Via Garibaldi under the lash. The image is fuzzy because of the merciless wind and rain. A video glimpse can be found on YouTube. (ilmeteo.it)
One month ago today the Big Water (“l’Acqua Granda,” as the disaster of November 12 was immediately dubbed), struck Venice, and I hardly know where to start my report. Theoretically I could have done this sooner, but when you have had ten inches of water in your house, even temporarily, it gives new meaning to the word “aftermath,” which is now synonymous with “exhausting,” “irritating,” and “stressful.”
The videos and news reports will have long since covered the general details, but I’ve found that putting things back together after a natural disaster is an experience all of its own. I won’t say it’s worse than water in the bedroom, but it’s not a whole lot better. Profound respects to any readers who may have endured similar, but worse experiences — avalanches, eruptions, typhoons, or earthquakes. You have had it much worse. Now, back to me.
On the positive side, all this a great reason to buckle down and get rid of tons of accumulated things which had, indeed, been slowly taking over our nonexistent space. So there is that. (However, see: “tiring,” above.)
I had just arrived in Virginia on November 11, as fate would have it, and on the 12th was reveling in the first day of my annual three-week R&R, when the lagoon rose up to smite Venice. Yes, Lino had to deal with wind, water, and general desperation all on his own. This entailed getting as much as he could raised or placed as high as possible in time, as per normal, notably the books on the lowest bookshelves, and the floor-level bottom drawers of the chests in the bedroom. But “in time” was suddenly dramatically redefined.
He is a veteran of acqua alta, having lived through many lesser ones and also the famous one of 1966. But what made this one different was not only the height — 187 cm above mean sea level, which covered some 80 percent of the city to one degree or another (1966 saw 194 cm) — but the ferocious wind. It must have been something like a hurricane, because not only did it make the water rise incredibly fast, but also created crashing waves that wrought havoc all along the exposed southern edge of the city. “I was looking out the door, watching the water rising,” Lino told me; “I turned around for a second, and then all of a sudden it was in the house almost up to my knees.”
Getting the sofa up on the chairs by yourself ought to qualify as an Olympic sport. Gold medal to Lino, which he totally would have preferred not to have had to win. No photos were ever made of the water in the house — he had about a thousand other things to think about, and as many things again that he had to do. However, he did tell me that all the shoes which had been neatly put away in the space below the lowest bookshelf in the bedrooms were floating around the house, which explains the saltwater stains on them which I may or may not ever face dealing with. Ditto the bottles of detergent and household cleaning products on the floor beneath the kitchen sink. All just floating around, like so much flotsam. “Good thing the lids on the bottles were all closed tight,” he cheerfully remarked.
Naturally all this was happening at night, and naturally almost all of our electrical outlets are at floor level, so he was going through all this in the dark with no heating. (Yes, candles and flashlights were at hand.) Then, when the tide turned, he spent three hours sweeping the muddy water out of the house, then cleaning the layer of fine slime from the floor.
But he was happy about one thing; “I saved the computer! I saved the computer!” he told me on the phone, in the way people in the old days must have said “I saved the cow!” The refrigerator, though, did not survive, even though we had long since set it up on five-inch beams of wood. The washing machine is fine, though, which is a great thing because whatever clothes and towels got soaked with seawater sat there for a week, busily mildewing, till I got back.
Immediate response came in various forms. Banks suspended the usual commission for ATM transactions by non-account holders because so many cash machines were dead. Also, mortgage payments were suspended till the end of the year, which could have been really nice except that we had just made the last payment on our 15-year mortgage in October. Yep — as soon as the house was totally ours, it went under.
The old fridge, our only casualty. It’s got plenty of company out and about; there are so many appliances to be hauled away that the trash-collection agency says they’ll get to us around January 15. They say they don’t have enough boats to do more.
Our only tangible loss was the 300-euro refrigerator, so not only can we not complain, there isn’t much point in running the bureaucratic obstacle course for potential reimbursement for that. Those for whom there is a point would be businesses whose power tools are kaput, for example, or the young couple at Osteria di Valentino. Of course they had already installed their appliances up to safety at 140 cm, but 47 additional centimeters (18 inches) inflicted damage worth 40,000 euros: two large refrigerators, a large freezer, the dishwasher, the deep fryer…
But at least their fryer was empty. The trattoria up the street hadn’t emptied the oil from their fryer in time, and the pressure of the water busted some valve and out came all the oil. So the owner had water, mud, AND oil on his floor.
