Souvenir Chronicles: RUSSIA, KALININGRAD: THE CURONIAN SPIT

June 29, 2019

In an earlier post I mentioned the Curonian Spit, a geographical and geological oddity that separates the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon. This UNESCO World Heritage Site (since 2000) shared by two countries is a 61-mile-long sand dune that connects to Kaliningrad on one end and to Lithuania on the other. At its narrowest point (which is on the Russia side) it is only 437 yards across, and at its widest point (which is on the Lithuania side) it is almost 2.5 miles across. The spit is the only national park in Kaliningrad.

We spent our last afternoon of the 21st day of a very long trip driving and walking along this unique landform. We made five main stops: 1. the Baltic Sea, 2. an ornithological station, 3. the Curonian Lagoon, 4. the largest sand dunes on the spit, and 5. the Dancing Forest.

1. The Baltic Sea

Our guide Elena told us that the spit was heavily wooded until the 1500s when German invaders cut down all the trees. Wind and water swept over the spit, covering it with sand. For the last few decades, conservationists have been working to reclaim the spit from the sand, planting hundreds of thousands of pine trees (mostly) and other trees and grasses that hold the soil in place and create new land. It is a very slow, tedious process that will take a century or more to take root. (No pun intended.) The spit, in most places, looks heavily wooded, but pull away the delicate grasses and lichens, and the foundation is sand. It is really bizarre.

There are many hiking "trails" made of wooden planks on the spit. Any footsteps on the fragile growth contribute to erosion. We walked on four or five such paths, including this first one shown below that led to a beach on the Baltic Sea.

We could see the efforts being made to stop the sand from overtaking the greenery.

The Baltic side of the spit is always windy, and my carefully combed and styled hair blew out in every direction.

There were plenty of people enjoying the surf and sand.

Later in the day we got another view:

2. The Rossitten/Rybachy Bird Observatory (aka Fringilla Field Station)
The Curonian Spit lies on a major migration route for birds that follow the coastline of the eastern Baltic. In 1901, German Ornithologist Johannes Thienemann established the a bird obsrvatory near the village of Rossitten on the spit. It was the first site in the world dedicated to "bird ringing," or attaching an identification band to the legs of birds to track their migratory patterns and life history.

The observatory functioned under German auspices until 1946, at which point it was closed. It reopened under Russian rule in 1956 and took on the new Russian name of the village, Rybachy. Locally, it is known as the Fringilla Field Station. This name comes from the Latin name for the chaffinch, the most common bird on the spit. Currently, eight to ten ornithologists live at the station from April through October.

Elena had arranged a special tour of the facility for us. We began by actually walking inside the nets they use to trap birds. The scientists trap tens of thousands of birds each season--mostly small ones but also the occasional larger bird. The nets, called a "Rybachy trap," form a very long cone-shaped tunnel, starting with a huge opening (50 feet high and 100 feet wide) and gradually narrowing to a small area from which the birds can be retrieved. Once a bird enters the tunnel, it almost never turns back to fly free. Their migration instinct sends them deeper and deeper into the tunnel.

We were with two tour buses of Russian-speaking tourists:

Before the end, we were able to exit the tunnel:

When we approached the scientists' "office" (more like a hut), the man leading the tour invited us to go inside to stand behind the ornithologist who would be explaining the bird-tagging process. Everyone else was outside, crowding to see or standing on their toes. We had a great view!

The birds are caught in the small area at the end of the long net tunnel and placed in this unsophisticated box. The ornithologists record type, gender, and size (length and weight) for each bird, and then place a metal band around its ankle.

The scientist showed us a string of what I think are the different sizes of leg bands.

He pulled a bird out of the box and showed us how it was done. He held the birds by their legs, and the birds never seemed freaked out, as I would expect them to be. (By the way, I loved his outfit--green shirt and what looked like pajama pants.)

When he was done banding the bird, he would put it back in the box.

He often turned around to show us what he was doing. We definitely had the best seats in the house.

Every now and then something interesting flies into the net, like this little bat they had caught that morning. The scientist pulled it out of a separate bag to show to us.

There was one thing that was quite unusual in the hut. Looking up, we noticed hundreds, maybe thousands, of pens attached to the ceiling. It was the station's pen collection. I can't remember if these are pens they have used up recording data in their handwritten ledger, or if they are gifts from visitors, or both. In any case, that is a lot of pens.

The pen collection is not the only unusual thing at the station. The only bathroom facilities were a little unusual too.

3. The Curonian Lagoon

Our next stop was to look at the east side of the spit, the Curonian Lagoon. The waters there were definitely much quieter, and it felt more like a lake and a lot less like the ocean, hence the kayak and boat.

4. The Sand Dunes
A little further on, we parked and walked through what looked like a fairly established forest. A long plank walkway led through a forest of trees that actually had some undergrowth.

The trees ended abruptly, and we could see that efforts are being made to control erosion and to extend the forest. Beyond the erosion control were large, barren sand dunes.

All the signage was in Russian, but I think this is a map of our walk from the highway to the dunes.

We couldn't actually walk on the sand, but there were observation decks that gave us a good view. this was one of the few signs we saw that had an English translation.

Very windy. It must the Baltic side of the spit.

The dunes, of course, lead to a beautiful beach.

We noticed what I think this is a restaurant near the parking lot. I wish we could have taken a few minutes to check out the inside.

We did find time to stop at this little shop, one of dozens that we had to walk through on our way back to the car. This woman is a jewelry designer and had made the unique, beautiful necklace our guide was wearing. There was no pressure to buy anything, but I did anyway. 😉

5. The Dancing Forest
My favorite place on the spit was the last place we visited--a place I can only describe as a magical forest, no doubt full of fairies and sprites.

The trunks of the trees, which in other places would be tall, straight, and thin, were tall and thin but not straight. At first we noticed only slight curves.

But then we started to see full loops and curls, as if the trees were dancing one night and had been frozen in place.

I thought this magical place was ancient, but when I came home and looked it up, I discovered that the trees were planted in 1960.

Our guide told us that a caterpillar in that region ate the top buds but not the side buds of the tiny saplings when they were first planted, causing curvy rather than straight growth patterns.

However, there is also a local legend that when a group of Christians moved here and tried to convert the pagans, one of the pagan men fell in love with a Christian woman, but she would not marry him unless he converted. He told her to show him the power of her God, and if she could, he would become a Christian. Her god turned their forest of straight, rigid trees into the flowing forms we see today. He was convinced and became a Christian, and she was satisfied and married him. Of course, they lived happily every after.

A love story is so much better than a bug story.