The Calendar 2025 and the Whitethroat

April is the month of migration and there are few places like the small islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea to understand the magnificence of this phenomenon. Thousands and thousands of birds arrive here from Africa, exhausted from crossing first the desert and then the sea. The call of the islands is irresistible, for them it is a fundamental landing place to feed and rest before continuing the journey, for me it is the opportunity to enjoy an extraordinary spectacle. I am in Ventotene, one of the Pontine Islands. Among the dozens of species that pass through, this time my gaze is captured by a whitethroat, a small passerine that moves agilely among the flowers of a tree mallow. It searches for small insects at the base of the leaves.

The warm gray head appears large thanks to a sort of hidden crest, the eye is amber and surrounded by a white ring. The throat is white. On the back the broad red-brown margins of the dark wing feathers stand out… if I look in the field box it seems that I have guessed the entire selection of my watercolours: sienna and burnt umber, sepia brown, van dyck brown. Except for the white. That is a gift of the paper if you have the patience and the foresight not to cover it with colour. The whole scene attracts me. Those who know me know that I am not a fan of flowers, too bold and showy, they distance me from my beloved neutral colours. Yet the sight of that common whitethroat among the mallow intoxicated me and I gave in. I found in my palette the permanent pink, the manganese purple, the ultramarine violet, colours too long forgotten and I devoted myself to them, to the flowers, with patience, glaze after glaze to find the right colour. I made them protagonists, I searched with them for a balance of shapes and the right connection between the whitethroat and the mallow.

She is there in the posture I love the most, she glances at me quickly ready to resume her migration. April is her month and the month of all those species for which the world has no borders but only migratory routes and hospitable environments. Happy 2025!