Not to worry! He went to buy some big bags of sawdust, the time-honored medium for glop removal. Not only were there none to be found (everybody got there first?), sawdust is now forbidden, he was told, in places where food is being prepared because the eponymous dust might contaminate the food. “I’ve used sawdust for 30 years!” he said. Well, that was then. Now we know better?
The waves broke down part of the wall at the Giardini vaporetto stop, not only by the dock but also further along. The southern-facing side of the city got it in the teeth. At the Zattere, an entire newsstand kiosk was blown into the water (since hauled up to great applause.)That must have been some wave.
Further along the waterfront by the Giardini.The violence of the wind and waves tore some of the gangways away from their docks. The docks at Sant’ Elena have been like this since Nov. 12; the vaporettos currently use a nearby dock. The dock at the Arsenal is similarly out of service, and part of the Giardini dock is missing the gangway, so we use one for going and coming. No telling how long this will last.The Sant’ Elena dock has just been left like this till they can get around to repairs. This gives a small idea of the chaos of that night. A small anecdote: A naval officer at the Morosini naval school and his wife were trying to get back to Sant’ Elena from some mainland errand. He told me that they waited fruitlessly at Santa Marta for longer than usual, not quite realizing the dimensions of the hecatomb taking place slightly eastward. Or maybe they were just hoping that transport could somehow keep functioning. No vaporetto appeared, so eventually they hailed a passing water taxi. “We were going along the Giudecca Canal, but the wind was unbelievable,” he told me. “The taxi, even at full speed, wasn’t moving forward at all. We were just staying in one place and finally he turned around and took us to the nearest point and put us ashore. He didn’t even charge us anything.” (They walked home.) I heard several people referring to how the taxi drivers were out and about, helping people in trouble for free. This is worth noting in a city that seems to live according to the motto “Every man for himself.”As I mentioned, wind. They got this tree chopped up really fast, but the stump with roots is still there.Even the little trees at Sant’ Elena got blown nearly flat. Now they’re at least standing up.Even stretches of the wall-less embankment at Sant’ Elena show signs of serious wear. If you follow the crack to the top of the image, you see that it had already given signs of giving way. Any time that a previous repair looks about to break, you’d better start over. But I’ll bet they just throw more grout, or whatever it is, in the cracks.Wind drove the waves into various glass windows — the Cassa di Risparmio (Savings Bank) got the hit on the Riva dei Sette Martiri.
Evidently the bank’s glass door was destroyed, so a substitute was rigged up. Needless to say, the ATM machine was drowned, as were the other two in the neighborhood.Speaking of ATM’s, this one simply says “Fuori servizio” (out of service.) It still is. We’ve been going to the Lido to use a cash machine.Speaking of the Lido, I lugged a suitcase full of damp laundry to the laundromat on the Lido to dry it because the newish laundromat in via Garibaldi took a hit right in the dryers. The three washing machines, set up on the purple concrete platform, survived the inundation, but the two dryers in the back were, as they say, toast. The piece of paper on the glass door says “Guaste” — busted. Ruined. At least a week went by before the owner could get the man in to replace or repair the motors (or whatever). Last week one of the two was working, but extremely unwillingly. Loud screeching noises, and only tepid temperature. But I would never have said anything — I have to give the guy credit for getting them working even a little.Maskmaker Carlo Setti’s little shop in Frezzeria didn’t have much defense, considering that it’s already two steps down from street level.This shop just around the corner from Carlo sells expensive, elegant fashion, but even being two steps up didn’t save it from doom.Fancy dresses are one thing, but expensive lumber is quite another. The gondola-maker at the squero of San Trovaso lost some of his valuable long-seasoned wood; it just floated away before he could get to it.A lot of the wood is stored behind the squero, where it looks to the ignorant eye like just a batch of old wood somebody threw out. Somebody didn’t, and somebody would really, really like to have it back.There were two more exceptional high tides the week of the catastrophe, and then several “normal” high tides followed. at varying depths. The thing about normal acqua alta isn’t only that you have to put on your boots (which can’t possibly be regarded as a big deal), but that the water brings detritus ashore, then leaves it behind. This is just outside our front door.I saw clumps and hanks of eelgrass (Zostera marina), left by the retreating tide, bestrewing the streets, often fairly far from the nearest canal.On Fondamenta San Giuseppe there are three street-level houses side by side which demonstrate a certain primitive evolution in dealing with water at the front door. The dwellings with steps are generally said to have a “piano rialzato,” or raised level. It’s easy to see how even a few steps could make a difference, at least up to a certain height, which is our case. After which, oh well.Just some of the nearby castoffs. A washing machine on the left (A), and on the right, a dark small stove and a small white refrigerator (B). I’m imagining that person A invited neighbor B to come over to cook their dinner in exchange for being permitted to go wash some clothes.I saw so many soggy mattresses. Does everybody sleep on the ground floor? Anyway, our bed escaped because we did something smart, years ago, putting it up on big plastic supports. But I wasn’t anticipating acqua alta, I was just trying to create more storage space.
