Other than for a break for lunch on Saturday as we were so tired we birded pretty intensively. Once it became clear that getting decent photos of the sort we liked wasn't really on the cards we switched focus to seeing as many species as we could. The amount of effort I went to to find a Robin for instance.....it had been so long and I had been trying so hard I essentially forgot what one sounded like and when, finally, there was a Robin my brain refused to believe it.
We were stymied at what seemed like every point by fences, closed reserves and blocking vegetation. It was as if there was a sustained campaign of wanting to prevent access and viewing, I just don't understand it. It makes the RSPB and other organisations here look wonderful frankly.
Despite the challenges we ended on 112 species, at this point more than in any other area of Italy I've been to, albeit that those trips have been either family holidays or very wine-centric. And the birds were good - things like Hoopoe, Nightingale, Bee-eater and Alpine Swift, tons of Corn Buntings and Whinchat, Shearwaters and Pratincoles. Maybe it is simply because it is different, and in a UK birder's mind things like this are rare and to be cherished, and so hen in Europe the cup runneth over.
What is for certain is that I want to go back to Italy, and I am already plotting how and when that might happen. On the other hand another opportunity to fall behind, but I am feeling more positive about where I am at. I have three more to get through before I am fully caught up - a weekend in Guernsey, a week in Burgundy, and then a monumentally good birding trip to Georgia - as in Caucasus Georgia not Atlanta Georgia.
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