Lovely Lithuania
Wildlife-rich, easily accessible and bird-friendly – a trip to Lithuania is a must for any birder keen to explore more of Europe
Head to this easily-accessible, bird-friendly country for your next European birding outing, says Steve Wiltshire
Those wanting to experience the thrill of birding in Eastern Europe, while keeping the logistics of the trip as straightforward as possible, would do well to consider Lithuania. Much of this beautiful country remains rich in wildlife and is easily accessible: Vilnius, the capital, is just a two-and-a-half-hour flight from London, and driving a hire car in the city is considerably less stressful than elsewhere in Eastern Europe – a far cry from Bucharest or Warsaw, for example.
It’s a compact country, just half the size of England, and easy to navigate. Main roads were good throughout, and even country lanes in Lithuania were fine – rough, but mostly lacking the cobbles and potholes typical of some Polish backroads. Thankfully, the much-feared Eastern European ‘imaginary third lane’ – which straddles the central white line and is, apparently, available to vehicles coming from either direction – was rarely employed here. Restaurants and accommodation were plentiful, although I had booked nothing in advance, and, on entering either establishment, my poor attempts at Lithuanian were treated patiently before most people burst into perfect English. I could find few trip reports or information on birding sites prior to my visit, but it didn’t matter. I identified four general areas to concentrate on – a wetland, a migration hotspot near the coast, and two forested national parks inland – and bought a roadmap.
From the moment I exited the airport it became clear that Lithuania was a birdloving nation. There were nestboxes everywhere – on poles, in parks, and on almost every house – traditional-style ones of various sizes, along with improvised wooden shelves for Swallows and House Martins.
Starlings commuting from foraging sites to nestboxes, beaks crammed with food, were a ubiquitous sight. Sadly, most birds that make up our own spectacular winter murmurations aren’t British, and this is where many of them must come from. I wondered why we don’t erect more Starling nestboxes in Britain? It wasn’t just Starlings either, Pied Flycatchers were
using a nestbox in a Vilnius beer garden right in the middle of the city, there were Redstarts, too, and even a singing Greenish Warbler. That’s my kind of beer garden.
Nesting storks
Vilnius was perhaps the most wildlifefilled European capital I’ve visited but, regardless of good beer and Greenish Warblers, I was itching to get out of the city and explore. Starlings and sparrows continued to appear in even greater numbers. However, Lithuania’s undoubted avian motif was the White Stork. Every village I passed through had at least one nest, usually more, and there were unused platforms everywhere for prospective pairs. The residents were so proud to have storks living alongside them, and the esteem in which nature was held in here was eye-opening and impressive.
An hour’s car journey produced a count of 67 storks, singletons or pairs, by the roadside or on nests. I later learned that Lithuania has the highest nesting density of White Storks anywhere in the world – and I can well believe it. They are such striking and spectacular birds to have liberally scattered throughout the countryside (as well as making for a refreshing alternative to the Buzzardbased British version of the same counting car game).
My first birding site, in the extreme south-east, was the Dzukija National Park – although, at more than 193 square miles, it was only possible to scratch the surface. This forest goes right to the national border and onwards into Belarus. Huge areas of predominately pine are dissected by rivers and dotted with lakes, birch groves, meadows and mires. This generally flat landscape was extremely atmospheric, and, at times, like most large forests, difficult to bird – you can’t see the birds for the trees. No doubt local knowledge or more time would reveal the owls, woodpeckers and grouse, including Capercaillie, that all occur here.
Nevertheless, wandering around the small, neat, rather timeless-feeling, forest settlements, and exploring random tracks into the trees proved extremely productive. Redstart, Fieldfare, Wood Warbler, and Tree Sparrow were common around clearings; a Wryneck called loudly and prominently from the end of a pine branch; Lesser Spotted Eagle soared overhead; Montagu’s Harriers floated over meadows, where Whinchats sang; and a raptor that sprang up from long grass at the side of the road, before heading alarmingly close to the car windscreen, was an unexpected Honey Buzzard.
I stumbled upon a small forest pond surrounded by tangled scrub and covered in lily-pads. Here, Golden Orioles fluted their song and flashed yellow from waterside willows, as Black Terns hawked insects above the lilies. It was lovely,
I remember thinking: Leave me here for the rest of the week – I’ll be quite happy. The only disappointment in this fairy tale-like forest was the absence of Rollers. They certainly used to occur here, but have declined markedly in Lithuania as elsewhere in Europe. I’ve seen plenty of Rollers in arid, scrubby habitats in Southern Europe, but I particularly wanted to see a ‘forest Roller.’ A feathered, turquoise delight, perched atop a pine tree among this verdant northern forest.
Quality raptors
There are only three million people in Lithuania, and even the country’s main thoroughfare, between capital and coast, proved pretty light on traffic. While travelling to my next birding sites along this major highway, I was astonished to encounter ‘quality raptors’ in numbers: Buzzards, Marsh Harriers, but also Montagu’s Harriers, White-tailed Eagles and displaying Honey Buzzards. But this is normal for Lithuania, there are birds everywhere.