A street behind our place. I wonder how long it will be before the wall dries out, if ever.The front door to the building where Lino was born and grew up. It’s still swollen and doesn’t shut completely, which is a situation you really don’t want in a front door.A veteran of many high tides, and devoted to his hipwaders.These boots have lived quite a life. By now they probably wish he’d leave them alone and let them leak in peace.When the high water isn’t catastrophic, you can easily see that it’s not distributed evenly. The edge of this fondamenta illustrates the situation.I’m used to this by now, but I still notice that it does me absolutely no good where I’m standing to see that the street up ahead is dry.As you see, even just a little water is annoying when it’s in the wrong place.I’d never noticed how many drains were sliced into the pavement on via Garibaldi till I saw how much water had come up and gone down. Of course you want drains to carry the water away, it’s just a little irksome that they also let it come up.Some bright spark salvaged a tree branch, which was a good thing because it could have been a hazard in the water. It looks quite fine as a supplementary barrier. One might almost imagine it to have been some work of art from the Biennale.And in Calle Lunga San Barnaba, in ever-so-fashionable Dorsoduro, the owner of this upscale eyeglass shop was especially witty. I notice the quip is written in English, for foreign consumption. You could translate this into Italian, or Venetian, but I’m not sure that the locals would have found it to be especially humorous.Even more than seeing flowers in spring or golden retriever puppies, any new appliance now makes me feel that life will go on.Big fat delivery boats bringing succor and new consumer durables is a happy, and frequent, sight. It’s a bumper holiday season for the warehouses and the delivery people.Every time a new washing machine is delivered, an angel gets its wings.
And speaking of damage, I took a walk along the Riva degli Schiavoni this morning. The damage from the waves is ugly, extensive, and probably will be here for quite a while. I suppose there is a Plan being devised as to the order and importance of interventions, but by the look of it at the moment, people are already getting used to things this way. Maybe we’ll find ourselves like those unfortunate earthquake survivors who are living in containers five years after the last aftershock. Or maybe five minutes before the next quake. Not sure how the thought process works.
The Arsenale vaporetto stop, even more than the one at Sant’ Elena, is lying there like a victim of a 20-car pileup on the highway, resting on a gurney in the Emergency Room at a permanent Priority 4 level while more desperate cases are moved forward.This is undoubtedly a spot where a vaporetto was hurled by thrashing waves against the nearest immovable object. This being an area where vaporettos are normally tied up for the night, that seems the most likely scenario.Wow.Moving west toward San Marco, there is this relic of some tremendous impact. I wonder what the vessel that did this looks like.Toward the Danieli hotel, the storm has beaten the balustrade to the ground.The former balustrade is in several large pieces, and the line of white squares is the only sign of the balusters, now gone somewhere.Another balustrade has bitten the dust.I have the distinct impression that this part of the Riva degli Schiavoni, in front of the statue of King Vittorio Emanuele II, is now sliding toward the water. The fanlike shape of the dark area left by the waves is only one indication — standing there, you can pretty much see it.The two docks at San Zaccaria are gone. I don’t know what’s being done with them, but they have left a very strange open space.
