The Nebrodi National Park is at its heart a huge and little modified beech and oak forest that rolls over a long ridge of high hills; it sits only a few miles behind San Marco d’Alunzio. A track from the town winds its way towards the Park boundary and we walk up it through scrubby fields, grazed by a handful of cattle and ponies. There are freshly burnt hillsides, presumably where the farmers try to halt the spread of the scrub and promote a fresh flush of grasses for their livestock to graze in the summer.

On a sultry evening we listen to two competing nightingales that give of their best from clumps of bramble and Sicilian broom; there are also cirl buntings, blackcaps, Cetti’s warblers and Sardinian warblers together with more familiar wrens, robins and blackbirds. Occasional griffon vultures cross the hillsides and the resident common buzzards pair put on a show. A brief view of a pair of Egyptian vultures is a good record as these are very rare in Italy today.

The butterflies are unspectacular with occasional wall browns, green underside blues and a single Queen of Spain fritillary and a few dashing swallowtails; only small whites are common. The flowers are diverse; the garlics and alliums are everywhere. Provence orchids are common throughout and now just being superseded by butterfly orchids. We find only a handful of Ophyrs orchids and perhaps Orchis brancifortii  which is endemic to Sardinia, Sicily, and southern Italy, although it looks very much like Orchis quadripunctata.

The edge of the Nebrodi, is where farmers tend the land quite brutally to beat back the ever-present broom and the wildlife appears to be doing quite well in the fresh pastures and scrubby margins.