The Elusive Golden Oriole

Heard but not seen

male Golden Oriole

The Eurasian Golden Oriole, (Oriolus oriolus) or rigogolo in Italian, winters in Africa and passes through Europe in the summer.

A few years ago a birdwatching visitor reported a fleeting sighting of a yellow and black bird he imagined to be a Golden Oriole in the fields below Le Ripe. 

dowdier female

Birdfeeders and Italian Birds

The Avian Learning Curve 

British blue tits, already wise to feeders

At Le Ripe we have always been keen to feed our birds. In winter, when it is frosty and cold, the small migratory birds which stop at Le Ripe, as well as those which are resident,  can generally be assured of a square meal each day.

Found in Woodpile

Nest eggs

Uncovered in woodpile, roughly-woven nest of moss, straw and wood shavings with six tiny eggs. Might be redbreast or starling eggs?

If anyone reading this blog can identify the eggs, please send us a message.

The Birds are Back!

Coming for dinner, not coming 

as dinner

blue tit - cinciarella - Parus caeruleus

For two winters now we have mourned our little birds, the ones that in the winter of 2012 came so merrily to feed on our new bird tables.  

no takers?

We wondered where they had disappeared to: was it the unseasonally warm weather which kept them in more northern climes; was it the scoundrel cat which had discovered it could access the goodies on the bird-table by jumping from the old hay-cutter (goodies signified birds and bird-feed, two for the price of one jump)? 

The Return of the Robin

Who killed Cock Robin?

     Who killed Cock Robin?
        I, said the Sparrow,
        with my bow and arrow,
        I killed Cock Robin.

        Who saw him die?
        I, said the Fly,
        with my little eye,
        I saw him die.

        Who caught his blood?
        I, said the Fish,
        with my little dish,
        I caught his blood.

        Who'll make the shroud?
        I, said the Beetle,
        with my thread and needle,
        I'll make the shroud.

        Who'll dig his grave?
        I, said the Owl,
        with my little trowel,
        I'll dig his grave.

        Who'll be the parson?
        I, said the Rook,
        with my little book,
        I'll be the parson.

        Who'll be the clerk?
        I, said the Lark,
        if it's not in the dark,
        I'll be the clerk.

        Who'll carry the link?
        I, said the Linnet,
        I'll fetch it in a minute,
        I'll carry the link.

        Who'll be chief mourner?
        I, said the Dove,
        I mourn for my love,
        I'll be chief mourner.

        Who'll carry the coffin?
        I, said the Kite,
        if it's not through the night,
        I'll carry the coffin.

        Who'll bear the pall?
        We, said the Wren,
        both the cock and the hen,
        We'll bear the pall.

        Who'll sing a psalm?
        I, said the Thrush,
        as she sat on a bush,
        I'll sing a psalm.

        Who'll toll the bell?
        I said the Bull,
        I am strong, I can pull,
        I'll toll the bell.

        All the birds of the air
        fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
        when they heard the bell toll
        for poor Cock Robin.
 

The first robin redbreast of the cold season appeared yesterday in our garden and the lines of this old rhyme came to mind. 

A Vexed and Vexing Question: Hunting in Tuscany

The reality in those hills

What follows is not an apology for hunting, nor is it an outright critique. It is intended as more of a review of the current situation in the region of Tuscany.  

In provincial Tuscany, on the whole, hunting  is considered not only an ancient right, but a necessity. For centuries people lived off the land, relying on their own strengths to make a living, to feed their families: in short, to survive. Hunting was an essential part of this process. In addition, farmers, as all the world over, attempted to protect their flocks, their crops and their families from the incursions of the wild. Once upon a time wolves roamed these hills, and although boar are not indigenous, they were introduced a long time ago.

Blackbird Days

I giorni della merla 

The days of the blackbird

the female blackbird is in fact brown

In Italy, 'blackbird days' are three days at the end of January and the beginning of February, reputed the coldest in the year. The popular belief is that if they are indeed very cold, spring will be early and warm; if they are mild, spring will be late and colder...This is a bit of country lore I have heard locally in Chianti too.

