Birdwatching in Patsch: Rosengarten nature reserve

Monika says: "Birdwatching in the Rosengarten nature reserve" I read on the Hotel Grünwalderhof's Facebook page. I'm interested. I sign us up straight away. A beautiful, cold May morning. We meet Mr. Ribis, the tenant at the hotel. As it turns out, he is also a qualified nature guide and will amaze and inspire us with his knowledge over the next hour and a half.

Rose garden... beautiful... We often walk there... You can also hear birds twittering - if you don't keep talking - and buzzards, red kites, crows and magpies can be recognized in the air. And of course blackbirds and starlings - I have a harder time with thrushes and finches...

After a few steps, Hansjörg Ribis stops and lets his professional camera click. On the display we see a yellowhammer shining in the morning sun and then we recognize it through the binoculars and almost with the naked eye. It goes on like this amazingly. More and more new names - juniper thrush, ring ouzel, mistle thrush, chiffchaff, nuthatch, red-backed shrike, crested tit... My head is spinning. I find out how you can hear a treecreeper and then perhaps discover it in its namesake occupation. Or how the jays' flight paths work when they fly down from the Patscherkofel. As the Rosengarten lies on a transit route for migratory birds, it serves as a resting place for many of them.

Clicking again and again, we are allowed to admire the bird on the display before we spot it. Finally I see something familiar. A crow! No: a raven. Sounds completely different. And then again. A pair of herons. Grey herons, we clarify. They're flying towards Italy... Oh yes... Hansjörg Ribis is too likeable and so we keep chatting instead of standing still, as he recommends, in order to reduce the birds' 100-metre flight distance. But we also learn about the landscape of the area, about extensively and intensively farmed meadows and much more.

Curious? My eyes and ears were opened to new worlds that morning."