Lagoons, leather and linguine: Holiday birding in Italy 16-28 February 2017 (1 Viewer)

Since we were married I've managed to persuade Carrie that our holidays should be built around the great outdoors in places that I'm keen to go birding. This time it was not to be. Few birders choose Italy, and even fewer choose Italy in winter. This time it was Carrie who decided, and I did not have to struggle too hard to agree to go to one of the world's great culinary and cultural destinations, and we booked to fly into Venice and out of Rome some two weeks later. As a result my birding was, with one notable and excellent exception, strictly opportunistic.

I had never heard of Venice as a birding destination, but choosing a hotel on the quieter island of Murano, some fifteen minutes by water bus from the main island did offer the opportunity for a little exploratory birding in the early mornings.

On a cold misty morning seeking a green-marked patch on the Google Maps coverage of Murano I headed out along the canal to explore. The first birds were Blackbirds and Woodpigeons and a drumming Great-spotted Woodpecker in one of the the very few trees, Great Cormorants and Black-headed Gulls were in the canal and a tiny park I found a silent, solitary Chiffchaff silhouetted high in a tree against the sunrise.

My destination was a patch of rabbit-pocked open ground with a few bramble tangles, some low trees, a couple of stands of very tall reeds - and an impressive roost of some 200 Yellow-legged Gulls. Many of the birds were paired up and I suspect this spot may be a breeding colony, although there was no evidence in chilly mid February! There were also several Magpies, and a couple of Buzzards - doubtless attracted by the numerous rabbits - slouched grumpily in the tallest trees, but apart from a score of European Starlings, precious little else.

There was more action out on the water, where five Eurasian Shelduck were wafting serenely across the glass-smooth surface of the lagoon, three Oystercatchers were flying in loose and elegant formation against the sky,and an impressive 25 Black-necked Grebes, all in winter plumage, and some of them very close, were the unexpected highlight of the morning.

I twice visited this area which seemed to have no purpose other than a rabbit shoot - there were plenty of shotgun cartridges lying about - and was pleased also to add several Chaffinches and three Goldfinches, Great Tit, a dozen Italian Sparrows that were the first lifer of the trip and a heavy browed female Eurasian Sparrowhawk. Other bits and pieces included a Common Sandpiper, a flighty pair of Mallard, a Grey Heron and a Little Egret (why so few here?) and a couple of rather shy Robins.

The boat into Venice added a party of 20-odd Great Crested Grebes and a couple of Hooded Crows near the spookily high-walled cemetery island. While the heart of Venice produced little more than pigeons and one or two more Black-necked Grebes, plus the gulls, a boat trip to Burano on another beautiful day was much more productive.

These quieter parts of the lagoon held several hundred Shelduck, more Black-necked and Great Crested Grebes and a solitary Little Grebe in the channel running north about Mazzorbo (but despite careful checking not the faintest sniff of either Slavonian nor Red-necked Grebes). I also had three rather distant Mute Swans and five Pygmy Comorants- which I've only just discovered are not the same as Little Cormorants, and therefore a lifer! The other highlights were two groups of heavy-billed Mediterranean Gulls - one a mixed age flock of over fifty birds - and a completely unexpected Red Kite, which drifted in from the East and away past the leaning bell tower. It appears that the latter is a pretty good bird for Venice.

I had been surprised to pick up just a solitary Curlew on the way out, but my faith was restored by findings groups of over 40 birds on out return, along with a couple of Grey Plovers and a distant Ringed Plover.

Cheers
Mike

Didn't even take the bins to venice

Have to admit we didn't even take our bins to Venice, so a well done.

"Lagoons, leather and linguine: Holiday birding in Italy"

Misread that title as "Lagoons, leather and lingerie: Holiday birding in Italy" ...thought this was going to be a novel birding report

But even without the lingerie, a pretty impressive day given what I thought Venice had to offer.


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I love that first photo, very atmospheric.
Only been there once back in 1990 before I had any interest in birds.
I also mis-read the title at first.

Disappointed to say that I didn't.

You can go on a birding holiday anywhere, yes, sometimes you have to allow for other interests ...

Even more disappointed that I did not mis-write the title . . . but glad it stimulated some interest in the report!

Anyway . . .

Birding in Dreamland - an afternoon on the Po Delta
20 February 2017

Having learned from eBird that a Red-breasted Goose had joined the thousands of White-fronted and Greylag Geese that winter on the Po Delta on Italy’s Adriatic coast a little to the south of Venice I successfully negotiated three days in Ferrara into our itinerary and set about trying to find a way to see it.

Red-breasted Goose captured my imagination from the moment I saw one in all its astonishing glory in the captive wildfowl collection at Slimbridge more than 30 years ago. In all this time I’ve never had the chance to even go for one – or at least a real one untainted by whispers of escapology.

Getting to Ferrara was one thing. Getting out to Bando, a good hour away in the middle of the flat fertile fields of the Po Valley was something else again. A web search led me to local birder Marco Crivarello who kindly agreed to take me to look for the goose, plus some of the other winter birds for which the Po Delta deserves to better known. We took a thirty five minute train ride from Ferrara to Portomaggiore, seeing several Buzzards and a few Great Egrets, Grey Herons, Woodpigeons, Magpies and Common Pheasants in the fields plus a couple of pairs of Mallards in the many drainage ditches which separate one field from another.

