This is a simple idea – where would it be good to be in Europe watching wildlife on each weekend of the year? It’s a good idea.
This weekend we should be in Matera, southern Italy with Europe’s largest Lesser Kestrel colony and in next year’s European City of Culture. We got here by way of last weekend’s trip to The Burren doing some plant spotting but we might as well stay the week in Italy as it’s Gran Paradiso for Ibex, Chamois and Marmot next weekend. Sounds good!
From Bison in Poland at the begginning of the year through to Flamingos in the Camargue at the end we are kept on the move by James Lowen. The individual accounts are well-written, seem to have most of the right type of advice and information and where i could check the details from personal experience it all seemed pretty much right.
As usual with such things, it’s a bit heavy on birds and mammals and a bit light on plants and insects. But would you really go all that way for an insect?
52 European Wildlife Weekends: a year of short breaks for nature lovers by James Lowen is published by Bradt Travel Guides.
Remarkable Birds by Mark Avery is published by Thames and Hudson – for reviews see here.
Inglorious: conflict in the uplands by Mark Avery is published by Bloomsbury – for reviews see here.
“But would you really go all that way for an insect?”
Yes! (Well perhaps not literally for one insect but if we’re talking lots of insects…).
Any mention of fungi?
“But would you really go all that way for an insect?”
No. That’s why we have cameras and books and that, to see what someone else has seen already. Then there are other considerations: the squandering of valuable transport energy resources, growth of air travel, all the deforestation and land use changes that accompany tourism infrastructure. Great ways to ruin someone else’s country, then whinge about the extinction of species.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0141-x
I’m with Filbert. We can’t ask everyone else to reduce their carbon emissions but jet off to nice places ourselves. The fact that “we” like nature and “they” might like a city break is neither here nor there. Walk the talk.
Have some computer problems and have lost ‘like’ facility – totally agree with you, Filbert and Jbc.