Wildlife spectacles in Austria
13 spectacles through the year, ordered by when they peak. Open Austria in the interactive calendar for the map and listening times.
Ural owls in the Wienerwald and Dürrenstein wildernessUral owl's deep barking 'wuh-wuh... wu-wuhuh' series, female's hoarse heron-like calls, tawny owl duets, pygmy owl piping in the Dürrenstein old growth; snow-quiet beech forest.
Great bustard display on the Parndorfer Platte and HanságBustards are near-silent; the payload is the steppe dawn — skylark, corn bunting, quail, lapwing, grey partridge, crane pairs in the Hanság, marsh harrier, and the reed edge of the Neusiedler See a few kilometres away.
Black grouse leks above the treelineBubbling 'rookooing' and explosive hisses from several cocks on a snow-patched clearing, wing-flutter jumps, ring ouzel and ptarmigan croaks; cowbells arrive later in the season.
Frog nights in the Danube floodplain forestTree frog volleys and fire-bellied toads' soft hooting from the oxbows (Altarme), marsh frog laughter, night herons croaking overhead, nightingale and beaver tail-slaps; Danube barges as a slow low bed.
Tree-nesting white stork colony, March floodplainBill-clattering across a colony of 40–50 nests in the oak canopy, chick hissing, black-headed gulls from the oxbows, oriole, nightingale, tree frogs and fire-bellied toads in the flooded meadows, Konik horses.
Reedbed dawn on Europe's largest steppe lakeGreat reed warbler's grating song from every reed clump, Savi's reeling, moustached warbler, bittern booming, marsh frogs, spoonbill colony chatter, black-headed gull colonies, the reeds themselves in the morning breeze.
Thayatal: river gorge dawn, eagle owl and wildcat countryOak-hornbeam dawn chorus with collared flycatcher, wood warbler, both nightingale species meeting (thrush nightingale reaches here), golden oriole, kingfisher along the meandering Thaya, eagle owl from the gorge cliffs in late winter.
Beavers by boat at dusk, Donau-AuenTail-slaps, gnawing on willow, kits whining in the lodge, surface swims and dives; frogs and night herons; the Danube.
Corncrakes and curlews of the Styrian EnnstalRasping corncrakes from the wet meadows, curlew bubbling and snipe drumming at dawn, quail, tree frogs from the raised bog, cowbells and the Enns.
Marmots, ibex and vultures, Hohe TauernMarmot alarm whistles bouncing between glacier-polished walls, chough flocks, ibex hoof-clatter, the wing-rush of a griffon passing at 20 m, ptarmigan; glacier streams and cowbells below.
Red deer rut in the Kalkalpen and GesäuseRoaring stags in mountain beech-spruce forest with limestone walls behind — long echoes; in the Gesäuse the Enns rapids run under everything; antler fights, hinds, tawny and Ural owls.
Goose autumn at the Lange Lacke, SeewinkelGeese in skeins of thousands crossing the pastures at dusk, greylag chatter on the soda lake roost through the night, cranes trumpeting overhead in late October, eagle calls; the salt-steppe silence in between.
Rhine delta on Lake Constance: migration and winter raftsDiving-duck rafts and wing-whistle, coot, whooper swans, gull roosts, curlew and godwit on the shallows in autumn; reed warblers and bittern in spring; the lake's fetch.