A BIRDING TRIP IN VENICE

My mother organised it so that when we were staying in Venice, I would get to go on a birding trip with a birding guide. This was meant to be with my father, but he got sick so I went with my mother instead.

We took a train to a station where we would meet our guide, Menotti. He would be driving us to the Po Delta area, a large wetland where we could see a variety of waterbirds. Along the way, Menotti pointed out a variety of birds common in the Venice countryside, most of which were lifers I would never have seen otherwise. Eurasian jays, magpies, Mediterranean gulls, great spotted woodpeckers, collared doves, wood pigeons, feral pigeons, yellow-legged gulls, black-headed gulls, Eurasian kestrels, little egrets, cattle egrets, great egrets, grey herons, dunlins, great crested grebes, little ringed plovers, avocets, caspian terns, common buzzards, little stints and common moorhens, among others.

Eurasian magpies are abundant in the Venice countryside, and we saw many of them

Collared doves were also common

We saw several of these Mediterranean gulls

We saw this great spotted woodpecker not very far from Venice

We saw several of these Eurasian kestrels

A flock of these dunlins were seen next to a road, along with two avocets, many yellow-legged gulls, a caspian tern, little stints and little ringed plovers

A little ringed plover

Two little stints

Soon, we arrived at the Po Delta area. We followed a road through some wetlands. A red-backed shrike flew out of a bush, as avocets, little ringed plovers, little egrets, black-headed gulls and greenshanks fed in the mud.

A pied avocet, a bird I've always wanted to see but never thought I would

Two common greenshanks, a familiar sight from Australia and Sri Lanka

Then we came to a larger pond, in which there were great crested grebes, little grebes, grey herons, mute swans and pygmy cormorants. 

A great crested grebe, we saw several of these in the pond

A little grebe, a familiar sight from Sri Lanka

A pygmy cormorant

I spotted something flying in the sky and landing in a nearby pond. We went to investigate and I saw a sight I definitely had not been expecting . . .

GREATER FLAMINGOES!

After staying around to watch the flamingoes for some time, we kept going. We came to another pond where there were avocets, black-headed gulls, black-necked grebes, yellow-legged gulls, wood sandpipers, mute swans, a Caspian tern and a rare vagrant to Italy, a Western reef egret. 

A wood sandpiper

A black-necked grebe in non-breeding plumage

A Caspian tern on the left, and a black-headed gull on the right

A rare vagrant to Italy, a western reef egret

A mute swan, its young and two gulls

We then drove back to Venice, stopping on the way to look at a common buzzard.

A common buzzard, we saw several of these