Cranes hopefully herald better days to come for Italians

Changes in migration routes are bringing millions of Italians in the country's industrialised north into contact with one of Europe's great wildlife spectacles

From the auguri of Ancient Rome divining the will of the gods and the omens for the coming season, to the guileless Chichibio in Boccaccio’s Decamerone (ironically written like this, to pass the time during a pandemic, the Black Death), on mosaics, in art and even the names of villages and towns such as Portogruaro*, for millenia Grus grus, the Common Crane was an integral part of folklore and culture along the Italian peninsula. Each year vast numbers would pass north and south, east and west on migration. According to the Italian ornithologist Arrigoni degli Oddi (1867 – 1942),  a few even stopped to breed in the vast, malarial wetlands close to Venice until the 1920s. With the reunification of Italy in 1861, however, the vast aristocratic hunting estates were thrown open to what amounted to a hunting free-for-all, while the great marshes around Venice and along the Po and the Tiber were drained in Mussolini’s “grain war” projects in a drive for foodstuffs autarky.

53 Common Cranes heading east over the Karst at sunset 26/2/2021 (Photo: Paul Tout)

By the 1970s, apart from Apulia and Sicily across which the birds wintering in Tunisia still pass in spring and autumn, the birds were pretty well only a memory, with 2.5 million hunters stalking the land from August to March, the odd skein of wind- or weather-blown birds was seen here and there, protected in letter if not on the ground. And so matters remained until the final years of the 20th century. Over that time demography, fashion, legislation and the drift from the countryside to the towns and cities conspired to reduce hunter numbers by two-thirds and the length of the hunting season by three months, but a key piece of legislation seems to have been the EU’s “Birds Directive” (Council Directive 2009/147/EC, replacing the more feeble Council Directive 79/409/EEC), which shortened the hunting seasons across the continent, with most hunters - albeit unwillingly - hanging up their guns between 31st January and 10th February each year. until the following autumn

The Cranes were quick to respond. Always at least as vulnerable to hunting disturbance as they are to the lead shot itself, the tranquil conditions of early spring and more effective protection saw their numbers building in Scandinavia, Central Europe and Russia. What began as three distinct flyways - either from Scandinavia through France to Spain, or down to Hungary and thence either across the heel of Italy and on to Tunisia or down into Greece, Turkey and, via the Middle East joining Russian birds to proceed along the Nile Valley into Sub-Saharan Africa – began to blur. In particular, birds from the booming western populations began to get caught up in flocks on the central flyway, fattening-up with at least a hundred thousand Baltic birds on the autumn stubbles around the Hortobágy National Park in eastern Hungary. In early November, as food becomes scarce,  temperatures drop and the nights draw in, the birds begin to get the urge to move to warmer climes.

Unlike most passerines such as warblers or swallows, migration in many large birds has both a genetic and a learned or cultural component, birds having the urge to move. The Germans call it “Zugunruhe”, meaning “migratory restlessness”. They often follow their parents, or other birds of the same species should they get separated. In that sense, birds such as geese, swans, ducks, spoonbills – and cranes of all species – are literally “winging it”. Does a “western” Crane stick with its eastern congeners and make its way down to Turkey or even Africa, perhaps facing the gunners in Lebanon and throughout most of the eastern Mediterranean, or does it go west towards Spain? Indeed, does an “eastern” bird stick with tradition or will the more adventurous among them that follow the westerners for a winter eating acorns in the Cork Oak groves of south-western Iberia actually be more successful in reproductive terms? Will it pay off? Observations even before the “Birds Directive” was passed suggest it has.

Every early spring, and it seems ever earlier each year, Today’s auguri now flood Italian social media groups with hazy cellphone videos of honking, trumpeting V-shaped flocks or wings-a-whooshing, passing low over the northern cities of Turin, Milan, Bergamo, Treviso and Trieste, presaging the return of the bella stagione. Some are geese, White-fronted or Greylags making their way to the breeding grounds, others are Mute Swans, but the stars of the the show are the Cranes with their slow-over-the-target flight on windy days, their camp, stridulous voices and disorganised formations seeming to communicate a “let’s do this!” enthusiasm for the task ahead.

15 Cranes gathering rising air over the Ara Pacis, Medea nr. Gorizia, NE Italy, 12:45, 27/2/2021 (Photo: Paul Tout)

A friend called me this morning (Sunday 28/2/2021) from the balcony of her apartment in Trieste. She was excited. Out of breath. She shouted “Listen!” and evidently held out the phone into the réfoli of the north-easterly bora that’s currently blowing. Audible above the gusts, the noise was unmistakable. 50 or so Cranes passing eastwards, low over the city. A promise of better days to come.

*“The Port of the Cranes” near Venice.

Some further info. here for the period 2004-2007, but now a little dated:
Acta Ornithologica, 48(2):165-177. 2013 Autumn Migration of Common Cranes Grus grus Through the Italian Peninsula: New Vs. Historical Flyways and Their Meteorological Correlates Author(s): Toni Mingozzi et al.