looduskalender.ee

March 7th

Once again I toured the Virumaa forests, this time in the Tudu area. Although it seemed for a while as if spring would be here at once, the thermometer showed 22 degrees of cold before sunrise. Leaving aside the cracking of trees in the cold, silence was total in the forest, the cold had frightened birds’ beaks shut. Only at the very first stop at about six o’clock in the morning a pygmy owlwhistled. Quite many hours passed until the warming sun got woodpeckers and other creatures calling. I could note several white-backed woodpecker and three-toed woodpecker, black grouse and hazel grouse sightings.

 

The ruins of the Peressaare once splendid school building. Of the one-time farm settlements mostly only foundations overgrown by shrubs remain. (07.03.2012)

 

By accident I strayed today into the Peressaare settlement area, established in the 1930s on the initiative of President Päts. In its time more than 100 farm settlements were founded here in the middle of the forests. Today only a few solitary buildings are left standing and the forest is reclaiming the abandoned area, only animals stray between the overgrown foundations. The splendid schoolhouse, ready 1938, is in ruins after a fire some years ago. The forest closes in here too, around the schoolhouse the white-backed woodpecker drums, pygmy owls whistle and nutcrackers croak.

 

Peressaare school auditorium (07.03.2012)