Boris Belchev, Bird Guide and Wildlife Photographer in Lithuania

Catherine: 00:00:00

this episode is dedicated to our nephew and my godson Christopher and our niece in law.

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Chelsea, congratulations again on the wedding.

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We're so thrilled and so happy for the two of you.

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Hello, I'm Catherine, your host of this variety show podcast.

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C H R I S N O L E Thank you again for listening and for your support of this podcast,

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As you know, from the dedication our nephew got married this weekend, well because of the wedding we had lots of family in town.

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Our young nephew Grant was staying with us and I thought it would be fun for him to chat a little bit about birds.

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Well, he really didn't want to talk about birds.

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He wanted to talk about dinosaurs.

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And today's episode is not about dinosaurs.

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But here is young Grant anyway to introduce the introduction for today's episode.

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YEAH The birds really lived with dinosaurs.

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My favorite bird is the velociraptor because the velociraptor has feathers.

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. Well, I don't hear a very much owls.

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I think it's time to talk about dinosaurs.

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Your Positive Imprint.

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your positive imprint.

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What's your PI?

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Boris Belchev surrounds himself with nature and interesting people.

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He captures the natural world by focusing on the magic he finds in wildlife throughout Lithuania's wilderness.

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As a bird guide, he educates visitors on the life of birds, but also the declining numbers of bird species.

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It's not easy to become a certified birder and guide in Lithuania.

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Boris Belchev is transforming how we live today.

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For a more sustainable tomorrow through education and information.

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And now Boris Belchev shares his journey into the window to nature.

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Well, Boris Belchev, it is so fabulous to have you here on the show, and you are out there in Lithuania, which is one of my spots that I visited, and I so much enjoyed Lithuania.

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Welcome to the show, Boris.

Boris: 00:03:15

Thank you, Catherine.

Boris: 00:03:17

It's really honor that I'm on your podcast.

Boris: 00:03:22

I listen to other shows from the beginning.

Boris: 00:03:26

I started from 2019 from the very beginning, so I need to catch up a lot.

Boris: 00:03:32

. Yeah.

Boris: 00:03:33

. It's, it's really, really special

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on your podcast.

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Thank you so much.

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Well, it's awesome that you're here.

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You have so much that you're doing with your positive imprints, and of course you're global as people come over to Lithuania and go birding.

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Lithuania is not where you are from.

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So let's back up a little bit, a few years and go back to where you were born and what got you started first in photography.

Boris: 00:04:04

So, I was born in Bulgaria in 1985.

Boris: 00:04:10

So now it's almost 38 years.

Boris: 00:04:14

And 16 of them I spent in Lithuania.

Boris: 00:04:16

But first 21 I spent in Bulgaria.

Boris: 00:04:20

I used to live in average size town with about 90,000 people living there.

Boris: 00:04:28

And I actually was interested in nature from very beginning, but the photography was just something very far away.

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Cause this technologies just were not so accessible in Eastern European countries.

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And I start first birdwatching and volunteering for Bulgarian society, for protecting our birds, making common bird monitorings.

Boris: 00:04:54

I was counting the breeding birds in the graveyards of our town.

Boris: 00:04:59

Everybody asked me always how I get into Lithuania.

Boris: 00:05:03

So the story, short, long story short, it's that my first trip was to

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Alaska.

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Oh my gosh.

Boris: 00:05:13

Listen, listen to your first podcast.

Boris: 00:05:15

You were in Alaska.

Catherine: 00:05:17

Yes.

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So, so,

Boris: 00:05:19

What brought me to Alaska was the, that I need to earn somehow money to, to buy my first photo photography equipment.

Boris: 00:05:29

And I have a friend that was working as a student on with J one Visa work and travel program to Alaska.

Boris: 00:05:38

And he told me about that it's good way to earn quickly money working in Denali National Park in the Denali Resort.

Boris: 00:05:46

So I quickly applied for this visa and I think my lucky number 13 works again.

Boris: 00:05:55

And on 13th of April, 2007 I got the Visa and I traveled to Alaska on 6th of May.

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Wow.

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This is so interesting.

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You mentioned that the availability of camera, equipment and other accessories were not available there in, in Bulgaria.

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How did you learn about the photography and, and what made you decide on your camera equipment when you were in Alaska.

Boris: 00:06:25

As I mentioned, I was volunteering for Bulgarian Society of Protection of Bird, and they were coordinating this project for breeding bird monitoring.

Boris: 00:06:35

And the coordinator of the project here as one of the first digital cameras and this longer lens.

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So I saw that and I , I said, I want do that.

Boris: 00:06:48

Wow.

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Try the camera, take some shots.

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Cause in this time I have only this analog camera with film, with very short lens and I, I could make mostly portraits and maybe some landscape, but I couldn't get any closer to birds.

