The Swedish physician and bestselling author Axel Munthe settled in the 1890s in the small town of Anacapri. The city is located in the mountains on the Italian island of Capri, which was known for its beauty even in ancient times.

There Munthe built the Villa San Michele, a building that is at once eccentric and unique, as he himself had a good amount of these features. He surrounded the Villa with a garden decorated with pergolas, a cypress walk and antique sculptures. The facility is beautifully situated overlooking the Bay of Naples with Mount Vesuvius in the background on the mainland. Some rare mornings San Michele with its garden is floating in the air along with the seagulls, all nestled in the clouds.

Munthe was a great bird fancier and strongly opposed the hunting of small birds that were traditionally additions to the Capri kitchen. He managed to save many birds in the vicinity by purchasing Mount Barbarossa next to his property.

A few quotations from his The story of San Michele show Axel Munthe’s personal relations with birds. First, in a conversation with a lark migrating from Africa to the North in springtime: "Yesterday I picked up a poor little skylark, so exhausted from his long journey across the sea that he didn’t even attempt to fly away, he sat quite still in the palm of my hand as if he understood it was the hand of a friend, perhaps a compatriot, I asked him if he wouldn’t sing me a song before he went off again, there was no bird-song I liked better than his; but he said he had no time to spare, he had to hurry home to Sweden to sing the summer in." Another time Munthe wanted to be discreet in front of a pair of lovebirds:" For more than a week the flute-like notes of a golden oriole have been sounding in my garden. The other day I caught sight of his bride hiding in a laurel bush. To-day I have seen their nest, a marvel of bird-architecture. There is also much fluttering of wings and a soft murmur of bird-voices in the thicket of rosemary by the chapel. I pretend to know nothing about it, but I am pretty sure some flirtation is going on there; I wonder what bird it can be? Last night the secret came out, for just as I was going to bed a nightingale started singing Schubert’s Serenade under my window."

Örjan Rudstedt, nature recordist from Sweden, here presents birdsong in the surroundings of Axel Munthe´s Villa with recordings in April 2008 and May 2010. We hear the dawn chorus, the soloists of the middle of the day and the nocturne singers. Birdsong is sometimes joined by the authentic sounds of Anacapri – human clamour, mopeds and church bells. Orjan Rudstedt saw many more birds than those who sing in the album, but they were too busy to sing as they were collecting food on their way back to their breeding grounds further north.

Enjoy your listening.

To order the CD booklet  please send a mail to info@verdus.se