Returning Home (to Italy!)

Two days ago I flew home to Italy...this was the view from the puddle jumper that took me from Munich to Trieste as we passed over the Dolomites.  What a difference three weeks away can make!  The mountains were covered with fresh snow that fell just a few days ago (there was no snow three weeks ago).  It made me excited to think about skiing this winter, something we plan to do since we have world class downhill skiing within a couple of hours from home.  This is about the same distance we traveled from our home in NJ to the icy slopes of the Catskills to ski last winter.  I think we'll like the fresh powder in the Alps a little better.

Another big thing that changed since I was last here in Italy is the bird diversity around Duino.  With the first snowfall of the year in the mountains it seems like many birds finally migrated down to the coast.  Birding has been really good the past two mornings as a front approached from the Adriatic to our south.  In fact, this morning was the best birding since we moved to Italy!  There were huge flocks of birds, mostly various species of tits (birds in the Paridae family...like our Chickadees and Titmice back home), mixed together with lots of new species that we hadn't seen yet in Italy.  A few of the notable ones were Blackcaps, Icterine Warblers, Goldcrests and Firecrests.  Not a tremendous amount of diversity, but more than we've seen before and there were just huge numbers of most species.  Looks like our coast could be a good migrant trap for sure, just like I suspected!

E 'bello essere di nuovo in Italia!

Ciao,
Tom