Prompt announcements of municipal reimbursements for damage caused some excitement: 5,000 euros to private citizens, 20,000 euros to businesses! But happy visions of the city councilors handing out bags of cash have been dashed.
Let’s say the funds are there, which I don’t actually know. What I do know is that there are too many problems and tempers are rising. The deadline for claims is too short (December 20), there is intense confusion on how to complete the claim forms, wrong information is being given out, what receipts are required, what sort of experts (too few, anyway) are able to prepare the necessary estimates on repairs and replacements. It’s turned into a sort of bureaucratic high tide all on its own. Of 2,900 claims submitted so far, only one in three has met the criteria for approval. And who can say when the reimbursement would finally be made? Some people who are owed money from disasters of various sorts from years ago are still waiting for the check. Or bag of cash, or whatever. I realize that frivolous and exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims are not to be encouraged, but creating problems while attempting to solve problems doesn’t sound like progress to me.
The Coop supermarket posted this very heartwarming notice in the store. I translate: “Venetians, we’re here. We have decided to gather funds for the emergency: Everyone can collaborate by choosing Coop products. Thanks to the solidarity of the Coop stores of all Italy, one percent of the sales of our trademarked products will be donated to the support of the population hurt by the high water, for a sum of at least 500,000 euros. GOOD SHOPPING CAN HELP VENICE.” This is heartwarming, and I should mention that the Prix supermarket chain has launched a similar initiative. But I have no idea how these things actually work, beyond the hot flash it gives you of feeling like you can do something to help out. (Apart from the incongruity of a Venetian, who perhaps has suffered in the disaster, going to spend money at the Coop in order to help Venetians.)
This is the view out our front door as the situation was reaching the problematic stage. In this case, though, it wasn’t so much the water that we were looking at as the height our boat was reaching. This was the point at we put on our hip waders and went to tie the boat to the barely-visible metal railing. The reason: The boat was in imminent danger of rising so high it would slip off the pilings it’s tied to and float away with the wind and the current. It happened to more than one person.
On October 29, 2018, there was water on plenty of floors. The tide wouldn’t have been all that high if the waning moon had been in charge of the weather, but the wind took over, reaching gusts of some 70 km/h (45 mph). The scirocco, or southeast wind, was what really brought the water home.
The media was flooded (sorry) with dramatic images of not one, but two “exceptional” high tides. “Exceptional” is the official term for any height over 140 cm above mean sea level (we got 156 cm at about 3:00 PM, 148 cm at about 11:00 PM). And, as Lino and I know from our experience ten years ago, 150 cm is the limit of the top step leading into our apartment. Therefore we had already gotten busy preparing our humble dwelling for this uninvited guest.
So the water came in but, in the time-honored way of the tide, it also went out. And I — along with everybody in the city at street level — can tell you that while “water on the ground” (as the common phrase here expresses it when the quantities of water are more modest) provides dramatic photos, water on the floor is tiring. Everybody’s next day was dedicated to cleaning up. Which is also tiring.
Because many friends have so kindly asked how we are (or, by this time, how we were), here is a little chronicle of the event as we lived it. There aren’t many pictures of the water outside our house because, as you’ll see, we had plenty to take care of inside.
It wasn’t fun, and of course it created major problems for vaporettos, ambulances, and other necessary boats which wouldn’t have been able to pass under the bridges. But the water here wasn’t anything like the monstrous flooding of the rivers devastating the Veneto region, where epic rain had filled some rivers, such as the Piave, up to 30 feet above their normal height. Bridges overwhelmed, roads completely impassable, houses drowned up to their second-story windows. Unlike high tide, flooding rivers kill people, so no wailing from us. Our water meant I had to dust and wash things I certainly had no interest in dusting or washing, but everything is back to normal for us. Out in the countryside, they can’t even see “normal” on the horizon yet.
