Post by Randy on Oct 14, 2019 12:56:14 GMT -8
My wife was sent to Italy for a 2 day meeting in mid-September so I decided to tag along and we made a little holiday out of it. We were only gone for 8-9 days including travel and it was certainly not a birding trip but while she was in her meeting I managed to get out for a few hours for some birding on the two days. Of course I noted birds that we saw in other locations as well although I generally didn't even have my binoculars. We had 2.5 days in Rome, 2 days in Venice, and 2 days in Padua, just outside Venice.
Her meeting was in Padua so I had a couple days to explore on my own. Decent birding locations seem quite hard to come by in the city but I decided to walk from a small local park along a river to another park. I really had to work hard for birds - not numerous at all! In 3 hours it was a struggle to get 17 or 18 species and even the ones I did see (aside from pigeons) were in low numbers. I was very unfamiliar with a lot of the birds but I used eBird bar charts and links to the species to try and figure out what I was seeing. I don't think there was anything I couldn't identify.
I didn't even have my camera so no photos but here is the list of species for the whole trip if anyone is interested. I only had 27 species in total for the trip but still some new ones for me. I've bolded the my lifers:
Mallard
Rock Pigeon
Common Wood-Pigeon
Common Swift
Eurasian Moorhen
Black-headed Gull
Yellow-legged Gull
Great Cormorant
Gray Heron
Little Egret
Common Kingfisher
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Eurasian Kestrel
Rose-ringed Parakeet
Monk Parakeet
Eurasian Jay
Eurasian Magpie
Hooded Crow
Great Tit
Eurasian Crag-Martin
Common House-Martin
Lesser Whitethroat
European Starling
Eurasian Blackbird
European Robin
European Pied Flycatcher
Italian Sparrow
Her meeting was in Padua so I had a couple days to explore on my own. Decent birding locations seem quite hard to come by in the city but I decided to walk from a small local park along a river to another park. I really had to work hard for birds - not numerous at all! In 3 hours it was a struggle to get 17 or 18 species and even the ones I did see (aside from pigeons) were in low numbers. I was very unfamiliar with a lot of the birds but I used eBird bar charts and links to the species to try and figure out what I was seeing. I don't think there was anything I couldn't identify.
I didn't even have my camera so no photos but here is the list of species for the whole trip if anyone is interested. I only had 27 species in total for the trip but still some new ones for me. I've bolded the my lifers:
Mallard
Rock Pigeon
Common Wood-Pigeon
Common Swift
Eurasian Moorhen
Black-headed Gull
Yellow-legged Gull
Great Cormorant
Gray Heron
Little Egret
Common Kingfisher
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Eurasian Kestrel
Rose-ringed Parakeet
Monk Parakeet
Eurasian Jay
Eurasian Magpie
Hooded Crow
Great Tit
Eurasian Crag-Martin
Common House-Martin
Lesser Whitethroat
European Starling
Eurasian Blackbird
European Robin
European Pied Flycatcher
Italian Sparrow