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After more than a decade of regular occurrence, the first confirmed breeding of the Sacred Ibis Threskiornis aethiopicus in the lagoon of Venice (Italy) was observed in 2020, in three sites. The ibises nested in colonies with of one or more species of Ardeidae and Phalacrocoracidae. The colonies were on islets < 2 ha in size, covered with thick vegetation. Nests were placed on the top of bushes or trees, at a height of 1.5-5 m. The colony sites seemed not occupied by adults until the end of February - half of March; laying took place from early May, with hatchings occurring from the end of that month until July. Overall, 22-24 pairs nested in 2020. Birds were observed feeding at saltmarshes, freshwater wetlands and arable fields; a public garbage collection site was also used regularly. Given the high number of suitable nesting and feeding sites, a rapid growth of the Sacred Ibis population is expected in the next years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The singer Antonio Grimani is a case study of a musician bred to a Venetian noble family's service: he was raised in the remarkable palace of the Grimanis, a noble Venetian family of high rank (of the branch dwelling in the parish of Santa Maria Formosa), together with their noble scion Giovanni, which later mentioned him in his last will. The Venetian documents describe the musician as a baptized Turk. Quite probably, contacts of the Grimanis in Rome enabled him to went at the service of Giovanni Ciampoli, a well-known Florentine prelate and writer, and cheer up his convivial meetings with his singing and playing on the theorbo. Antonio Grimani he is cited in some letters which Ciampoli wrote to Galileo Galilei. In Venice the singer was a member of the ducal chapel of St. Mark's; in the meantime he was hired for the annual feste held in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and in some of the earliest Venetian operas. Outside the lagoon city, he participated to the Parma's festa of 1628 (again as a Ciampoli's protegé), under the musical direction of Monteverdi, that held him in high regard. In this occasion a letter by Ciampoli encourages affectionately a young unnamed musico who can be identified with the singer Grimani. Later he held the title role in Ermiona, the forerunner of Venetian opera (actually a tournament-opera) staged in Padua in 1636. Some letters by Ciampoli shows that Grimani traveled to and from Venice, Rome, and the smal towns in the Marche, where the prelate had been sent as governor, to remove him from Rome, having lost the favour of the pontiff in 1632. During 1620-30s, when Grimani was fully active, he was among the protagonists in transimitting some typical roles of Roman opera in Venetian musical circles. His last documented performance was in Cavalli's Giasone (1649), in which she played the role of the vecchia Delfa -- so that one can guess that he had already lost some of his early vocal skills. Grimani lived in Venice until his death in 1665. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008-2014 wader and seabird nesting pairs were censused along the 220-km long coastline of the NE Adriatic Sea, in the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions (NE Italy). Fourteen species were regularly breeding, with an annual mean of 20,610 pairs (±1553, 1 SD). The most abundant species was the Yellow-legged Gull (about 13,400 pairs on average, 65% of the whole population of the study area), followed by the Common Tern (1670 pairs, 8.1%) and Common Redshank (1525 pairs, 7.4%). The whole population of waders and seabirds increased with an annual rate, estimated with the TRIM software, of +0.8%, with a greater increase (+4.3%) if the Yellow-legged Gull was not included. Twelve species were stable or increasing; only the yellow-legged gull (-1%) and the common redshank (-2.4%) were decreasing. The populations of several species exceed 10% of those estimated for the whole of Italy; those of the Eurasian Oystercatcher, Common Redshank and Sandwich Tern are among the most important in the whole Mediterranean. On average, about 8860 pairs (43%) nest in the Venice lagoon, 6,400 pairs (31%) in the Po Delta, 5100 pairs (25%) in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia lagoons. Among nesting habitats, semi-natural (such as the fish farms) and man-made sites (dredge islands) make each year about 70% of the nesting pairs. Saltmarsh islets host large numbers of Common Redshank and Sandwich Tern, while along the beach zone the only abundant species are the Yellow-legged Gull and the Eurasian Oystercatcher. The major conservation threats observed in the study area were the erosion of littoral islands, the uncontrolled occurrence of sunbathers along the beaches, the vegetation overgrowth at dredge islands, the increasing frequency of saltmarsh submersion by high tides, the strong fluctuations of water levels inside the fish farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]