July news from Tallinn

26.7.2026 by Inari Leiman

🌿 The student volunteers, who spent two weeks working at the zoo in mid-July, helped us out whatever the weather and carried out a wide variety of tasks here. As well as tidying up the flowerbeds and paths, raking leaves and weeding out horse-tail, scrubbing down the tables and chairs in the nature school classrooms, cleaning the drainage grates and washing the windows, the young people were also able to repair and refurbish the animal enclosures.

🦚 In the habitats of pheasants, peacocks and cranes, the volunteers carried sand and used stones to create paths and small mounds. In the Bennett’s wallaby enclosure, however, they cut willow branches and fed them straight away to the wallabies.

At the Centre for Species Conservation Research, the young volunteers removed wire mesh from disused gardens and bent it into tunnels for the weasels.

🐻‍❄️ For our pairs of polar bear sisters – Inuk and Imaq, and Skadi and Kaja – the volunteers wove two magnificent creatures around large plastic barrels. A large walrus lying on its stomach was made from a red fire hose, whilst a sitting polar bear was made from a light-coloured fire hose.

🌊 Inuk and Imaq got hold of a walrus to play with last Friday, the camp participants’ final working day. It was such an exciting toy for the bears that a tug-of-war broke out between the sisters: Imaq, clutching the walrus by its rear end, tried to pull the toy towards the water, whilst Inuk tugged at the front end, pulling it towards the land.

Then Inuk lost her focus for a moment, and Imaq got her way.

The frolic continued in the water. Skadi and Kaja played with the bear toy, which had been placed on their rocky outcrop, on a rainy Tuesday morning.

Among the pheasants in the Moonbarren enclosure, you can now see a young silver pheasant that hatched in May and a blue peacock chick that was born in June 🐥. In the Rainforest House, you might spot rice paddy birds teaching their young.

Garden Dormouse

Kookaburra

Since Thursday, Lusjen the alpaca and Marki the domestic goat, who have been getting to know each other in neighbouring enclosures, have been spending some time together.

Meanwhile, Darla, the elderly Amur leopard, continues to watch passers-by whilst lounging on her high platform. 🐆

💚 On Friday, we will be sending the first European ground squirrels born at the Centre for Species Conservation on their way from the zoo to Suur-Pakri – a species last sighted in the wild in Estonia as recently as 1986. The project to reintroduce the European ground squirrel into the Estonian countryside, launched in collaboration between the University of Tartu and Tallinn Zoo, has reached the stage where the animals are being released into the wild.

Keep you updated – Tallinn Zoo