Various folktales are associated with the so-called days of the blackbird hen - merla being feminine, this is a female of the species. The simplest and most pleasing could be narrated just so:

In the beginning, all blackbirds were as white as snow and prided themselves on their plumage. One day in the cold heart of winter, a mother blackbird and her chicks sheltered in a chimney for three frozen nights. When they emerged on the first of February, they had turned as black as soot. From that day forward, all blackbirds were black.

(This works better in Italian where blackbirds are called merli, which has nothing to do with the Italian word for black..) 

a white blackbird: perhaps this one did not hide in the chimney

A fledgling

  A small incident in the garden
or
The magpie chick that wasn't

adult  Eurasian jay

We thought it was a magpie nest. Large and conical, built in the centre of a cluster of field maples not far from the main house; it seemed to fit the description. As it turned out, we were wrong. One evening as we ate outside, we spied a bird wobbling up and down on a branch of one of the field maples as if it were standing on a diving board. Suddenly it launched itself to fly. Rather than fly, it fluttered earthwards where it made something of a crash landing. 

just landed

The Nightingale

A Nightingale Sang 

Luscinia megarhynchos

A small, modest, brown and beige bird, the nightingale, thanks to his song (for only the male sings), has inspired authors and composers from Homer to T.S Eliot and counting. So you're curious? Here's a partial list: Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Ovid, Virgil, Chrétien de Troyes, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, George Gascoigne, Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Beethoven, Hans Christian Andersen, Joseph Lamb and T.S. Eliot have all either mentioned the nightingale or the myth of Philomena and Procne associated with the bird. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale is the poem which first springs to mind, but to quote another particularly apt example, here is Shelley in his A Defence of Poetry:  

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.
 

sheet music for Lamb's Nightingale Rag - which is attractive but bears little resemblance to a nightingale's warbling

Nesting Dove

Our Collared Doves start a family

an improbably sloppy nest spied, once a collared dove was seen to be favouring this perch over some days, in the oak tree near the house...

the voice of the turtledove

 springtime

wildflowers in the top field

The flowers appeare on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land...

 Song of Solomon 2:12 (1611 King James Bible)

collared dove or tortora dal collare orientale

The turtle, or turtledove or, to be precise, the collared dove, is certainly heard in our land, together with the cuckoo and other twitterers and warblers. We still await the nightingale.


...with thanks to someone else's sudden recollection of these apt and beautiful words...

Antipodes

Our Sister Slope

Three Peaks with its three hills and farmhouse

Far away on the other side of the world from Le Ripe, in another hemisphere and in another season, stands Le Ripe's Sister Slope, Three Peaks. Sister Slope, because linked by family ties. And because similar in its aspect, size and topography, if starkly different in its flora and fauna, and considerably different in its climate  (milder in winter than Le Ripe).

Black Angus steer calves eating hay

Home to passing kangaroos and resident wombats, the occasional koala and myriad birds, but also host to introduced species such as fox and rabbit, unlike Le Ripe, Three Peaks is an active farm where steers are raised for market. It contains a spacious one-storey home and its surrounding native garden nestled within 30 hectares of pastureland characterised by three hills which inspired the farm's name.

kangaroo photographed at Three Peaks

wombat photographed at Three Peaks

Birds in Winter

a bird ballet

starling (sturnus vulgaris) planning today's choreography

Two winters ago I was in the parking lot in Greve in Chianti towards dusk. A loud chirping and rush of wings made me look up at the darkening sky. Thousands of birds were streaming and wheeling above me, calling and settling on surrounding trees then rising again. I stood there fascinated, surprised that no one else seemed to bother with this scene. On asking a passerby what the birds were I was told "storni" which is starlings.Of course the locals see the birds every year, they are commonplace, like pigeons in the city. Still.

