Butterflies of Slovakia

Slovakia is a small country that comprises large proportion of West Carpathian mountains, the backbone of Eastern Europe that curves east and then south in an arc through Ukraine to Romania. Lowlands and hills along the southern border already belong to the warm region of Pannonia.
This wild country with rugged mountainous heart in the middle offers a wonderful diversity of limestone meadows, high mountains, pristine beech and conifer forests, and wetlands rich in butterflies and other wildlife. We travel from the White Carpathians in the west, along the borders of the Czech Republic, through the mountains, and up to alpine regions of the Tatras, finishing on sun-dried southern slopes of the Slovak Karst.
High mountains provide beautiful scenery with alpine flowers in their best while hilly areas along the Czech-Slovak border offer gentle walks in varied man-managed landscape and many butterflies hovering above meadows. Slovak Karst can recall days when butterflies where common everywhere in this region. Such a wide range of habitats offers the naturalist a quite exceptional variety of wildlife to enjoy.
The tour visits some of the best butterfly areas in the country, looking at the wealth of flowers that we shall encounter on the way, and not ignoring the bird life either. Here together with some birds and plants are blended many of the large and most beautiful butterfly species of the Continent. We will search for the Danube Clouded Yellow that has almost disappeared from the whole region and much sought-after Scarce and Dusky Large Blues will be high on our list complemented by gliders, fritillaries or emperors. Summer time before harvesting crops is always an idyllic season in Central Europe.