Well the title gives it away we have just had 7 days in Estonia - myself, Wayne, Neil and Adrian booked flights with Easyjet at £62 Liverpool to Tallinn - booked an estate car through Jigsaw.com at £244 and picked up accommodation wherever the birds were. Our itinerary was 2 nights in Haapsalu, 2 nights in Nigula. 2 nights at Tartu and the last night back at Nigula twitching Ural Owl! The trip was easy to plan and navigating your way around Estonia is easy - the roads are good with little traffic on them, probably too good as we did get stopped for speeding and fined 40 euros! Birding is challenging in as much as you have to constantly do battle with clouds of mosquitoes which makes photography and concentration very difficult and although we had a wonderful time clocking up 175 species I would hesitate in returning - the mosquitoes were by far and away the worst I have ever known and we have travelled around the world fairly extensively. However it is a beautiful country with acres of wildflowers and a true sense of wilderness - the exact opposite of Britain in fact and you get true peace and quiet with very little industry to be seen and with a population of only 1.5 million you rarely see anyone! So a few images but not nearly as many as usual as the mosquitoes just drove you to distraction and it was just easier to run!
Fieldfare on nest
Garganey
Red-backed Shrike
Blue-Headed Wagtail
Citrine Wagtail
Herring Gull on nest
Brilliant pictures - love the videos
ReplyDeleteNicholas