The Birds

Crows

Birders may gush over the woodpeckers, storks, and owls, but to my mind, the Hooded Crow is the true bird monarch of Parco di Monza. You see them everywhere, roosting in the mixed woodland, marching about in groups on the open meadows, stalking alongside the asphalt where cyclists and babysitters may have inadvertently dropped something edible, or perching on novecento architecture, looking like part of the furniture.

There  is something scary about the crow family. they are not quite birds of prey, they don't make you feel alarmed or awed as you would if an eagle or a falcon was walking close to your picnic. It's 'just' a bird, but one that creates a feeling of uneasiness among picnickers and sunbathers. Intelligent, large, airborne, with that ferocious beak and that unfortunate Hollywood connection, even their name, their exact taxonomy, is beyond most of us. Few people fail to identify a robin or a sparrow or a dove but crows are another matter: rooks and ravens and jackdaws are all kinds of crows along with the 'true' crow, and few ordinary observers can confidently tell them apart, even in England where a smattering of ornithology is widespread in the population. In Italy, where twitchers are rarer, the same confusion can be found, and in a way the Hooded or Grey crow is a culmination of that blurring of the names.  Corvus cornix the corvo and cornacchia

.  the the geese chase after . One Thursday, it wanted to rain. The kiddies with their nonni gave the park a miss, and the birds on the lake were pretty miffed about it. Much less to eat. Even the usual lunchtime loungers were absent

swallows: Cielo di giugno azzura giovinezza di rondini sfreccianti in folli giri d'aria

cornacchie  the prize the bird on the top of the column