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Italy: birds and art in Tuscany Monday 16 May to Thursday 26 May 2011 with Rick Wright and Marco Valtariani
Cost: £3250 plus about £220 for flights (2010) Please click here for details and an explanation of the price breakdown Maximum group size: 14 with 2 leaders. |
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Tuscany, the heart of the ancient kingdom of Etruria, is as rich in culture as it is in birds. Famous artistic centres such as Florence and Siena perch in a landscape dotted with medieval villages, while a fine network of archaeological parks provides excellent birding amid ancient ruins. With late morning starts and a minimum of hotel changes, this is a relaxed and relaxing experience of some of the greatest historical and artistic treasures of Europe, combined with low-key excursions in search of a surprising array of breeding birds and migrants. We’ll also have the opportunity to taste world-class wine from some of Italy’s finest vineyards. All our scheduled group activities leave individual participants the possibility of taking the day off to simply enjoy the bright skies, warm air, and easy-going lifestyle of Tuscany. Day 1: The tour begins with a flight to Rome. Once assembled, we’ll drive north to the monumental ruins of Etruscan Vulci. A thriving city-state in the sixth century BC, Vulci was conquered 400 years later by the Romans, who were eager to take advantage of the city’s strategic position on the Tyrrhenian Sea. We’ll walk along the Roman road past Etruscan fortifications and the ruins of lavish palaces, with Hoopoe, European Bee-eater, Crested Lark, and Corn Bunting among the birds we can expect to see; Common Cuckoo and Common Nightingale should both be heard, but can be more difficult to glimpse. From Vulci it is another half hour to our very comfortable hotel in Manciano, home for the next six nights. We’ll have dinner in our hotel, whose kitchen produces excellent Tuscan specialities from the freshest of local ingredients. Night in Manciano. Day 2: We’ll have breakfast in our hotel, then leave for the Orbetello region. This is one of the most productive stretches of coast anywhere on Italy’s Mediterranean shore, and we can expect to find a good range of birds today. An hour’s drive from our hotel, the fields and wetlands of Orbetello support good populations of many typical Mediterranean species, including Little Egret, Yellow-legged Gull, Little Tern, and European Bee-eater; the shallow, enclosed bay itself provides roosting and nesting sites for several heron species. Montagu’s Harrier and Great Spotted Cuckoo are rare but regular in the area. We might run across lingering waterfowl or shorebirds at a small pond near Albinia, famous for its rarities over they years; a Ferruginous Duck was here on our 2010 tour. We’ll have time to bird around the hotel or relax before dinner. Night in Manciano. Day 3: After breakfast in our hotel, we’ll set out on the hour-and-a-half drive along the ancient Aurelian Road to Cerveteri. The paths through this impressive Etruscan necropolis are lined with hundreds of monumental tombs, some of them 100 feet across, dating from the eighth to the third century BC. The tombs can be viewed from a wide, level path, and many can be seen from the inside by ascending or descending short staircases. Particularly notable here is the famous Tomba di Rilievi, its walls ornamented with important reliefs showing tools, weapons, and other aspects of everyday Etruscan life from 2,500 years ago. We’ll have lunch on the ramparts of Tarquinia, across from the Renaissance palace that houses the city’s world-famous collections of Etruscan antiquities. After lunch we’ll stroll across the street to spend an hour and a half in the museum, starting with the renowned winged horses and working our way through the galleries of Etruscan art and artifacts, many of them from the very tombs we will have visited in Cerveteri. We’ll return to our hotel in time for a break before dinner at a classically Tuscan restaurant in Manciano. Night in Manciano. Day 4: We’ll have breakfast at our hotel, then leave for Diaccia-Botrona Natural Reserve, where we’ll board a flat-bottomed boat to move slowly through extensive marshes in search of Squacco Heron, Western Marsh Harrier, Pied Avocet, and Ashy-headed Wagtail. We’ll stop at a couple of blinds along the way, hoping for views of nesting Greater Flamingos and perhaps a lingering shorebird or duck. After about two hours, we’ll get off the boat to walk on an abandoned road about 20 minutes to rendezvous with our bus. We’ll have lunch in medieval Castiglione della Pascaia before returning to our hotel for a break and dinner. Night in Manciano. Day 5: We’ll have a quick breakfast in our hotel, then leave for the hour-long drive to Porto San Stefano, where we’ll board the ferry to Giglio Island, ten miles off the Argentario Promontory. The ferries on this route are not designed for birding, but we’ll look for Shag, Northern Gannet, Scopoli’s and Yelkouan Shearwaters, and Caspian Tern on our crossing. After landing on Giglio, we’ll have a brisk five-minute walk to the public bus that will take us nearly 2,000 