The Po Delta (more Flamingos)

The Po Delta turned out to be an even better bird watching place than The Camargue. It covers a huge area. Unfortunately we only had 3 days. We were in the south and didn’t even manage to make it to the Po River but saw a great diversity of ecosystems, salty mudflats, salty lagoons, fresh water lagoons and littoral forests.

Flamingos in the Po Delta

There were many flamingos. They only arrived in the delta 15 years ago. Now there is a second type of Flamingo which has just showed up in the past two years – only two pairs. Also saw African bee eaters, grey heron, rose heron, great egret (like in NZ), black crowned night heron, grebe (2 sorts), hoopoe (very exciting) , pygmy cormorant as well as all the birds I saw in The Carmargue. A lot of the water birds had young. We found one nesting area of stilts, black headed gulls, Mediterranean gulls, and red shanks all with young.

African Bee eater

Pygmy Cormorant

Black crowned night heron

Nesting bird colony

A Pigeon nesting near our caravan

Also saw many coypu in the freshwater lagoon. These beaver like animals were introduced to Europe from Sth America for fur. They are now considered a pest in most of their range. (Wikipedia)

Coypu is an animal like a beaver

Comacchio

We visited historic town Comacchio, a smaller version of Venice with many canals and cute bridges, but no people. It is famous for 1 bridge that crosses 3 canals.

Comacchio

Tre ponte

View from Tre ponte

Also saw a real archaeological dig with some bones and ancient boat.

Digging up bones, these are human bones

The whole site

The history of the area is fascinating with the local people involved with eel fishing for hundreds of years. Under various administrations Rome, and local municipalities they were forbidden to fish so a lot of poaching went on. We took a boat out to an old fishing station and saw old fish traps. They still trap fish today using the same techniques but with concrete and plastic instead of timber and reeds.

Fish traps

Fishing station in the middle of the lagoon

We also had some really good fish dinners. Our campsite was great, well organised, friendly and we were the only non Italians there. We could take away a mixed grilled fish plate from the Camping restaurant- a totally civilised country.

Adria Camping mixed grilled fish take away, a meal for one??

We have come across some very funny English translation. Here is just one example.

The Direction is a translation from Direzione which is Administration.


Pick the odd one out

(It's a duck)

Pick the odd one

(It's Ron pulling silly face)