The view inside was dramatic in a different way. Everything was either up on blocks, so to speak, or on the bed (which I won’t show because all the stuff piled up is just too appalling. And dusty. It’s been ten years since the last time this happened, and I had no idea how much dust there was under there).I usually watch the top step at the front door to gauge the height of the water, but Lino showed me an entertaining new way to keep track: The tiny triangular brick in the wall across the street. That brick is exactly at 150 cm. So I watched the brick. Not much else to do, all the chairs were up on the table.We opened the door, not because we’re so hospitable, but because the water would have come in under it anyway. On the right side of the doorway is the metal frame which was installed to hold the well-known panel intended to keep the water out. You notice there is no panel (it’s up on the sofa at the moment). The first time we used it — which was also the last time — the water didn’t come under the door, it came through the wall under the kitchen sink, and up through a fissure in the floor. This time it didn’t come through the wall, so we learned our lesson.Meanwhile, as the water is spreading across almost our entire apartment floor, one can only wait for the tide to turn. There’s a difference between resignation and acceptance. When you’ve reached acceptance, having a coffee is the rational thing to do while waiting to be able to get back to normal.
The next morning, I had some errands to do on via Garibaldi. As I expected, what I saw wasn’t a scene of destruction and lamentation but universal enforced housecleaning. The Venetian bucket brigade, with mops.
While his son was busy with the water vacuum, Gianni at CityMedia got busy with the mop and a bottle of alcohol, which he said made the floor dry faster. Neat trick, wish I’d known that earlier. But I guess there will be a next time.The Coop supermarket was kind enough to clarify the situation for any early customers who couldn’t interpret the significance of what the employees were doing. The Italian version on the right-hand side politely added that they would be opening as soon as they could. Please do without your bag of potato chips and bottle of beer for a little while longer.At the pharmacy: Bucket and mop, check. Things up on plastic boxes, check. Soggy dirty mat at entrance, check. This would be the perfect moment to ask for lip filler, or to bring your little girl (or boy) to have a jolly ear-piercing.The video-rental and various photo-tasks store. When the machinery is okay, everything is okay. They almost certainly will have installed the electrical outlets up high. If not, they may be well planning to do it as soon as some electrician answers the phone.At the drygoods store, she wasn’t only wiping up the floor, but also washing the windows. I forgot to mention that for a brief, exciting interlude the ferocious wind brought a deluge of rain. It sounded like things were breaking outside. But this is her only, if toilsome, task; in the mountains there are still villages, isolated by masses of fallen trees and mudslides, which still have no electricity. They would love to be in Venice with only acqua alta.I like her spirit; she must be new around here. In fact, she is; this bar/cafe (which has no visible name) has been open only a little while.KirumaKata, another new shop, offers jewelry made of glass and also various ceramic objects. They’re very lovely. When I saw the barrier she had installed in front of the door (here we see only the frames), I thought, “Well, I hope that works out for her.” In fact, she told me that the panel keeps out water as high as 140 cm or so. After that — as our experience showed ten years ago — the water comes in however and wherever it wants to.Three days later (Nov. 1) is a holiday, so the banks are closed. Here on the Riva dei Sette Martiri, the Cassa di Risparmio left the front door unbarricaded, even though acqua alta is forecast for today. This shows either extreme tranquillity in the face of imminent inundation, or they’ve already organized everything inside really well.Towing a tree from somewhere to somewhere. Floating debris is a serious hazard to navigation, and there was plenty of it around after the high winds plus tide. Don’t think this is just somebody wanting to save on toothpicks.Needs no explanation.Nor this. The flat area is often used as an impromptu trash bin (seeing that there isn’t one as far as the eye can see, even if you use a telescope). In this case the border just floated on the surface of the water, and when the tide went down it left all this behind. Including the little bag of dog poop, because otherwise this wouldn’t be Venice.For the curious about the sanitation system here, I offer a rarely-mentioned note on acqua alta, at least at street- or canal-level. When the water is this high — which isn’t anything particularly threatening…..….the pressure of the tide makes it almost impossible for our toilet to do its work efficiently. After flushing, only a few teaspoons of water are left in the bowl, after a series of struggling, strangling, sucking noises from the plumbing. I add this information for anyone who might be on the ground floor someday during acqua alta and hears a noise that sounds like a hydraulic wrestling match. Also, I don’t use the washing machine till the tide goes down — I can only imagine it not draining at all and flooding the kitchen. Which would already be wet anyway, true, but I haven’t reached the point of WANTING water on the floor.
I promise that I will not transform this blog into the daily bulletin from the MOSE hecatomb.