feet up the mountain to the twelfth-century Castello. We’ll take a couple of hours to explore the narrow alleyways and steep staircases of this remarkably well-preserved (and still inhabited) fortress, then have lunch in a restaurant cut into the living rock of the island. We’ll ride back downhill to the harbour to catch the ferry to Porto San Stefano. We’ll be back at our hotel in time for a break before dinner. Night in Manciano. Day 6: Today will be devoted to a relaxing exploration of the romantic Tuscan countryside. We’ll start after breakfast with some birding on the startlingly birdy grounds of our hotel; among the more than 40 species regularly seen and heard here are Wryneck, European Green Woodpecker, European Stonechat, Woodchat Shrike, Golden Oriole, Melodious and Sardinian Warblers, Cirl Bunting, and Italian Sparrow. Our bus will pick us up mid-morning, taking us first to admire a breathtaking view across deep gorges to Pitigliano. We’ll wind our way into this spectacular medieval hill town for a few minutes of sightseeing and shopping before eating lunch in the vaulted chambers of an ancient stone house. After lunch we’ll drive through gentle hills and across flowery fields to another atmospheric medieval village, Scansano, where we’ll indulge in a tasting of some of Tuscany’s best wines, gems that remain little known outside of Italy. Along the way we’ll be looking for Lesser Grey Shrike near the thermal baths of Saturnia. Dinner in our hotel. This will be our final night in Manciano. Day 7: We’ll say a reluctant farewell to Manciano and drive north after breakfast to Siena. Buses are not permitted inside this wonderful city, so at the end of the two-and-a-half-hour drive we’ll be dropped off beneath the walls of the fifteenth-century fortress. We’ll walk about forty-five minutes up and down the brick streets to the Cathedral Museum, stopping along the way to gape at the Piazza del Campo, perhaps the finest surviving medieval square in all of Europe, and at the massive Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption. The museum houses the original rose window and limestone statues from the front of the cathedral, along with Duccio’s influential and beautiful Maestà. After lunch we’ll continue to Florence, where we’ll have two hours in the treasure-laden salons of the magnificent Uffizi Gallery before checking into our centrally located hotel. Day 8: We’ll spend this morning Florence. After yesterday’s culture crush, we’ll take it easier today, with time for shopping, strolling, and simply enjoying the sights here in the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance: we’ll view the exteriors of the cathedral (and perhaps its nesting Peregrines), the baptistery, and Giotto’s perfect belltower, then pay a visit to Santa Maria Novella, the most beautiful Gothic church in all of Italy. Giotto’s incredibly moving Crucifix is just the most famous of the many fine objects ornamenting the interior, and we may run into a Tawny Owl or a Wryneck in the monks’ peaceful cemetery. Our bus will pick us up near the train station, about 20 minutes’ walk from the church, and we’ll continue to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, our base for the rest of the tour. Night in Castelnuovo. Day 9: Castelnuovo lies at the heart of the lush Garfagnana region, nestled between the high Apennines and the Apuan Alps. The mountains of northern Italy remain surprisingly wild, though we’ll be fortunate indeed to glimpse a wolf or, as on our 2010 tour, a Eurasian Griffon Vulture. Among our more realistic hopes today in the Apennines are such high-elevation and forest species as Golden Eagle, Alpine Chough, Coal Tit, Firecrest, Serin, and Common Crossbill. Woodpeckers are notably diverse here, with chances to see the “spotted” species and Green Woodpecker. The sites we plan to visit include the beautiful small village of Castiglione and the 15th-century pilgrim’s hostel of San Pellegrino, where we’ll have lunch after walking the Giro del Diavolo, where the town’s eponymous saint launched the devil right into the mountainside. Night in Castelnuovo. Day 10: The massive Apuan Alps are famous for their deep canyons, steep slopes, and striking marbles, quarried since antiquity. Rising to over 6,000 feet, these dramatic peaks hold such desirable (and sometimes elusive) high-altitude species as Alpine and Red-billed Choughs, Crag Martin, and Tawny Pipit. The mixed forests and open pastures can produce Woodlark or Red-backed Shrike. In the Orto di Donna, we’ll walk a short ways up a paved road from the welcoming cafe, keeping an eye out for raptors and forest passerines such as Western Bonelli’s Warbler. On the way back to Castelnuovo, we’ll stop to admire the striking and weird early Romanesque carvings in the parish church of Codiponte. Night in Castelnuovo. Day 11: We’ll leave Castelnuovo after an early breakfast for the 90-minute drive to Pisa’s international airport to connect with our return flight home.
The ground arrangements for this tour are organised by our American associates WINGS.
E-mail or phone +44 (0)1767 262522 for availability.
Last updated August 2010.
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