Critters of Ljubljana

Anne got herself a paper accepted at a conference here in Slovenia, so I flew down from Delft to see the sights with her. Ljubljana, the capitol, is very nice, and there is a huge park on the edge of town, called Tivoli City Park, which I visited this morning.

Right off the bat, there were quite a few crows, but not like any crows I can recall seeing before. These are hooded crows (Corvus cornix), with traditionally jet black heads, wings, and tails, but with ashy grey bodies.

There were also a bunch of Eurasian nuthatches (Sitta europaea), which look and act like the ones in Estabrook, but their song is different, and they have a prominent black eye stripe and “orangish” bellies.

There were also plenty of great and blue tits around, as we’ve seen is South Holland, but also some marsh tits (Poecile palustris), which I haven’t seen before, and which look a lot like the chickadees in Estabrook.

One of the coolest looking birds I saw was this lone Eurasian green woodpecker (Picus viridis) patiently waiting for someone in the top of this tree.

There are also red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) who have distinctive ear tufts that the American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) in Estabrook clearly lack.

Finally, there was even at least one jet-black squirrel, which I read is merely a melanistic variation.

That’s it for now, and if I see more, I’ll keep you posted