First, keep things in perspective:

On a walk up and over the hills behind my home in Florence:

Walking home through the Giardino Orticultura, I stop to admire the Pinocchio statue:

I live on a beautiful avenue on the northern edge of Florence, and I have the enjoyment of looking out at a line of pretty plane trees that border the Mugnone, a “torrente” or what we would call a creek in the US. For the past few weeks, a few of the plane trees have been filled with a certain species of really noisy bird.

I know very little (nothing really) about birds and have no idea what species this is. But, they put on an amazing show!

Their presentation goes like this: first, thousands of them gather in one tree. They begin their song, which sounds like racket to me. All of a sudden, no matter what I have been doing inside, I realize they are at it again. This happens about sundown, or about 4 – 4:30 p.m.

They make a terrific racket for many minutes and then apparently someone sends a signal and they all stop their song. They fly away almost immediately, only to regroup a little later and begin the whole show again.

It’s interesting! I’ve been thinking of it as “rein bird games”, you know, like reindeer games? I don’t recall if this goes on all winter; I’ll try to pay attention to this this year.

At any rate, happy day after Christmas. Are you exhausted?

Almost every church in Italy has a crèche scene. I enjoyed seeing this one in a small church,
Chiesa di Sant’Andrea, in Orvieto. Located on the Piazza della Repubblica, it dates to the 12th century and is noted for its distinctive decagonal bell tower.

The nativity scene, which is called a crèche in French or presepio in Italian, is a representation of the birth of  Christ, which originates from late ancient and medieval traditions; the custom, initially Italian, of setting up the nativity scenes during the Christmas period is widespread today in all Catholic countries of the world.

I’ve seen a lot of crèche scenes, but this is the first one I’ve noticed with a field of sand. It makes sense.

Benozzo Gozzoli’s incredible fresco cycle in the private chapel, Palazzo Medici, Florence. My very favorite work of art in all of Florence!

These are not the best videos I ever made, but keep in mind that the painting is within a set of iron gates that are never open. I had to slide my phone thru the bars and film, while desperately afraid I was going to drop my phone inside!

No matter, this is one of my favorite Italian paintings! I’d do anything to photograph it!