Just yesterday I was working near our vegie patch when a very sudden and loud gushing, whooshing noise from a little higher up the hill startled me. My first thought was of a mass of water released from a dam or pool. Of course we have no such thing, but that was precisely what it sounded like.

Seconds later a host of starlings rose into the air from behind a stand of trees. There must have been hundreds. As they wheeled and turned in the sky their wings whirred and almost sang.

Just today on the Italian paper il Corriere della Sera, this film was published, which I have tracked to YouTube. It doesn't reproduce the sounds I heard but it does record the extraordinary annual dance of the starlings. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV9wOTqOQw0
 
Here is a reference from the International Business Times 
which explains more ... 

"...breathtaking phenomenon called murmurations. This is when a huge flock of birds that are in migration form a magical shape-shifting flight pattern in the sky. The birds tend to flock together for protection and can reach speeds of up to 20 mph/32kph...Scientists aren't sure how the starlings do their complex dance...the birds have a quicksilver reaction time of under 100 milliseconds, which prevents them from colliding with each other in the air."

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/starling-flock/ 

This is another clip which apparently has gone 'viral'; it includes some scientific explanations of the starlings' startling steering abilities.

Here instead is a curiosity regarding one starling and Mozart. It appears that the birds are excellent mimics: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart%27s_starling

 Here, in 2015, a starling murmuration in the Middle East

Our Visitors

Le Ripe birds

Here is a gallery of some of the birds that visited our bird tables last season, hopefully soon to return!

blue tit - parus caeruleus - cinciarella

chaffinch - fringilla coelebs - fringuello

blackcap - sylvia atricapilla - capinera

This one looks a bit of a rascal

collared dove - streptopelia decaocto - tortora dal collare orientale

greenfinch - carduelis chloris - verdone

nuthatch - sitta europea - picchio muratore

love that Egyptian eye shadow

redstart - phoenicurus phoenicurus - codirosso

                                           

Thanks to the internet for the photos....

Birdfeed

Where are the birds?

Last autumn/winter we began welcoming birds to Le Ripe in earnest, setting up three bird tables which we kept richly supplied with seeds, scraps, crumbs and water. And so many birds came to eat: robins, magpies, collared doves, redstarts, blackcaps, tits, greenfinches, chaffinches and the delightful nuthatches with their elegant Egyptian eye paint. 

Unfortunately we have very few photos of these birds: we never seem to have the time to watch and wait in order to capture good shots of them.  

blue tits feeding around the trough before it was restored

a redstart on the fence

magpies feeding at one of the bird tables

This winter, however, we have seen very few birds in general. I wonder if it is thanks to the milder weather keeping them in more northern territories, or because I have been rather slow to set out the bird food this year?

Today I decided to set matters right and bought several bags of feed from the shop locals call il Mugnaio, the Miller, in Panzano (once upon a time there was a working mill there). A couple of these products were new to me: panico, which turns out to be foxtail millet, to hang from tree branches, and something called Vigorpast whose ingredients resemble those of the bird puddings my children and I used to create for city birds when we lived in Milan. This sticky feed consists of goodies such as (and I quote): 

"fruits, backery products, vegetable by-products, oils and fats, cereals, vegetable proteins extracts, sugars, yeasts, seeds, mineral substances, natural flavourings.."

But the best part is what this energy bomb is going to do for the darling birds, according to the manufacturer (again I quote verbatim):

"Vigorpast is the best mash for insectivorous and frugivorous birds. The base of its formula is a high content in fruits. It is considered the food more similar to that free birds prefer. It is particularly desirable to BLACKBIRDS,THRUSHES,FIELDFARES, LARKS, NIGHTINGALES, GRAKLES and in general to all birds with thin beaks. 
It favours the general sense of vitality therefore stimulating the tendency to sing."

Now, isn't that charming?

If only we could all boost our vitality in such a way, thereby stimulating 

our tendency to sing.

No doubt the world would be a better place for it.