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Italy has no national bird! Some places on the web claim that the national bird of Italy is the “bluebird” but this is so untrue that it does not make sense. Some places on the web claim that the national bird of Italy is the “bluebird” but this is so untrue that it does not make sense.
Operated by sommelier and importer Nicola Marchesi, the eponymous label Nicola Biscardo Selections works with smaller, family-owned estates all over Italy to bring these wines to a wider audience around the world. The outfit specializes in wines produced from indigenous Italian grape varieties.
As we move from Spain towards the east however, it starts getting interesting as soon as we reach Italy. Italy has an almost endemic … well … “form” of Sparrow, the Italian Sparrow , whose taxonomic affinities and rank have been a matter of dispute ever since scientists started to think about it.
The White-winged Crossbill on the 2018 vintage doesn’t appear to be an expected visitor to Italy according to the range maps I’ve seen, but the label claims that it’s been seen there in Chianti in the past, though it’s now rare there due to the use of herbicides (which this vineyard abstains from using).
The population of Egyptian Vultures in Italy is nearing extinction, with fewer than 10 pairs, and numbers are also going down in the Balkans, now with fewer than 70 pairs. The most recent estimates suggest that some 1,500 pairs breed in Spain. That’s about half of the entire European breeding population.
Here is just a small handful of some of the wonderful images that have moved me this year: The subtle brown hues in mclaudio’s (Italy) Dotterel ( Charadrius morinellus ) image wonderfully place the bird within a habitat – and imagined landscape – context.
It seems that the Red-billed Leiothrix can be vocally dominant (it accounts for 37% of an entire bird community soundscape in northern Italy) and can influence the singing behavior, particularly of native Eurasian Blackcaps and European Robins (in Portugal and Italy).
Funny story about that – though they did take widely divergent paths they have come back together : Three of the birds, Chris, Martin and Kasper, flew down through Italy and straight across the Sahara desert. The other two, Clement and Lyster, went to Spain and down the Atlantic edge of the continent, more than 1,000 miles to the west.
From Bite Back: Redecorated with paint and oil the opulent houses of Luigi and Ignazio Maramotti in Albinea (Reggio Emilia). Locked the main entrances. Redecorated with paint also the house of the sister Maria Ludovica located in Reggio Emilia.
Cyprus Wheatears are the easiest to find of the three endemic birds that occur on Cyprus Black Francolins once bred in Portugal, Spain and Italy, all countries from which this handsome little game bird has long been lost.
After three visits to southern Italy, followed by a lone excursion to Belgium, we’ll head back south to end our month-long “Grand Tour” of falconry-themed wine and ales in Portugal.
VICE went to Italy to play, squeeze, hug, and cuddle some of the most adorable owls in the land! You might recognize one of the owls in the video below. They are all very sweet. Luckily they made a video that we can share with you!
Tha dropping numbers are suspected in Greece and Croatia, and confirmed in Italy, France and Malta. In the IUCN Red List, it is listed as vulnerable because of the high mortality of nestlings that become victims to rats and of adults that end up as a fishery bycatch. But, the Yelkouan Shearwater is also a lifer for me!
Along with her team (including her lover Jenny Sparks, the living Spirit of the Twentieth Century) she destroyed an alternate Italy to prevent the invasion of her world and took over the United States in order to run it better than Congress. This is not comic heroism as you remember it.
Confiscated from a poacher in Brescia, Italy, this robin will be released to fly away into an uncertain world, where habitat is threatened and predators and poachers await. The survival of songbirds depends in part upon eliminating illegal hunting. Photo by David Guttenfelder, courtesy of National Geographic ).
10 Beats have been out in 9 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Serbia, China, Costa Rica, USA, UK, Italy and Mexico) and have shared 125 lists to account for 916 birds. Italy is the newest country to feature in our collection of Countries/Territories/SARs/Kingdoms/Principalities and brings this list to 51.
A Spanish Ibex photographed in Spain’s Sierra de Grazelema Natural Park According to my mammal guide, there are two species of chamois in Europe, the Pyrenean Chamois (which also occurs in Central Italy), and the Alpine Chamois.
The coast of the Mediterranean Sea is used mostly as a wintering ground, with just a handful of breeding colonies between Greece, northern Italy and eastern Spain (and recently through central Europe all the way to Ireland). So there you have it: conservative taxonomy leads to unfortunate common names.
It subsequently spread to Budapest/ Hungary (2005, 2006), Zürich/ Switzerland (2006), and north-east Italy (2008/2009). The first detection outside Africa occurred in Vienna/Austria between 2001 and 2006.
It even entices those of us who seriously dig the fromage (did I ever tell you about the amazing, heavenly provolone I ate at a rest stop somewhere in Italy? Yes, if you understand Spanish or took the time to Google translate it, this does indeed mean “Half Cheese” It’s intriguing. Oh, but this is a birding blog, sorry.).
They carry USA, Germany, Brazil, England, France, Italy and more. Little Fanaticos has all kinds of team jerseys, so even if USA isn’t your favorite, you will probably be able to find your team. They would make a really cute Halloween costume too, don’t you think? They make shopping and shipping a breeze too!
Dates of first arrival listed by Schorger (1966) are: Italy 1520, Germany 1530, France 1538, England 1541, Denmark and Norway 1550, Sweden 1556. Another from the King of Spain dated 30 september 1512 refers to two turkeys which had arrived in Spain from Hispaniola. Diffusion to other european countries subsequently was very rapid.
