Birds and wildlife: Lake Como wildlife - Bellagio, Lenno and Tremezzo

At the beginning of June I was lucky enough to spend a week with a group of friends at a villa in the mountains above Lake Como. None of us were drivers or wanting to drive along the very twisting narrow roads up and down the mountain, so we had to rely on public transport. This was not very frequent, to say the least, as the bus going down to Bellagio on the lake was at 10.00 a.m. and it returned to our mountain hideaway at 16.30 p.m. on every day except Sunday, when we had to travel in a taxi people carrier. Nevertheless, we managed to find some great things to do during our allotted hours by the lake - especially taking several ferry trips across the lake to some of Como's amazing villas and gardens.

I was also looking for wildlife during my holiday and during the week tried, unsuccessfully, to take photographs of the many swallows that were always skimming the surface of the lake. When I got back home and downloaded my photos onto the computer, I found that I had accidentally managed to get what I believe to be a swallow in this photograph that I took of the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio.

On the first day of our holiday we visited Villa Melzi in Bellagio, which is where I saw this blackbird with a beak full of worms - no doubt being collected in order to feed the family.

When I was sitting on a bench near the lake, this obliging sparrow posed for a short while on the top of the railings.

A dog lolloped down a set of steps that led into the lake. A mallard was swimming nearby.

Fortunately, the dog was only interested in the stick that it's owner had thrown into the water and the mallard survived to tell the tale.

On another day we took the ferry across the lake to a little town called Lenno. There I saw a waitress take some ice-cream cones (minus the ice-cream) down to a slip-way leading into the lake. She crushed the cones and the bits were then set on by a gang of hungry male and female mallards.

This lone mallard had just arrived and was wondering what all the fuss was about!

While waiting for the ferry to take us back across the lake to Bellagio, I saw a female mallard with seven young ducklings swimming around amongst the boats that were moored along the edge of the harbour.

Later in the week we took another ferry ride across the lake in order to visit Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo. There I saw this mallard couple. They looked as though they were in a cage, but the netting was only round the sides and the couple flew out after we had walked away from them.

The drake was hoping we would feed him.

..... so was his mate.

At Villa Carlotta there was a terrapin grotto.

The terrapins seemed to mostly like a crowd and seemed to be enjoying standing on one another.

No visit to the lake would be the same without seeing the obligatory gulls. These two were standing on a post and watching the world go by.

Here there was also another female mallard with her brood of growing ducklings.

Towards the end of the week the weather got very hot. Here two dogs are looking very comfortable, lazing around outside their front door, but seconds later they were up, running around and barking at some people that were walking along the road near their house.

Here a cat is having a lazy time under a flowering shrub.

It looked very comfortable.

All week I had been trying to take photographs of the little lizards that were running around in the garden of our villa, but I never managed to focus on them before they disappeared into the foliage. During our visit to one of the other villas, this obliging lizard posed on the path long enough for me to get a photograph of it.

And, as they say, you wait for a bus and then two come along together. Blow me, when I got back to the villa in the mountains and looked out of my bedroom window, I saw another lizard resting on the window-sill of the room below.

This is another photograph of the same lizard using the zoom on my camera.

There was a small pond with the statue of a boy in the front garden of our mountain hideaway. One morning I was having breakfast on the small balcony that overlooked the garden and I saw a black-and-white cat at the edge of the pond. At first I thought it was after the small goldfish in the pond, but it only wanted a drink - lucky goldfish!