Latvia

Nests Across the Country

Latvia's forests and farmland hold large numbers of storks and birds of prey, and its nest cameras follow them from the first egg to the first flight. A lesser spotted eagle nests in an old oak at Barkava and another in the farmland of Zemgale, near Glūda; a black stork family lives in the woods near Ogre; an eagle-owl nests close to Riga; and a kestrel uses a nest box in Durbe parish, in Kurzeme. Near Tukums, white storks return each spring to a nest on the edge of the fields.

A Castle Town

Cēsis, one of the oldest towns in the country, keeps the ruins of a castle of the Livonian Order above the valley of the Gauja, Latvia's oldest national park, and swifts nest in a box on its walls each summer. In Liepāja, on the open Baltic, a garden camera watches the birds and small animals that visit a backyard pond.

Countryside Seasons

The cameras follow the rhythm of rural Latvia: eggs in April and May, chicks through June, and empty nests once the storks and eagles leave for Africa in late summer. Midsummer, Jāņi, is the year's great festival, celebrated on the shortest night.