Many animals have found a hospitable place to live in the city of Venice. Partly because here they can find the ravines and niches that the surrounding environment cannot offer: swifts, starlings, pigeons, bats and others find refuge in attics, between the tiles of roofs and in cracks in the walls of the houses.
Gardens in Venice, especially abandoned ones, offer plenty of vegetation and hence food and shelter for many birds, such as the blackbird (Turdus merula), the blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) and great tit (Parus major).

For other animals, urban waste is a great source of food: the herring gull (Larus argentatus) and the black-headed gull (Larus ridibundus), but also rats. The city of Venice sits in the centre of a lagoon that is one of Europe’s most important wetlands in terms of the number of species and numbers of birds that winter, nest and stay in this area.

400 - 1000 - until today - rev. 0.1.8