Photos & translation © Ksenija Putilin A few cars move through the first cold of November over yellow grasslands (and it was only a day ago that I had had coffee in the warmth of an Indian summer sun), mottled with wooded hills of planted conifers. The Lada Niva heading the convoy stops, followed by all of the vehicles behind it, and twenty-odd ornithologists from the area between the Macedonia and Slovenia busily search the gloomy sky. These participants of the BirdLife workshop Wings Across the Balkans, have entered Ovche Pole, in the North-East of Macedonia – you have never heard of this place, unless you have relatives there. This is my first time here as well, after at least a decade of legends about it. Ravens over the nearby hill, then a Common Buzzard and … the reason we stopped, the rare Eastern Imperial Eagle soars over the hill ( If I had an eagle's wings, I would rise and fly with them, To our own shores, to our own climes, …) and lands on top of th...