Looking for Satyrus

Satyrus effendi is a rare and endangered butterfly species native to the mountainous and inhospitable terrain along the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia – two countries in the grip of a decades long conflict. The species was named in honor of the photographer’s father, famed Soviet Azerbaijani entomologist Rustam Effendi.

Rustam Effendi’s friend and protégé, Parkev Kazarian, an ethnic Armenian refugee from Baku, Azerbaijan, in his home in a village near Gyumri, Armenia. For more than a decade, Effendi and Kazarian went on butterfly hunting trips together.

A taxidermied eagle rests on top of boxes of preserved butterflies in Parkev Kazarian’s home. As violence broke out on the streets of Sumgait in 1988, Kazarian and his family left Baku (just 30 km away) a year later, bringing eleven boxes of his most precious butterflies and little else. They settled in the village of Tzhogamark north of Gyumri, Armenia.

Acherontia atropos, also known as death’s-head hawkmoth, encased in a frame in Parkev Kazarian’s home in Gyumri, Armenia. Kazarian recalled many trips with Rustam Effendi hunting butterflies in the Caucasus mountains. Every butterfly came with a story of a place, an adventure that led to its capture: “You sit at home and it’s cold outside, snowing and the dogs are howling. But then you look at the butterflies and the memories come flooding back and warm your heart.” – Parkev Kazarian. 

Parkev Kazarian’s taxidermy tools and butterfly mounting board, with moths, in Gyumri, Armenia. Rustam Effendi used similar tools and passed on his knowledge to Kazarian, who was two decades his junior.

Parkev Kazarian’s home is a time capsule full of stories and objects from the time before the war. The Soviet era refrigerator is stacked with taxidermied birds and preserved beetles. Gyumri, Armenia.

Parkev Kazarian, butterfly hunter and taxidermist, with a caterpillar, in Gyumri, Armenia. The photographer followed Kazarian into the mountains on the Armenian side of the Armenia-Azerbaijani border in search of Satyrus effendi.

The mountains of Yeghegnadzor, Armenia, where Parkev Kazarian, friend and protégé of Rustam Effendi, tracked down Satyrus effendi, a rare butterfly native to the region named after the photographer’s father.

Goga, driver of the Soviet era all terrain vehicle that transported Parke Kazarian and the photographer into the mountains in search of Satyrus effendi, a rare butterfly native to the region named after the photographer’s father. Despite searching for a week, they did not find the butterfly. Yeghegnadzor, Armenia.

A rare Brahmaea christophi moth (center) displayed in Rustam Effendi’s butterfly collection housed at the Azerbaijan State Institute of Zoology, in Baku, Azerbaijan. Effendi hunted, collected, and preserved lepidoptera from the region for forty years. After he passed away in 1991, much of Effend’s collection – which once contained over 90,000 specimens – was lost or degraded due to neglect.

A taxidermied shark at the Azerbaijan State institute of Zoology in Baku, Azerbaijan, where Rustam Effendi worked as an entomologist.

The Murovdağ mountains, where Rustam Effendi hunted butterflies. This road is a mountain pass that leads to Kalbajar, Azerbaijan, a province occupied by Armenian forces in 1993 during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Thousands of Azerbaijani refugees fled the conflict through this pass on foot and many died along the way. In November 2020, the province was returned to Azerbaijan but the pass remains riddled with landmines.

Agdam, Azerbaijan. Once a city with a population of nearly 40,000, it was systematically dismantled during thirty years of occupation by Armenian forces. Rustam Effendi regularly passed through the city on his way to Armenia to hunt butterflies in the mountains of Zangezur. Reclaimed by Azerbaijan in 2020, the city is now being cleared of landmines.

A minefield in Agdam, Azerbaijan. According to Khalid Zulfugarov, the local unit supervisor of the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action, it could take up to ten years to clear the landmines from all recaptured territories: “We simply don’t know yet which areas have landmines and which don’t. So we consider all lands to be dangerous here.”

