Crossbill Guide : Tuscany, Italy

The Crossbill Guide: Tuscany is a thorough and practical guide for birdwatchers, naturalists and nature lovers. It offers background information, routes and site descriptions, plus tips on finding and watching all kinds of wildlife. Each route offers detailed descriptions of where to find wildlife and wildflowers. The book offers a mix of walking routes and car itineraries with stops and short walks. Although some are challenging, all the walks in this book are designed to explore the landscape and find birds and wildlife rather than simply covering ground.

This Crossbill Guide Tuscany (Toscana) covers the popular Italian region of Tuscany including the Tuscan Islands. The book covers the wildlife of the regions of Siena, Florence, San Gimignano and Pisa as well as less known sites that are great for wildlife – places like the Orbetello lagoons and the botanically rich peninsula of Monte Argentario and the Maremma Regional Nature Park, but also the Apuan Alps and the Tuscan part of the Apennine Mountains.

Altough the splendid landscape, villages and towns of Tuscany are world-famous, this region is less known as a wildlife or birdwatching destination. That ought to change. The varied landscape, ranging from pretty to jaw-dropping dramatic, boosts a tremendously rich flora and fauna. What makes Tuscany particularly attractive is its high biodiversity across all species groups. Tuscany has a wide range of orchidfs, a great selection of butterflies and mammals, plus a number of rare and restricted salamanders. And there are of course the birds. Tuscany supports a great range of Mediterranean specialities and a large number of wetland species, but also Alpine birds, which collectively make for a fine range of species.