Boris: 00:07:05

So this grabbed me and , I find a way to, to

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do it.

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That is such a fun story that you, you volunteered to do the counting, which is so important around the world.

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It's not just important in any one country because the birds migrate over land and over sea . So you got started at, at a young age . When you were in Alaska, did you work

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What did you do in Alaska?

Boris: 00:07:42

This friend that I mentioned earlier, he told me that I should get waiter Job there because you're getting a lot of tips , and it's easier to turn the money that you need in a short time.

Boris: 00:07:57

But unfortunately I got a job of dishwasher,

Boris: 00:08:01

. Catherine: Yeah.

Boris: 00:08:02

Well, that, that's okay.

Boris: 00:08:03

Dishwasher's okay.

Boris: 00:08:04

Yeah.

Boris: 00:08:04

They still split the tips.

Boris: 00:08:06

Yes.

Boris: 00:08:07

And because I really want to speed up the process, I still find another job night shift and one of the fast food chains I managed to do my schedule this way that I have my day offs the same time on both jobs, so

Boris: 00:08:35

And in two months I managed to earn the money I need and I have the chance , to start learning to use the digital camera with with longer lens.

Boris: 00:08:45

And I have some funny stories with this two jobs sometimes

Boris: 00:08:50

In this period of two months, working 16 hours a day, I, I really wanted to take photos in, in, in this time.

Boris: 00:08:58

But I have only three, four hours to sleep and one of the days I decide to not go to sleep, but to take some photos.

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So first time I wake up there was a river otter staring at me from the lake that I was sitting on the shore

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So it was really funny until I wake up next time sleeping standing up next to the road and the husband of my Chef Cook in the, in the canteen that I was working wake me up and take me to the . Back to the resort.

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. .

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As far you keep a safe distance from wild animals and there are the buses that take you into the park because it's not open for private vehicles, and you can ask the driver to stop and let you out wherever you want.

Boris: 00:09:53

So I met tourist one professor in ornithology and we hike together and uh, we were looking for wildflowers for birds.

Boris: 00:10:08

And then we saw that there was a grizzly bear mama with its cubs she was sleeping and it was like three, 400 meters, which is, I dunno, maybe 600 feet.

Boris: 00:10:23

Mm-hmm.

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from us.

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And and we try slowly to not wake her up and hike back to the main road and stop the first bus.

Boris: 00:10:34

So, the first bus that was passing by it took us and stopped when we were passing the bear and we can take some photos from the bus, from safe distance.

Boris: 00:10:46

Also I had night walk because in Alaska it's not getting really dark in the summer.

Boris: 00:10:54

And I was walking to on a normal trail for the tourist going to my favorite spot at, and I heard the the wolves.

Boris: 00:11:03

uh,

Boris: 00:11:06

I need to finish this four months and earn the money that I owe from my parents to pay their tickets and everything.

Boris: 00:11:17

This is the, the almost the end of the second month when I met a girl from Lithuania and this is how I end up in Lithuania.

Boris: 00:11:27

Ah,

Boris: 00:11:28

. Catherine: Boris Alaska really opened a path for you in not just photography, but in your love for

Boris: 00:11:44

Because, not everybody would've left that grizzly bear.

Boris: 00:11:48

Others would've just taken out their camera and hoping she would wake up so they could get these great photos of her moving around.

Boris: 00:11:56

And that's not protection of the wildlife.

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So I applaud you and the ornithologist that you were with that the two of you enjoyed seeing that she was there with her cubs, but you backed off and you left her her privacy within her own habitat.

Boris: 00:12:14

This story has so many different tales and, and turns

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.

Boris: 00:12:26

What is the reason for the birds versus the other wildlife that is in Eastern Europe?

Boris: 00:12:34

Birds are started to be part of my life from very young early age.

Boris: 00:12:39

It was my first memories that are always picking up were about the bee-eater colony that was just few hundred meters from my grandparents summer house in the village where we were spending most of our summers with them.

Boris: 00:12:56

And there is a clay wall where the bee-eaters are digging their nest holes.

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And we were going with my sister there to, to watch them because they're one of the most colorful birds in in Europe.

Boris: 00:13:12

I think they have more than.

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20, 25 different colors and different tones of of different colors.

Boris: 00:13:22

And this was one of the reason, other reason is that my father liked to run a lot when he was younger and healthier.

Boris: 00:13:33

And he was bringing to us different small birds and we were trying with my sisters to grow them.

Boris: 00:13:40

This is one of the reason that, and later when I become more conscious about nature and about good of the wild animals, I never want to have anymore

Boris: 00:13:54

wild animals.

Boris: 00:13:55

So, I was trying to help them in the nature, but not be selfish and take them home and try to, to domesticate them.

Boris: 00:14:05

But before this happened, I managed successfully to grow really young ferel pigeon that my father bring home also from his work.

