We are working our way back toward the airport in Venice after 3 relaxing days in Ravenna looking at mosaics. We decided to revisit two birding spots before stopping for the night in Ferrara - Comacchio where we hoped to find two vagrant Lesser Flamingos but got fogged out on the first try and Ripristini Bellini where we dipped (missed) on the vagrant Sociable Lapwings on our first try.
As we were driving along on the two-lane country road, my loving husband and exceptional birding companion / valet, who is quite versed in what to do when I yell “Bird!”, went to the next roundabout, headed back to where we came from, and pulled over on the grassy shoulder at almost the precise location where I saw this Eurasian Curlew in a field. What a team!
After a little picnic of buffalo di mozzarella, prosciutto, salami, pecorino and chocolate, I headed down the spit at Comacchio while Avi headed back to the car to get his binoculars. Before he even got back, I had one of the lesser flamingos in sight . It was pretty far out, but there was no mistaking the shorter stature and black bill. Sadly, no good photos because they were too far away.
✅ Lesser Flamingos is my1,288th life bird!
Feeling smug, we headed straight back to the car and over to Ripristini Bellini to try our luck on the lapwing. The birding area is a series of farm fields and it was full of birds -about 30 Ring-necked Pheasants, as many Northern Lapwings, and we flushed about 30 Gray Partridges that were in the grass by the road. I never thought we would see a skittish Gray Partridge, let alone a big covey of them! (Of course there was no time to line up my camera for a decent shot.) We never found the Sociable Lapwings.
✅ Gray Partridges is my 1,289th life bird!
And to top off the day, I found the first [eBird] record of a Fieldfare in the area in two years! (To clarify, other birders may have seen Fieldfares in the area and not recorded them. This does happen a lot as there are a lot of birders, especially outside the U.S., that keep their lists in other ways or don’t keep lists.) It’s not new to my life list, but still exciting.
Our tally for the trip so far is 57 species of birds this week n Italy, 3 of which were new to my life list.
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