Porto Santo Stefano overlooks the western border of the Laguna di Orbetello, perhaps since prehistoric times, a wintering place for birds arriving after long seasonal journeys. In the image (Didgeman/Pixabay), Cranes in migratory formation.
The species of birds that are most skilled at flying, before the arrival of the winter cold, can abandon their usual home to move to warmer areas, where they can live better and where they can find a greater quantity of food.
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The phenomenon does not concern warm temperate regions and their islands, where the climate, never too hot nor too cold, creates ideal conditions for a great variety of species and populations with a high number of specimens.
This is the case of those originating from the temperate zones of Asia, Africa and America, such as Madascar, the Galapagos and New Zealand, rich in specimens which, as they are sedentary, are not found in other parts of the world.
The birds native to the Mediterranean regions, which could not survive the rigors of winter and had to evolve into migratory species, move in groups, before the arrival of the cold, towards more livable destinations, for example, a lagoon.
In small groups or in large numbers of specimens, they fly in formations that often have a V shape and are organized with a bird leading the group and two lines that increasingly spread backwards.
Starting with favorable weather and favorable winds, they cross prodigious distances, crossing seas and oceans and moving from one continent to another: some species cross the Mediterranean twice a year, from northern Africa to Provence and vice versa.
Many birds fall, exhausted, into the sea or descend, with their last strength, to the coasts of Sardinia. Others, from Egypt, always return to the same places in Denmark, as has been observed, even for up to forty consecutive years.
After arriving in Porto Santo Stefano coming from Orbetello, the fitwalking path continues in the direction of the Tuscan ‘mainland’, which can be reached by crossing the length of the Tombolo della Giannella, near the village of Albinia.