A comment made by birders returning from Eastern Europe is often “there were just lots more birds around than back home.” I agree, but to quantify this statement here’s an example: I pulled off this main highway for a break and walked a random 300 metre stretch of country road. In doing so, I encountered Barred and Icterine Warblers, Golden Oriole, Redbacked Shrike, Yellowhammer, Redstart, and two Thrush Nightingales. The density of birds within the landscape of the wider countryside was quite staggering.
I was heading for the Nemunas Delta, arguably Lithuania’s premier birding area, where the country’s longest river winds through a big-skied, bird-filled landscape of marshes, meadows, lakes and fishponds, before finally entering the Baltic Sea. There’s a fabulous list of breeding birds, including some sought-after Eastern European specialities like Great Snipe and the globally threatened Aquatic Warbler. I found Cranes, Montagu’s Harriers, White-tailed Eagles, Marsh, Savi’s, and Great Reed Warblers, and numerous other wetland species in abundance.
The birding here was fantastic – good birds were easy to find. But some habitats just come into their own at particular times of day and, in an Eastern European wetland, it’s evening that provides the magic hours. A memorable post-supper stroll among the extensive Sedge and Reedbeds produced a flock of 100 Black Terns hawking insects late into the evening as CornCrakes, River Warblers and Thrush Nightingales sang. Garganey croaked from the ditches, while Rosefinches wolfwhistled from the bushes. Then, among a flurry of various wagtails, a ‘cut-and-shut’ ‘Pied-Yellow’ Wagtail, or, more accurately, a beautiful male Citrine Wagtail.
Wildfowl and waders
The southern half of Lithuania’s coastline is shielded from Baltic storms by the Curonian Spit – a long, thin, pine-topped, dune system, and my third site. Half of the spit is Lithuanian, while the southern section belongs to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. This landform creates a huge, sheltered lagoon used by thousands of passage wildfowl, waders and terns, while the spit itself is a national park and can be visited via a short ferry ride.
As with many offshore islands and spits all over Europe, it’s a magnet for migrants and rarities. A visit here, timed to coincide with peak spring or autumn migration, could turn up anything, along with common passage migrants in big numbers. Indeed, the Ventes Ragas ringing station which juts out in to the
lagoon from the mainland has produced a mind-boggling array of vagrants.
My highlight, besides marvelling at the lichen-encrusted, weather-blasted pines, and towering sand-dune systems, was a singing Blyth’s Reed Warbler. These mellifluous songsters, all the way from India, are regular in Lithuania these days. They have one of the most interesting warbler songs, full of mimicry, not unlike, but more languid and elegant, than a Marsh Warbler’s.
Cycling the spit, along one of the many designated routes, was a fantastic way to become immersed in the woodlands which proved to be full of Crested and Willow Tits, Redstarts, Firecrests, Pied Flycatchers, Wood Larks and Red Squirrels. Following the species list for the day my notebook simply reads: Delightful! Finally, I returned back inland to the last site of my trip, the Labanoras National Park, which, without hyperbole, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. It is a more undulating than the Dzukija, a landscape of rolling forested hills, vodka-clear lakes, and fast flowing rivers. Its interesting topography and sinuoussided, many islanded lakes are the result of past glaciation. The, seemingly, endless forests and lakes are home to Beaver and evidence of their activities – lodges, dams, and knee-high tree-stumps sculpted to a point as if with a giant pencil sharpener – are everywhere. I saw the animal in question, too, on a number of occasions, indeed, more readily here than anywhere else I’ve visited. Sharing the lakes with the Beavers were Goldeneye, Goosander, Black-throated Diver and Osprey. Middle Spotted and the huge, weirdly animatronic, Black Woodpecker were easily encountered among the trees. Wryneck, Icterine Warbler and Golden Oriole formed the core of the forest soundscape, and Great Grey Shrike, Serin, Hoopoe and Black Kite all became new and welcome additions for the trip here. Many areas surrounding the lakes were designated campsites; there were no facilities, other than picnic-tables and fire-pits, but also no other campers, and this made it the perfect camping set-up to see wildlife. Dozens of Cuckoos called from all around, long into the night; Cranes bugled and stalked through the vegetation at water’s edge; Woodcocks roded their rounds, and Nightjars churred.
There is much more to be discovered in Lithuania, particularly the aforementioned woodpeckers, grouse and owls: Three-toed and White-backed Woodpeckers, Capercaillie, Black Grouse, and Hazel Grouse, along with Ural, Pygmy and Tengmalm’s Owls, are all present in these vast, un-birded forests. I, somehow, managed to avoid any Black Storks of which there are 500 breeding pairs in the country, and Rollers, surely, hang on somewhere. But overall it’s the volume of birds within the wider countryside that will remain with me. The Tree Sparrows and Whinchats, those White Stork and Cuckoos, and the Red-backed Shrikes which I describe in my notebook as being: “very tame, everywhere… everyday!” What’s not to like?