Heat wave in Florence and most of Italy. Nothing to do but hide. And wait. Till it ends. Pant pant sweat sweat. Life goes on. 

On Saturday, before it got too hot!, Stefano and I went to the Parco della Piana to check on the chicks. But there wasn’t much to see…Most of them have clearly flown off with their families…

Luckily for us, though, there was one black-winged stilt family left: two parents and three chicks. Here is a photo I took of one of the growing babies (compare this photo to my previous one, see my June 5th post).

An exciting moment: at one point an egret landed quite near the chicks, and the stilt mommy went ballistic. Screeching like a banshee, she took off like a missile, landing with a loud thump on the egret’s head and doing her best to shove the poor bird under water. Over and over. Screech, scold, whackthump!, push&shove. Unbelievable. Stefano got some great shots of this fierce, one-sided battle (the egret quickly and wisely retreated to the opposite side of the lake…), whereas I got…well, none. Not one photo. Oh well. You’ll just have to take my word for it… 🙂

I’m trying to cool off now by watching a few silly videos…like this one: http://goo.gl/AXvmw Boy, I’d like to tell this guy to give up and let his cat sleep with him…That’s what we do…much less hassle! 😉