After meeting Marco we headed out to search the fields around the hamlet of Bando, where we immediately started seeing small groups of Greylags, and then a larger group of a couple of hundred White-fronted Geese. This is a rare treat for me as geese typically appear in ones and twos in Hong Kong. Indeed the three Greater White-fronts that turned up this winter was the second-largest group ever recorded. This flock contained no Red-breasted Goose, but we did see large number of geese flying into an area just out of view and soon after Mauricio, a birding friend of Marco’s, called us to come to the small reserve nearby where the geese were gathering on a reed-fringed pond in large numbers.

And how they were gathering! It was an amazing privilege to witness perhaps 1500 grey geese massed on the water, as hundreds more flighted in against the clear blue winter sky, and spread their white-black-white tails before landing with a splash, calling all the while. The geese were clearly unsettled. Mauricio explained that this was because with spring in the air their stay on the Po was coming to an end and the first birds had begun heading north a few days earlier.

With the assurance that the goose had indeed been seen the day before, we began searching in earnest. As I only had binoculars I scanned the arriving birds, hoping to pick up the Red-breasted Goose on size, but it was Marco who found it among the White-fronts on the water at the back of the pond some 500 metres away. A superb adult bird in immaculate plumage – a geometric perfection of red and black squares and crisp white lines that Mondrian or Rothko would have given their eye-teeth to create – I was completely blown away. I watched it for no more than five minutes before it drifted behind some reeds, but not before showing a small black bill, and a distinctive white stripe on the flanks below black back upperparts, in addition to the dark maroon breast and neck.

Other birds on the marsh included a scattering of Mallard, Gadwall, and a few Pochard in the lee of the reeds; a couple of Marsh Harriers drifting back and forth with casual menace; an invisible Penduline Tit pinged a couple of times but never shivered so much as a reed stem; and eleven Spoonbills dropped in over the back of the pond with another flying over the car as we headed out, making a round dozen. A quartet of Jackdaws playing along the telegraph poles turned out to be a local scarcity. A little further away we had great close views of a few more Greylags and a solitary, presumed feral, Canada Goose.

Cheers
Mike

You are doing well so far Mike. I took my other half ,Claire, to Sorrento in July last year. It was high time she had a destination of her choice without birding considerations as it was her big 50 birthday. I think my trip list was around 6 species but I didn't expect much more at that time of year !

Our next target was a flock of Common Cranes that winters in the fields close to the southern edge of the Commaccio lagoon. We followed a beautiful but bumpy road lined with mature trees among flat misty fields, dipping on the cranes but stopping for a trio of white Camargue horses that were sharing a field with a flock of starlings and a family party of Nutrias – an unexpected mammal lifer – albeit no more kosher than the Canada Goose. A short while later we were standing on the bund of the lagoon, enjoying a quartet of Scaup amongst a few Tufties, a couple of Black-necked Grebes and Black-headed and Yellow-legged Gulls on the glassy surface of the lagoon.

At the southern edge of the lagoon, where a long vegetated spit protrudes due north into the lagoon, we climbed back onto the bund and found a hundred-odd Greater Flamingoes clustered and bickering on the edge of a small islet. There cannot be a better bird than flamingoes for creating a sense of the ethereal, especially with their pink plumage lit up by late afternoon sunshine against a hazy afternoon palette of misty blues and greys.

As the light began to seep out of the day and the mist began to rise Marco had a final spot to check for Cranes. We found them a few fields inland from the road, but as we headed towards them about forty birds took off and headed north along the edge of the lagoon towards their roosting site. Zipping back the way we had come, we positioned ourselves so that they flew right over us, giving terrific views. We had hoped they would roost in a reed-fringed pool close to the northwest corner of the lagoon, but disappointingly they flew straight on to a second roost that was substantially further away.

We decided not to chase them but headed back instead to the spot they’d come from on the off chance that a few may have lingered. Bingo! Twenty-one birds (including two juveniles) were still present, and we were able to approach to within 100m and watch them until they too took off north to roost.

One final run along the bund delivered a Short-eared Owl that had been seen here throughout the winter. Unfortunately it flushed up from my feet and began its typical low floating flight as it hunted along the edges of the canal and then away over the fields where our parting view was of it dropping into the grass and beginning to feed on whatever it had just caught. Short-eared Owls have been a favourite since I first saw them at Farlington in the mid-80s. I’ve not seen many since, so his was a rare treat and a fine end to the day. Except . . .

On the way back to Portomaggiore , with the falling darkness squeezing the very last light of the out of the sky a Marco made one final stop for a pair of White Storks that had built a nest on a telegraph pole. Part of a successful reintroduction programme, they posed in beautiful silhouette magnificently rounding off a superb afternoon.

In the end the day was about so much more than nailing Red-breasted Goose as a much-desired global lifer. Huge thanks are due to Marco for driving and guiding us around the magical Po Delta, a terrific site, which certainly deserves more than the afternoon we were able to give it. In an intriguing post script Marco let me know that two Red-breasted Geese were seen together at Bando just a few days later! It seems they appear every year in Italy in small numbers, which is not altogether surprising given the relatively short distance to their regular wintering grounds on the Black Sea.

There was not much birding in Florence but a lot of shopping (for leather), gelato, and the best hot chocolate in the universe at Hemingway The only other bird of interest was a Firecrest I pished in at a bus stop opposite the Teatro Comedia in Rome.

Cheers
Mike