Mistras's pond and Sinis's peninsula

The Sinis's peninsula is a big area in the middle-west of Sardinia, rich of cultivated lands and rich of water: pond, rivers, streams and, of course, the sea.

Indeed Mistras's pond is really near the sea and it mades , with some others ponds, a big ecosystem with a wide variety of animals, mostly birds. It's possible to find many different species of birds in Cabras's pond, like seagulls, ducks, flamingos, hawks, cormorants, but also owls and barn owls during the night. Surely the king of the pond is the osprey, known as with its scientific name of Pandion haliaetus, a big hawk belonging to pandionidae family, that descends from the accipitriformes order, the same order of the Golden Eagle, for example. The osprey of Mistrass  isn't native of here, but they come from the nord Europe, probably from Germany, and every year they come in Sardinia to pass the winter, then in summer they get back to their lands in order to reproduce theirself.

I took many pictures of the osprey, but I've never taken ones taking off from a perch:

 In this sequence we can value the wings dimensions and the powerful of this Wonderful raptor. A mention goes to the camera, a Sony A99II with the Sony 300mm f/2.8 lens, a perfect couple for Wildlife photography, but that they aren't often consider from the nature photographers. In reality with this camera is possible to get beautiful sport or naturalistic photos, having at least 12 FPS wiht you in order to don't lose any shoot. The only problem, for me, is the shooting sound that often scare animals, like the buzzard that in general is very shy and wary, but if the Sony A99II had a softer shooting sound, it would be better, in fact for this reason I hope to buy very soon a camera with an electronic shooter, that is really silent, like the Sony A9 that it would be perfect for me.

In the following picture the osprey was eating a fish that it's catched before.

 But how I said above, in Mistras's pond there isn't only the osprey, but others birds too, like the following: a Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) and a Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)

In a place located more at North of the Mistras's pond, there's a little village, Putzu Idu, where it's possible di see this very nice double arc of rock. The rock itself is not good and quite Dangerous, indeed in some point has fallen down in the sea, so if you want go there is better to be careful. The photo is a long exposure took with some filters: a CPL, a soft GND and a ND1000 filter in order to get 30 seconds of shoot (fot this kind of photo I use a Nisi V5 system, that I find really useful). How you can see, the day was quite windy and the sea was really rough with the waves that came near us (indeed I got back home wet), so be careful, really.

Sardinia offers a lot of beautiful places where find the nature, but I remember you to respect Always the ambient and the animals, because we've already been making  many damages, throwing rubbish everywhere and killing animals without a reason, often only for fun, and I'd like that our sons can see these nature stuff in the future.

Italian version