Our walk this morning took us to the top of Monte Victoria, the slightly higher hill to the North of Monte Gibralfaro. Our route has recently been smoothed out and covered with compact sand. Access is now possible for child’s buggies, and unfortunately, electric scooters. Hopefully we won’t be seeing many of the latter.

Although these hills back onto each other, they are quite different in flora and fauna. Monte Victoria was also re-planted with Aleppo Pine back in the 1940’s but much of the hill is in it’s natural state with low scrub and olive, oak and carob trees dotted around. The lower slopes of the Southern side are built up, but still attract plenty of bird species in the gardens and on the roofs, like this Black Wheatear.

Local groups of volunteers have for years been looking after this important green space by regular litter clearance and planting and caring for a huge quantity of trees and shrubs. The hill now has a good population of mature Stone Pines, wild Olive and Holm Oak amongst others. The aromatic plants are all in flower, thyme, lavender, fennel and rosemary all do well here as do the wild asparagus.

Other resident birds which aren’t seen on our hill include Crested Lark, Rock Bunting and Blue Rock Thrush. I have seen many others in both the Spring and Autumn passages. Today the hill was relatively quiet, barring the Common Swifts and the ever present Sardinian Warblers.

This hill feels much better connected to the surrounding mountains and, notwithstanding the intervening motorway, Wild Boar regularly come over to root around.