Estonia Days Five and Six - The bogs and forests around Parnu

Spent the last couple of days exploring the forests, bogs and coastal marshes around Parnu. Highlights have included Great, Lesser and Middle Spotted, Grey-headed, White-backed, Black and Three-toed Woodpeckers, Eagle, Ural, Pygmy, Tawny and Long-eared Owls, Hazel and Black Grouse, Capercaillie, Goshawks, Great Grey Shrikes and Crested, Marsh and Willow Tits. Furthermore we've had singing Green Sandpipers and Snipes, roding Woodcocks and on the coast there are thousands and thousands of wild geese. 

It's been pretty sensational. 

Not so much luck on the mammal front, although Noel saw a Raccoon Dog from the car that I missed and we found Elk and Wild Boar tracks, a dead Badger on the road and just a couple of Arctic Hares and Red Foxes in the flesh.

Trip report HERE. 117 species in total which is good for this time of year, in fact so good that I'm the second highest Estonian year lister for 2024 which is amusing. Not for long. From the looks of the photos below the photography suffered for the list. One world tick (Steller's Eider- 728 WP list, 90 ranking, 947 False WP list, 41 ranking, 3208 World List) and also had white-headed Long-tailed Tit and Northern Treecreeper as subspecies lifers, also nice to see good views of Northern Nuthatches and Northern Bullfinches. The numbers of birds out here is mind blowing- we totted up 21,000 White-fronts and 11,175 Bean Geese , 1620 Long-tailed Ducks, 664 Goosanders, 73 Smews and 20 White-tailed Eagles and we've only looked at a tiny fraction of the coastline and bays. 

What with the vast open and silent spaces filled with abundant wildlife it is certainly an enchanting and magical part of the world. Apparently it is even more amazing in high Spring when all the waders, Little Gulls, Terns and Eagles etc arrive to breed in the bogs, forests and coastal marshes.

I jumped on (literally last minute, a few hours before, after a bargain popped up after a cancellation) the Early Spring trip with Birding Uppsala HERE (a Wise Birding partner) and our guide was the famous Estonian concert pianist Sten Lassman HERE who does a few weeks a year as a bird guide to get out in the field. The only other person on the tour was Noel from London who also owns a wildlife gardening company so did a bit of unplanned networking too. We all had a great trip (including moments of impromptu private piano concerts every time we passed a grand piano). Thanks to Tarvo who owns Birding Uppsala for sorting it all out and for Chris at Wise Birding for the tip-off. 

Trip Report HERE

White-backed Woodpecker- an Aspen and mixed wood specialist

Three-toed Woodpecker - a Spruce specialist but here in Aspen. Black Woodpecker prefer Pine forests. Grey-headed like mixed with deciduous.  

Eagle Owl - a singing male out in the open in a Pine forest was pretty impressive 

An appalling photo of a Pygmy Owl 

Great Grey Shrike

Parrot Crossbill by the looks of it but there were Common Crossbills around too

Bewick's Swans

White-fronts, Bean and Barnacle Geese (above and below). There was a Lesser White-front in this flock a week ago but despite extensive searching, before two White-tailed Eagles flushed them all, we couldn't find it- feel free to check this lot! (Click and zoom in). 

Found a few Taiga Bean Geese candidates (above and below) amongst what predominately looked like Tundra Bean Geese. The bird above appeared to tower above the surrounding birds and had more extensive orange on the bill and the two birds below had more orange on the bill compared to the more Tundra looking centre bird. The outer birds appear a bit larger too. 

The Northern Forests (above and below) 

BIRDING HAPPSALU