatching Tour!

It had been a standing joke among my friends for two decades: Daphne’s birdwatching page! It all started when I asked my best friend, Eleni, to help me translate the hotel’s website from English to Greek. There was lots of work involved because, lacking any local online information portal in the whole of our region at the time (the early 2000s), our website doubled as the area’s informal information site on what to see and do while staying in Corinthia. When she got to the birdwatching page she went crazy! “Daphne, she said, do you really expect me to translate all this information about birds?”!

So how did all come about? At the time I was myself young and free, naturally inquisitive and in the mood for exploration. I roamed the area, taking pictures and writing up my discoveries in the first version of our website (in Microsoft’s Frontpage, followed by Adobe’s Dreamweaver). One of the places I visited was lake Stymphalia and there I found out about bird-watching, through Panos Poulos, who had created an environmental information center for the lake’s wildlife (as well as the youth hostel Elisson). One thing brought the next and somehow I stumbled upon GreeceBirdTours. I spoke with the founder, Spiros Skareas, an avid birdwatcher and founder of the company, and learned much about the birdwatching possibilities around our hotel. And that’s how a whole page in our hotel’s website got dedicated to birdwatching!

Many years passed with no birdwatcher coming to our hotel or asking for information. Until 2024, when NatureTrek organised an amazing trip in our area “Spring in Greece’s Northern Peloponnese – a Vegetarian/Vegan tour” and I finally got to host real birdwatchers! I went with them to the Strofylia National Park, where I got a hands-on introduction to slow travel. I loved it! The group also visited, among others, Lake Stymphalia, Mount Kyllene and the Alyki wetlands of Aigio.

Strofylia National Park by Daphne Mavrommati

Strofylia National Park by Daphne Mavrommati

The tour is coming again this year and I am very much looking forward to also participating in a couple of outings and discovering more about birds and wildlife!

Below you can see some of the pictures taken by the group leader Dave Jackson.