Great lakes and little birds

Recently I left my beloved Yorkshire to explore the outdoors elsewhere; in fact I left these shores completely and went to the Italian Lakes. I had never been to the area before and was really looking forward to comparing it to our own Lake District that I know fairly well. I stayed in the beautiful walled town of Sirmione on Lake Garda and the first thing that struck me was the sheer size of the Lake. Not being familiar with, nor having read much about the area, I was expecting to find something akin to Lake Windermere. As you can imagine I got a huge surprise, Lake Garda is enormous, so big that large ferries run between the towns on the lake, a journey from about half-way up the lake back to my hotel took nearly three hours, that should give you an idea of the scale. Another thing that struck me was the beautiful blue of the water, I don’t think I had encountered that anywhere before. I was lucky with the weather as it was beautifully warm for March so the light may have had something to do with it. Being a bit of a bird spotter, my binoculars had gone on holiday with me; the greatest number of birds I saw were great-crested grebes. Again I don’t think I had seen so many of this species in one place at any one time before. Not only were there a great many out on the lake but there were also some in the moat at the foot of the old castle walls. Because of the time of year they were manically doing their courtship displays only yards from the locals and tourists stopping to wonder at this spectacle. The grebes were also showing a great deal of interest in the raft where a coot was already sitting on eggs but defending her nesting place from any intrusion. Speaking of birds I also saw a lot of small sparrow-like birds, indeed as soon as I sat out on my balcony they would appear to see if I was dropping any crumbs for them to pick up. They were very bold and would even eat out of my hands which enabled me to get a very close look at them. They were very much like our tree sparrow with their brown caps but they did not have the black cheek spots that tree sparrows have. I was very annoyed with myself for not having packed my field guide with which I could have made a positive identification. As I was on an organised tour I did not get much chance to do the kind of walks that I would have done at home. Nevertheless there were a couple of days when there were no trips so I managed to walk around the whole peninsula at sea level and then climb up to the heights where there were the remains of a huge Roman villa to explore. Sadly all too soon the holiday was over but I was pleased that I would get to see the wonderful green of Yorkshire once more. One thing however puzzled me, and I still do not have the answer as to how they get such big boats, which are far too big to come by road transport, on to the lake. And that little bird, why an Italian sparrow of course…should have guessed!!