It was meant to be a promotional tour and the first cooperation between Greenwings and Estonian Nature Tours. As a matter of fact 2015 summer has not been the best for butterflies. The spring was cold and lasted long and there were frequent rainfalls during the tour on top of that. Nevertheless it turned out to be not so bad at all.
The first half of the tour was guided by Rein Kuresoo - a local nature tour leader. The emphasis was on South-East and South Estonia, around Järvselja and Piusa regions. These days offered several interesting encounters.
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John with a Purple Emperor.
Photo: Rein Kuresoo
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The first butterfly in the first day to meet was Purple Emperor, sitting to the car tyre. It was very elusive though, and flew away immediately. Later we saw several Moorland Clouded Yellows and Cranberry Blues on the edge of a small bog.
In Piusa the most interesting part was sandy meadow adjacent to the heath forest. We saw several Purple-shot Coppers and Large Checquered Skippers.
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| Cranberry Blue Photo: Rein Kuresoo |
Next day we were checking forests in Laeva region. We saw several Purple Emperors flying high above the road, but not landing, also White Admirals were present. Large Checquered Skippers and Heath Fritillaries were very common on the roadsides.
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| Heath Fritillary. Photo: Rein Kuresoo |
One of the butterflies we were eager to see in these forests was Scarce Fritillary. Although a lot of butterflies started to fly, whenever sun started to shine between the rainfalls, there where no Scarce Fritillaries among them. When it started to rain more heavily, we decided to move on a bit and went to the car. Just beside the car there I saw a Scarce Fritillary sitting on the leaf. It was easy to invite it to the car, it sat on the front seat, while I was driving to the rest of our group.
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| Scarce Fritillary Photo: Rein Kuresoo |
Third day we headed to Western Estonia and made several stops on the way. In a clear-cut area near Olustvere we had good looks on Purple Emperor. Finally the butterfly was ready to pose on a finger of John. We also saw a few Large Coppers on a ditch.
Nedrema wooded meadow has surprising diversity of flowering plants. Most of the butterflies seen there were quite common ones, but otherways the meadow was not a disappointment, as about dozen of Woodland Browns were seen flying from flower to flower and occasionally stopping on trees.
Later at night Rein was leaving towards Tartu by bus and another local nature tour leader - Peeter Vissak - took over. Together we headed to Saaremaa island.
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| Woodland Brown Photo: Peeter Vissak |
In Saaremaa two next days were dedicated to the richest wooded meadows, deciduous groves and coastal meadows, although in most of the places we saw almost exclusively only loads of Woodland Brown, Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Chestnut Heath, Lesser Marble Fritillary, Common Blue and Small Blue. Luckily some really positive surprises happened. Peeter was lucky to spot and net Geranium Argus, we also had Northern Wall Brown, Nickerl’s Fritillary, Black-veined White and Wood White.
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| Black-veined White Photo: Peeter Vissak |
Estonia is really scarcely settled and traffic in periphery is almost missing. So it was, that we could watch and photograph a Poplar Admiral, flying around at the roadside and then sitting almost in the middle of the road for nearly 15 minutes. When everyone had enjoyed really marvellous views it decided to add up to the photoshoot with posing on Rob’s hand.
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| Poplar Admiral in the middle of the road Photo: Peeter Vissak |
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| Poplar Admiral on Rob's hand Photo: John Maddocks |
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| Photoshoot Photo: Peeter Vissak |
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| Poplar Admiral Photo: John Maddocks |
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| Poplar Admiral Photo: John Maddocks |
An overgrown alvar forest pathway gave us two brief views of White Admiral, passing us on wings, later we also encountered rapidly flying Silver-washed Fritillaries. One smaller fritillary made us guess our heads off, while we couldn’t decide whether we had a Heath or False Heath Fritillary. For a moment we even called it Nickerl's Frit, but it had some distinctively ‘wrong’ marks on the underside. While the False Heath Frit is rare in Estonia and seen only in the Eastern part of the country, we didn’t think as if we made he grade. Heath Frit it probably was!
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| Fritillary ... Nickerl's or Heath? Photo: Peeter Vissak |
Some local heavy rainfalls ruined half a day, but before leaving the island next morning we succeeded to spot 2 splendid specimen of Large Blue.
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| Rob hunting Large Blue Photo: Peeter Vissak |
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| Large Blue Photo: Peeter Vissak |
Some occasional common species at the roadside, like Brimstone and Lesser Tortoiseshell and we were in Mukre bog. Late hour and overcast, but we spotted a great number of roosting Ida’s Blues and maybe some Silver-studded Blues as well.
The week was over and we headed towards Tallinn.
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