Boris: 00:14:16

And this was really special connection between me and this pigeon because I was like, only parent and I was teaching him on the stairs because we were living on the eighth floor.

Boris: 00:14:29

I was teaching him on the stairs to fly.

Boris: 00:14:32

And after that he was even flying in the city park until he become adult and he made his soulmate and in pigeon life the males always moving to, to the females area.

Boris: 00:14:48

But I, I still believe that they were coming to visit me together on our balcony.

Boris: 00:14:55

And I was really happy that this pigeon given was grown by me.

Boris: 00:15:01

He made his way back to the wild.

Boris: 00:15:04

This is one of the main things that brought me mainly to the birds.

Boris: 00:15:09

And other thing is that mamas and other creatures are less abundant and especially the mamas, they're mostly nocturnal creatures and more difficult to, to see and explore.

Catherine: 00:15:25

What are the bird populations doing in Bulgaria and Lithuania?

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Are they dropping in population as they are dropping in North America and on other continents?

Boris: 00:15:41

Unfortunately, yes, especially after this country joined the European Union we're really sad about that and I'm not really happy to talk about it,

Boris: 00:16:04

But I also joining one project that I find very interesting.

Boris: 00:16:10

It's about lonely trees in the, in the agricultural landscape.

Boris: 00:16:16

So the company that I will not mention, they're running this project now to encourage the farmers to leave at least single trees , in their agricultural land and not make just this agricultural desert.

Boris: 00:16:32

They're getting this compensation from the European Union for clean bushes and trees for agricultural land.

Boris: 00:16:40

And also agricultural policy in Europe it's and that for example, natural meadow, it's treated like wasteland and mean that it's, it could be inaudible, but it's nobody were making agriculture there even

Boris: 00:16:57

it's so important habitat still treated like wasteland

Boris: 00:17:01

And this one of the main reasons that birds in Bulgaria and Lithuania are declining cause of the loss of habitats.

Boris: 00:17:11

And I recently participate, every year at least one twenty-four hour birdwatching marathon, which society in Lithuania is organizing..

Boris: 00:17:23

So they choose an area that it's not well explored by scientist.

Boris: 00:17:30

And there are different teams that get the opportunity in four hours to explore the, the patch of this area and try to count as many species as possible.

Boris: 00:17:44

And why I mentioned this is not because it's so important to race but because we give a lot of feedback to the non-government organization that can take actions.

Boris: 00:17:55

And because first six years when I live in Lithuania it was in the same area.

Boris: 00:18:01

And I have a lot of observation of some rare birds.

Boris: 00:18:06

For example, corncrake is one of them.

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And this is only four years later.

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And agriculture made such big impact on these species that in twenty-four hours we couldn't hear or see any of these corncrakes.

Boris: 00:18:24

, their habitats were completely destroyed with monoculture, fields.

Boris: 00:18:29

So some birds are really in really bad situation.

Boris: 00:18:36

Some even seabirds and some agricultural landscapes like corncrakes that I mentioned.

Boris: 00:18:42

For example, in Czech Republic, they lost 70% of their agricultural land bird populations which really big hit on these birds that we used to see every day.

Boris: 00:18:57

They don't care about nature.

Boris: 00:18:58

But just in this two things like nature conservation and agriculture, there's so much separate from each other that one is making nature conservation.

Boris: 00:19:10

And another one, it's trying to do what they do the best, but without taking care about the nature.

Boris: 00:19:17

So such projects even it's just small thing single trees, but it's not enough, at least.

Boris: 00:19:27

Yes, it's it's good start and,

Catherine: 00:19:30

but it's not enough to sustain the bird populations and it's, and it's happening worldwide.

Catherine: 00:19:37

I think there's too much of living today and not looking to tomorrow, which is why your positive imprint transforms how we're living today for a more sustainable tomorrow.

Catherine: 00:19:52

And I think that's just so important.

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How are we going to sustain ourselves for tomorrow?

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And it's not just our sustainability because part of our sustainability is living with the animals and all of nature that is part of our planet.

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Now you met your girlfriend in Alaska and you obviously moved from Bulgaria over to Lithuania.

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So now in Lithuania you are doing not just photography, but you are also a bird guide and you can't just become a bird guide.

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What are those requirements for getting yourself on the world map as a bird guide in Lithuania?

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Join me next week with more of Boris Belchev's journey into the window to nature.

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To learn more about Boris.

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You can go to his website, BorisBelchev.Com B O R I S B E L C H E V.

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Dot com.

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Thank you so much for your support of this podcast.

Catherine: 00:20:59

Thank you for listening.

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And don't forget to follow or subscribe or download this podcast.

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You can go to your positive imprint.com for more information.

Catherine: 00:21:10

Your positive imprint.