But two days ago (June 14), at the last meeting of the council of ministers, the government did something so extreme — and indisputably necessary and long overdue — that I want at least to make it known.
They abolished the Magistrato alle Acque. An entire government agency with 500 years of history is no more. Yesterday it was, today it is not.
Beginning in October, its responsibilities will be “absorbed” by the Inter-regional Director of Public Works of the three contiguous regions of the Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Trentino Alto Adige.
Of course this is good, but I feel sick at heart. Not only because of the annihilation of one of the last tiny links to the Venetian Republic, but because a gesture of this magnitude shows all too vividly the extent of the rot.
People who occasionally had to request a permit for temporary use of a certain stretch of lagoon have long been aware that the Magistrato was as swampy as Reelfoot Lake. It wouldn’t have been the first city agency whose functionaries accepted the occasional guerdon for speeding up the processing of requests. I’m not saying the employees of the Magistracy did such a thing. I’m just saying that if they did, they wouldn’t have been alone.
The MOSE work has made the tides stronger and faster, which has affected plants, fish and, I presume, also birds. But the floods of water are nothing compared to the floods of payoffs.
The Magistracy of the Waters was established in 1501; it was specifically charged with overseeing the health and security of the lagoon, and any action required — digging, land reclamation, maintenance — had to have its approval.
Care of the lagoon required care of its tributary rivers, too. Venetian engineers diverted the Po River, for God’s sake; between 1600 and 1604, innumerable men with shovels and wheelbarrows cut Italy’s greatest river at Porto Viro and turned it southward. There were many reasons for this, some of them political, some economic, but it was also time to limit the amount of sediment that was filling up the lagoon. The Venetian Republic knew that the care of the lagoon was its primary life insurance.
“Lagoon” (laguna) is a Venetian word, by the way.
But the Magistrato was populated by many individuals who were not all of the same stripe, and in 1678, human nature having demonstrated its impressive dimensions, the Venetian Senate created a group of inquisitors to conduct the legal cases against those accused of having damaged the lagoon. There must be some diabolical hothouse somewhere that causes little tiny crook seedlings to sprout, then sells them to the Magistrato alle Acque where, in its own special microclimate, they can flourish and grow to be big tall leafy crooks.
In fact, I now learn that this is the third time that the Magistrato has been “suppressed,” as the headlines put it, though it’s the first occasion where the reason was crime.
In 1808, during the brief but eventful French domination of the city (1806-1814), the Viceroy Eugene Beauharnais put an end to it, for reasons I haven’t yet discovered. It didn’t take long for it to become evident that this was an error, the neglect having contributed to an assortment of watery damage. When the Austrians took over for the first time (1816-1848), they quickly re-established the Magistrato, reorganized it, renamed some departments, applied a coat of varnish and it was good to go again.
In 1866, when Venice and the Veneto became part of the new nation of Italy, the Magistrato was annulled again, and again a series of hydraulic disasters showed what serious consequences could come from indifference to the state of the waterways.
The Magistrato was reformulated for the third time in 1907 as part of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, and its authority expanded to cover the entire hydrological basin of northeast Italy — an enormous watershed of rivers, lakes, and other lagoons stretching from Mantova to Trieste. Total area of its authority was some 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 square miles). So when we talk about the misfeasance of the Magistrato, we’re not talking about some little local entity that turned out to have just a few bad apples.
I very sincerely hope that Cuccioletta and Piva, in their respective cells awaiting trial, are happy. Because I’m not, and neither are a whole bunch of other people.
This is a relatively recent lion, and he looks like he’s had more than enough of all this.
I suddenly realized that when I was proposing the going-away party for the boy — clothes, but possibly also food, because he must be really hungry by now — I didn’t mention the frog.
That was an oversight. So here’s the plan.
First, the frog would be freed.
Second, he would be given a large pile of small- and medium-sized rocks to throw at the boy.
Third, he would be given a hundred things his heart might desire, from the unlisted phone numbers of Charles Ray (sculptor) and Francois Pinault (collector), to his own private estate with tennis court and helipad in the Great Moss Swamp, to a date with every winner of the Miss Humanity of the Netherlands pageant. And a huge party at the Waldorf-Astoria for freed dolphins, liberated dancing bears, wounded hedgehogs, rehabilitated slow lorises, and birds whose owners accidentally left their cages open. He’ll also have his own smorgasbord with all the beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, and Purina Frog Chow he’ll ever want. And a trampoline. And a pony.