A Russian made “Smerch” rocket stuck in a field littered with anti-tank mines. Unlike Agdam and Kalbajar, which were returned to Azerbaijan without conflict, the district of Fizuli, Azerbaijan was fiercely contested in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.

Khodaafarin Bridge located at the Azerbaijan-Iran border in the recently recaptured province of Jabrayil. Rustam Effendi used to take train journeys past this bridge on his way to Nakhchivan through Armenia, but the railway tracks were dismantled and repurposed as anti-tank traps during the war.

Firengiz Salimova in her village of Agali in the district of Zangilan, Azerbaijan. Internally displaced during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1993, Salimova returned to Agali after it was reclaimed by Azerbaijan in 2020.

The ruins of a historic publishing house in Fuzuli, Azerbaijan. Publisher of the newspaper Araz, it was destroyed during the war and subsequent occupation of the province.

Ammunition and rocket shells collected from the fields around the reclaimed province of Agdam, Azerbaijan.

Flowers are placed on the graves of those who perished fighting in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War by family members who have returned to the province of Agdam, Azerbaijan.

Hashim Rahimov, the photographer’s driver from the village of Bichenek, Nakhchivan recalled to her memories of night time moth hunting using UV lamps and a white screen with her father, Rustam Effendi, Soviet entomologist and butterfly collector. Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan.

Vugar, a local shepherd, in the mountains of Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. He led the photographer 3,100 meters above sea level to the mountain habitat of Satyrus effendi, a rare butterfly last spotted in the region in 2017.

Fatima and her sister pose for a portrait. Her family settled in a remote outpost of Parağaçay in the Ordubad region of Nakhchivan, which is now an Azerbaijani exclave. Formerly a Soviet era mining town, Parağaçay later became a military checkpoint near the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Fatima’s family welcomed the photographer into their home for three consecutive years and she searched the region for Satyrus effendi, the rare native butterfly named after Soviet entomologist Rustam Effendi.

Military patrols secure the trenches near the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, which has been closed for three decades due to war. The Satyrus effendi butterfly, named after Rustam Effendi, the photographer’s father, flies across this border, traversing the Zangezur mountain ridge. Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan.

A view from between sniper positions overlooking a land littered with mines at the militarized border of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. The Satyrus effendi butterfly, named after Rustam Effendi, the photographer’s father, flies across this border, traversing the Zangezur mountain ridge.

Fatima prepares tea for breakfast in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. Her family welcomed the photographer into their home for three consecutive years as she searched the region for Satyrus effendi, the rare native butterfly named after her father, Soviet entomologist Rustam Effendi.

Russian entomologist Dmitriy Morgun spent over five years pursuing Satyrus effendi. "It was my life's goal," Dmitriy said. The elusive butterfly inhabits inaccessible terrain. In 2017, Dmitriy finally located and collected the species near the military border with Armenia, in the mountains above Parağaçay. Upon descent, he was detained and questioned by local authorities on suspicion of espionage. Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan.

Russian entomologist Dmitriy Morgun arranges local species of butterflies caught in the surrounding mountains. In 2017, near the village of Parağaçay, Morgun successfully collected Satyrus effendi, the elusive butterfly named after the photographer’s father, Soviet entomologist Rustam Effendi. Morgun helped the photographer in her search for her father’s butterfly. Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan.

Melanargia larissa, the Balkan marble white butterfly, is a common species which can be found in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan. Due to global warming, the grass burns faster in lower plains, and shepherds are forced to move their flocks higher into the mountains, thus degrading the mountain habitat and endangering populations of high altitude butterfly species, such as Satyrus effendi.

The high mountain habitat of the elusive and endangered Satyrus effendi butterfly species, named after the photographer’s father, Soviet entomologist Rustam Effendi. The butterfly inhabits a terrain 3100 meters above sea level at the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Its caterpillars feed on a native species of cereal plant, which local shepherds feed to their livestock, threatening an already vulnerable butterfly habitat degraded by climate change and decades of war. Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan.

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