Bird Rock

In between rain showers today I went for a hike in the Črnica (a Slovene word pronounced "Chur-neet-sa"). The Črnica is a wooded area between Duino and the next village to the west, Villaggio del Pescatore, which is where I go to surf when the Bora is blowing. I've walked the Črnica a bunch of times because Villaggio is also a very good birding spot. It's full of trails that wind and cross the woods in a maze...a good place to get lost. Today, I followed a tiny, overgrown trail that I hadn't seen before. It led me to this site.

I've been calling this rock "Bird Rock" for a while now because I've seen so many different birds perched on it. The best bird I've seen here was a Wryneck...a very difficult bird to see in Europe. Often, there's a Kingfisher perched on that branch on top of the rock staring down into the water looking for fish. Although I've looked at this rock with my binoculars from across a small cove so many times before, what made today different was that the hidden trail that I found took me directly to this rock! To my surprise there was a sunken boat next to the rock that couldn't be seen from my usual birding spot across the cove. Finding a trail to Bird Rock was a fun end to a rainy hike.