Birding the Forum Romanum

Normally, you wouldn't consider one of the most popular tourist destination of the world to be a good place for finding birds. The Forum Romanum is probably an exception in this regard. Naturally, my main reason for visiting the site wasn't birdwatching, however I found it to be astonishingly productive, at least during the first hour, when I was almost alone there. As you can probably imagine by the end of the day I had a decent selection of common birds, but there were also one or two surprises. The most prominent birds were in fact the dozens of Serins that were virtually everywhere. So far I haven't seen so many in my entire life, there were some flocks of minimum 50 individuals. As usually there were also Ring-necked Parakeets, Hooded Crows and Yellow-legged Gulls present.  After a month now in Rome, I even get more and more familiar with the rattling calls of the Sardinian Warblers. However I'm still happy, when an individual leaves its cover (normally just a matter of patience).
The first real surprise was in fact a negative one: I haven't yet found any Black Redstarts and - to be honest - I can't think of a more suitable place than the Roman Forum for this species (if this place was in Germany, there would have been probably some dozens of these). In the meanwhile I did some research and as it seems the Black Redstart is just a winter guest in the region. Sad, but surprising nonetheless.

Of course, I wouldn't have written post solely for everyday-birds. Well, this is probably the right moment for introducing the positive surprise of the day. From my last real trip to Rome I could still remember that according to a travel guide the roman ruins host Blue Rockthrushes. For someone living north of the Alps this is an almost mythical species, but on my mentioned trip some years ago  I was naturally disappointed in this respect. Today however I finally succeeded in this task. In the far less frequented Forum Iulium (Cesar's Forum) next to Roman Forum I was able to locate at least a female bird. Even if this is no really rare bird, for a birder of Central Europe, it definitely is a day to remember.