Lino spotted this gull because of his little identification anklet. Maybe he’s in the bird atlas by now, with a number if not a name.
While we’re on the subject of animals, here’s something you might find interesting. More than 240 species of birds spend at least some, if not all, of their time in the Venetian lagoon and immediate vicinity.
An article in the Gazzettino announced this fact along with the notice of the publication of a new atlas of birds, the result of five years of data-gathering. For the record, the title is “Uccelli di laguna e di citta’ – L’atlante ornitologico del comune di Venezia 2006-2011,” written by Mauro Bon and Emanuele Stival, ornithologists of the Museum of Natural History, published by Marsilio.
Of these birds, 142 species come only for the winter, 115 come to nest, and about 60 are migrating. If you stop and read that over again, I think you’ll be respectfully amazed. In fact, the lagoon is at a crucial point on a major north-south flyway, and is one of the largest lagoons left in Europe. It’s far from being just scenery.
Even though I’ve never seen them, I now have learned that there is a Hungarian royal seagull which arrives in the fall, and spends the winter in the Giardini Reali between the Piazza San Marco and the lagoon. And there is an extremely rare black-legged kittiwake that comes from England.
The Little Egret, which is abundant in the lagoon, doesn’t mind looking for a bite wherever the chances seem good, though they seem to be happier pecking through the shallows when the tide is low. There is a tree near the Vignole which at twilight in the summer is almost completely white with the egrets who’ve come to perch there for the night.
I was already interested in birds because rowing around the lagoon at all hours and in all seasons means that you see plenty of them. For one thing, they’re everywhere. For another, they’re generally easier to see than fish.
Some of the birds I’ve come to recognize are as much as part of Venice as canals and tourists. The svasso (grebe) and tuffetto (little grebe), only appear in the winter. The cormorants, mallards, seagulls, egrets and herons are here all year. I’ve already gone on too long about my passion for blackbirds (a few months per year), and I’ve never bothered to mention pigeons because there’s nothing worth saying about them. They are the roaches of the avian world; they’ll be here pecking around and crooning after the last nuclear device explodes. I am prepared for hostile letters from pigeon-feeders.
There is one kingfisher who I watch for as we row behind the Vignole; all you can see is a flash of iridescent blue-green flitting through the trees and over the water. I wish he’d hold still somewhere just for a minute, but he’s not interested in being admired.
In the plush summer nights we almost always hear a solitary owl called a soleta (civetta in Italian), somewhere high in the trees in the Public Gardens. He or she makes a soft one-tone hoot, repeated pensively at perfectly regular intervals. It’s like a metronome, far away. It goes on for hours. It’s very comforting.
A young Little Gull, photographed in Northumberland. Maybe he’s thinking about his Venetian vacation.
For two days not long ago we were startled to see a fluffy young gull we’d never seen before, standing on the fondamenta gazing out at the lagoon. Determined research revealed that it is a Little Gull. We haven’t seen it since.
And one magical winter day a trio of swans flew over us. You hardly ever see the wild swans, but here were three, flying so low that I could see their long necks undulating slightly and hear a curious murmur from their throats.
Many of these birds depend on organisms and elements in the lagoon wetlands which exist because of, or are replenished by, acqua alta. If so many people who never leave the city didn’t get so worked up about having to put on boots, the water could continue to provide for lots of creatures who like being here too. Maybe your tourist or trinket-seller doesn’t care about the birds, but the birds probably don’t care about the Doge’s Palace and Harry’s Bar. Just saying.
A luscious look at acqua alta in the lagoon. A soaking marshy islet looks even better to a bird than it does to me.This is the single grey heron I’ve seen here, always fishing between Sant’ Andrea and Sant’ Erasmo.And of course the indefatigable seagulls. They look more attractive out here than plodding along the fondamentas ripping open plastic bags and strewing the garbage all around. Lino says nobody ever saw gulls in the canals, much less on the streets, when he was a boy. The same with cormorants, who we sometimes see fishing in our canal.