This early weathercock once graced the church of Santi Faustino e Giovita in Brescia, Italy, but now resides at the Museo di Santa Giulia in the same city. The Gallo di Ramperto, the oldest extant weathervane in the world in the shape of a rooster, dating to the ninth century CE.
Europe… with such low herp diversity the locals split any sub-population of a species that occurs on either the Iberian Peninsula or Italy as a new species just to make them feel better out themselves, naturally is the continent that rose to the top of my trip list. Either that or having family friends in Germany.
Danish Carl Christian Tofte , a professional illustrator and a birder, has done most of the Tinamous, Wood-Quail, Rheas, Seriema, all of the raptors, most of the shorebirds, all of the owls, most of the hummingbirds, some of the Jacamars, most of the Aracari, all of the falcons, most of the parakeets and parrots, all of the woodcreepers, all of the (..)
To paraphrase Aristotle via Aldo Leopold, one swallow does not a summer make, but zero swallows, that is fall. That at least holds mostly true where I am in eastern upstate New York, where I haven’t personally seen a swallow in several weeks, and the last reports in my home county of Albany are now over a fortnight old.
Despite being debased and reduced to a mere gastronomic buzzword by American chains of Italian-esque eateries, the offerings of dubious submarine sandwich shops, and bastardized and slapped onto corporate supermarket products labels, the word “Tuscan” can still denote genuine gastronomic excellence in a country of proud regional food traditions.
Today is Valentine’s Day – which means that at this very moment, countless would-be Romeos and hopeful Casanovas are undoubtedly scurrying around at the eleventh hour trying to find that perfect gift, tracking down the last florist in town not already sold out of roses, or perhaps merely struggling to choose a perfect bottle of wine for tonight’s dinner. (..)
So last week I was in Sardinia. Many fine wines were drunk, and many fine meals were eaten. We also looked at some racing cars, which I guess was sort of the point? But of course, also and above all that, I saw birds. The White Wagtails , omnipresent on all my other trips to Europe, were not around this time.
The Gyrfalcon ( Falco rusticolus ), the largest falcon in the world, is as sought after by falconers as it is by birders – and for many of the same reasons: namely, the rarity with which these imposing raptors of the Arctic visit us residing in more temperate climes.
Sandy was a fifty-something guy who had immigrated to the Falls from Campobasso, Italy. Once upon a time in Niagara Falls, NY, they were to a friend of mine whose name was Sandonato. He had a heart of gold, you could see it in his eyes.
The remainder of the recipe is relies on grapes grown in the High Valley AVA on the eastern side of the lake and includes the Rhône varietals Syrah (12%), Mourvèdre (4%), and Petite Sirah (4%), as well as Arneis (2%), a grape from Italy’s Piedmont region more often used in white wine production.
The cargo was meant to be sold as delicacies to restaurants in Italy. But by then, all surviving Turtle Doves are already in Africa, and those less fortunate await in deep freezers for their final flight to Italy. It was only the first in a series of such cargoes. The Turtle Dove is not a trophy animal.
My trips abroad were limited to short family vacations to the Cote d’Azur during the first days of January and a week-long vacation to northern Tuscany / Italy in May. Scopoli’s Shearwater , Tuscany, Italy. Great Spotted Cuckoo , Tuscany, Italy. Northern Gannet , Liguria coast, Italy.
Storks, Ibises and Spoonbills goes on to give greater detail of the former nesting sites in Europe: it could once be found “in southern Germany and Austria, in the valleys of the upper Rhine and Danube Rivers, and in the Alps of Switzerland, Italy and Germany, and perhaps in Hungary and Greece”.
35 countries were visited during 2019 , 7 of them ( Belgium , France , Germany , Italy , Thailand , Indonesia and Barbados ) bringing new blood to the Country/Territory/Emirate/Republic/Pricipality/Kingdom/Special Administrative Region list which now stands at 55. The life list was pumped a further 27 sp up to 3953.
You’d be lucky today to find even a pair in Hungary, while according to the European Breeding Atlas 2 , it “has almost completely disappeared from S, central and W Italy, Switzerland, Norway and W Austria”. EBA2 goes on to say that the “Grey Partridge has undergone one of the steepest declines of all European farmland birds”.
And while most of these introduction attempts failed, the species has now become firmly established as a “countable” species in several areas of France and Italy, and even Spain so far as I was able to find out. Celebrated awesomeness: Trips Europe invasive species Italy'
Whatever they may be, the image makes a handsome label for this week’s wine, the 2015 Siir from San Martino, a vineyard in the Aglianico del Vulture region of Basilicata in Italy. Aglianico vines are still grown in southern Italy today, particularly in area around Mount Vulture, an extinct volcano in Basilicata.
Between 2023 and 2024, Animal Equality investigators documented conditions inside a pig slaughterhouse in Cremona, Italy. This facility–owned by a company called Belli–slaughters thousands of pigs each year. Veterinarian Enrico Moriconi, who reviewed the footage… Source
Aglianico is a rustic and savory red wine from Southern Italy made from a venerable grape of the same name. Overseas visitors who are unsure which field guide to choose should know that with Sasol Birds of Southern Africa you cannot go wrong. Grifalco Aglianico del Vulture “Gricos” (2016).
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