I was just looking at our blog and realized we haven't even mentioned BIRDS yet! By our posts so far you'd think all we were doing was eating, but we've actually gone birding around town quite a bit (mostly on our way to get food). We haven't seen that many species yet...there aren't that many birds in Duino right now. It may be due to the severe drought that they are having. If we get out of town and find some water maybe we'll find more birds?
The very first bird we saw in Italy was not new to us...it was the Eurasian Collared Dove. While this "should" have been new to us, this bird was introduced to North America and is now very abundant in many parts of the US (especially down in FL). Besides this species, most of the other birds were completely new for us. In fact, we still see at least one new species just about every day. This makes birding in Duino very exciting despite the lack of diversity right now, but this will change as soon as migration gets into gear (our area should be very good during migration).
Here's a list of the birds we've seen in Duino so far:
Collared Dove
Rock Pigeon
Shag
Yellow-legged Gull
Common Gull
Moorhen
Peregrine Falcon
House Sparrow
House Martin
Barn Swallow
Alpine Swift
Magpie
Blackbird
Great Tit (maybe the most common bird in Duino)
Blue Tit
Coal Tit
Long-tailed Tit
Jay
Willow Warbler
Wood Warbler
Hooded Crow
Green Finch
Chaffinch
Hawfinch
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Collared Flycatcher
Black-eared Wheatear
Pied Wagtail
Hopefully Kristen will add to our list while I'm back in the US! When I get back to Italy I'll start posting some bird photos...I've had some requests already but just haven't had much time to do any photography yet.
Ciao,
Tom
I finally found a new one today! A nuthatch! There is only one kind here, and it was calling very loudly on the Rilke path. I'm sure it will still be here when you get back.
ReplyDeleteAwesome!
DeleteI'm glad I'm not the only one to notice the food theme...I cracked up when I read Tom's post about going home and was like "once I knew Kristen had dinner invitations, I knew she'd be fine."
ReplyDeletePS- Manan says hi!
I remember a lot of these birds from my year in Israel. Wagtails were absolutely everywhere, and the closer you were to water the more of them you'd find. There were Great Tits everywhere there were trees, (at least I think that was the Tit species; I knew their names in Hebrew more than I did in English, and it's been like 7 years,) but Coal Tits were very rare migrants, and the fact that I saw one at all was rather incredible. How on Earth do you tell European warblers apart?! As I recall they're almost all green-brown, with very slight variations in coloring, body shape, and preferred habitat which are not always clear in the field. Seriously, how?! (I'm one of Tom's former students, in case you're wondering.)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I still don't quite know how to confidently tell the warblers apart!
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