Day 1

Depart London to Lubljana/Trieste where we will be met by Lajos, our tour leader, who has been visiting the area since 1991 and very familiar with its wide spectrum of wildlife.

Our accommodation is a beautiful setting in the Dinara mountain range, a lovely small hotel deep in the forest, with friendly Slovenian hosts and great hosts.

Rakov National Park and Lake Cerknica is a famous nature reserve, showing many typical karst features. Most of the park is a limestone plateau with trees and with seasonally vanishing waters. In this plateau, several deep river valleys can be found (‘Poljes’ in Slovenian, a word adopted by geologists worldwide for this kind of karst feature). We will set up our lights just near the hotel, right in the heart of the beech and coniferous forests.

Overnight near Cerknica.

Day 2

In the morning, we will explore the surroundings of Lake Cerknica, a seasonal lake of Inner Carniola and also a world-ranking attraction. When full, for about half the year, it is the biggest lake in the country. It starts to disappear in spring and leaves behind a field where farmers cut hay through the summer. There are huge expanses of reed, sedge and wet grasslands, and some remnants of raised peatbogs on the eastern shore. We will also drive high up to the peak of Mt. Savnica for an excellent view over a lake.

In the afternoon we will visit Skocjan Cave, which is a UNESCO World Heritage List, and a breath-taking experience which you never will forget!

Inside the cave we take a guided tour 90 metres above a giant underground river and finish the trip at the bottom of a huge, hundred-metre-deep gorge, from where a cable car returns us to the starting point.

Later we will descend to the warmest part of the Slovenian Karst around Podgorje village, which is on the edge of an escarpment, receiving not only lots of sun but high rainfall also. This area is extremely productive area for insects. The hills which rise rapidly behind the coast to some 250 metres, provide a rich habitat for butterflies and moths.  This is a great area for birds and herping, however of course it’s not the ideal time of the year.

Peregrine (Falco peregrinus) breed in the cliffs, and the enormous Alpine Swifts (Apus melba) are abundant. Rock Bunting (Emberiza cia), Short-toed Eagle (Circaeotus gallicus) and Blue Rock Thrush (Monticola solitarius) are also widespread in the area, and with some luck we can see Griffon Vultures (Gyps fulvus) which roam here from nearby Cres, an island off the coast of Croatia.

There is a population of Hermann’s Tortoise (Testudo hermannii) in the area, along with the enormous and legless ‘Seltoputzik’ or European Glass Lizard (Ophiosaurus apodus), Balkan Whip Snake (Coluber gemonensis), Four-lined Snake (Elaphe quatorlineata), Smooth Snake (Coronella austriaca) and many small lizards, including Wall Lizard (Lacerta muralis), Italian Wall Lizard (L. sicula), Dalmatian Wall Lizard (Podarcis mellisellensis) and Dalmatian Algyroides (Aégyroides nigropunctatus).

We will set up our lights in a very rich oak scrub and forest, waiting for a great array of autumn moths, inclunding the top-prize Perisomena caecigena, which is has a large population here.

Another highlight is the localised and rare Gortyna puengelerii, and we also will see some other Noctuid-beauties and rarities like Dichonia aprilina and aeruginea, Chersotis margaritacea, Spudea ruticilla, Trigonophora flammea, Staurophora celsia, Aporophyla nigra, Meganephrya bimaculosa, Brachyonycha sphinx, Xylina vetusta, Antitype chi, Rileyana fovea, Catocala conjuncta, C. spoinsa, C. fulminea, nice Croccalis and Ennomos geometrids… and many more.

Overnight near Cerknica.

Day 3

In the morning, we will visit Postjona cave, a very different cave which we can visit by means of a small electric train.  It is a limestone cave with incredible stalactites shaped like needles, icicles, and even columns and pillars.  One highlight of the cave is a small tank filled with pinkish Olms (fully aquatic, blind cave salamanders, Proteus anguineus). These bizarre little animals are also named the “human fish” and inhabit only a few caves on the Dalmatian coast. There is also a recently described black variation, now considered to be a separate species.

For lunch we make a break at Predjama Castle situated in the mouth of a hillside cavern. We will hear the legend of the famous robber, Baron Erazem Lueger, a maverick knight who became Slovenia’s Robin Hood by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

We will then spend the afternoon on the nearby magnificent Mt. Nanos, a huge island-rock, which stands like a secret garden above the surrounding plain. The mountain has a very interesting flora and fauna, and holds many interesting butterflies too, however the season is late for them by now.

Lots of interesting reptiles live here including the enigmatic Nose-horned Viper (Vipera ammodytes), and Nanos is also home to Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetus), Peregrine (Falco peregrinus), colourful Rock Thrush (Monticola saxatlisis), Rock Bunting (Emberiza cia),  Capercailie (Tetrao urogallus), Brown Bear (Ursus arctos), Lynx (Lynx lynx) and Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra).

We will set up our lights either on the southern slope, or on the plateau, depend on weather (plateau can be very windy and foggy).

Overnight near Cerknica.

Day 4

Today we will return to the coastal part of the Karst again, and for the morning we will visit the famous stud farm of Lipica, from where the famous Spanish and Austrian horses “Lipizzaner” originate.

For lunch we descend to downtown Trieste, to enjoy some excellent Italian cuisine, than we will return to Slovenia again for another moth-session.

Overnight near Cerknica.

Day 5

Departure day.

If flight departure allows, we still chance to see a nearby unique and seldom-visited small, unique museum, the Dormouse Museum. This museum celebrates the history and cultural impact of the four species inhabiting the Slovenian forests. Nearby, we also can see the fairytale-like Sneznik Castle, built in the 13th century and recently renovated.

(In case of very late departure, we still can visit Ljubljana downtown, very lovely and tiny, or enjoying more of Trieste, depend on departure airport).

Lajos Nemeth is a freelance zoologist from Hungary. He has been designing and leading tours for 25 years and has led more than 100 to date. Lajos started as a naturalist by becoming a birder at the tender age of 7. He quickly expanded his interests to butterflies by the time he was 11. His interest and knowledge grew rapidly, and he published his first scientific paper on butterfly conservation before grammar school.

As an adult he has been a member of at least 15 entomological expeditions, in Turkey, the Himalayas, Taiwan, and North Africa. These have resulted in more than 200 species new to science (Noctuidae mainly).

Lajos was also an early contributor for the “Prime Butterfly Areas” and the “Mapping European Butterflies” projects. He also spent years on fly and dragonfly-research, and as a keen birder still holds the record of species on one tour in Eastern Europe (254 species).

He has organized several of the European Butterfly Group – Butterfly Conservation (EBG-BC) fundraising tours to Eastern-Europe, and further afield, to places such as Uganda and Madagascar.

In addition to exploring his own country, Lajos has carried out fieldwork in Slovenia, Croatia and Romania. He loves to go back to his favourite spots very often, but has also travelled to some very remote spots, including Tibet, Sudan, Libya, southern Algeria, Chad, Djibouti, Comoro Islands, Yemen (incl. Socotra) and more. He also feels home in Egypt and Ethiopia, where he spends his winters and guiding photography, deep desert, scuba diving, and birding-safaris.

To follow later