Ugo Mellone holds a PhD in Biology and works as a freelance photographer specializing in wildlife and conservation. Combining photography and writing, he regularly publishes in magazines such as National Geographic (Italy and Spain), Nature, BBC Wildlife, and GEO, among others. He has been awarded in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and is the author of five books.
During his talk, he will discuss raptor migration and explain how the Mediterranean Sea, with its three great peninsulas and its location at the crossroads between temperate and tropical biomes, provides a privileged setting for studying bird migration. Together with the Sahara, it represents one of the greatest ecological challenges that long-distance migratory raptors must overcome to reach their wintering grounds.
This lecture will combine the results of more than twenty years of research on the migration of the short-toed snake eagle, Eleonora’s falcon, and the booted eagle — based on both field observations and satellite telemetry — with the author’s photographic work documenting the extraordinary biodiversity of the Mediterranean and the Sahara.
