Estonia 2026

At the end of february, early march, we spent a week in Estonia, looking for a couple bird targets, but mainly with a mammal target in mind. Late winter is the best time to look for Eurasian Lynx and Estonia is the country with the best chances if the internet is to be believed. A couple friends wanted to go and invited me to join, which I did. Upon arrival, we got pretty lucky, as Estonia was just coming out of the coldest winter in 15 years. Instead of the -22°C temperatures the week before our arrival, we didn't see temperatures drop below -8°C and it was even above freezing a couple times during the day (it certainly felt like -22°C in the car at night, but you gotta have something there for over as we say in the Netherlands).

The first two days were spent on the island of Saareema, with the main target being Steller's eider. We fairly easily found a few individuals, but they were sleeping and a fair ways out from shore, so no interesting pictures. The nights cruising didn't bring us much, but we weren't expecting Lynx here, that would have to wait until the mainland. The most spectacular view (in my opinion) we had on Saareema was a white-tailed eagle catching a common merganser out of a frozen sea, a few pictures of which I've included below.

On the mainland sightings came slowly again, but eventually we saw moose, ural owl, Eurasian pygmy owl, gray-headed woodpecker and hazel grouse. I also saw white-backed woodpecker, which was missed by the others. Night 5 was when spirits were low, but by blabbering nonsense and eating ungodly amounts of garbage we managed to stay awake, eventually leading to our first (and last) lynx sighting. We saw the animal hunt a hare by moonlight, which I got to enjoy a little more than the others through my camera's viewfinder. The sighting was distant, and we didn't use flashlights so as not to disturb the hunt, so all we had to illuminate the animal was the full moon. What we weren't expecting was that the most spectacular sighting still had to follow. After the lynx had disappeared from view, we had a very close encounter with the Living Head. Luckily we had an expert on Surinam folklore aboard, to explain to us what we were seeing, and to narrowly escape certain death. No great pictures, but a few keepers. No portfolio shots, but that was fairly expected when most of the sightings would be at night. 

Some pixels that show of our lynx sighting, including the hare it failed to catch. Maybe one day I'll take a good shot of a lynx, but it'll have to be a lucky sighting, as I don't feel like spending another week freezing my ass of in the car anytime soon