National rarities committee - Malta : 1st report

Abstract

The Malta Ornithological Society (MOS) - now BirdLife Malta - was founded in 1962. Until then bird-watching was virtually non-existent amongst local people, in spite of the fact that there was always great interest in birds in the Maltese Islands. However, this interest was always manifestly expressed in widespread bird shooting and trapping, and in Victorian-style mounted bird collections. Unfortunately these relatively numerous private bird collections cannot be regarded as scientific and most of the specimens are not even labeled. Apart from this several specimens of birds which had never been locally recorded, or which are rare visitors and vagrants to the Islands, have been illegally imported along the years from various countries, mainly European and North African, some of which claimed to have been taken in Malta to fetch more money from collectors (Sultana & Gauci 1982). Furthermore sea hunting has become an increasingly popular past-time (for both legal and protected species) and hunters are often equipped with powerful speedboats that can take them many miles outside of Maltese territorial waters where they kill a wide range of species, both legal and protected. This has been identified as a serious conservation problem. The same is true for some fishermen, hailing particularly from the south-east of Malta who are also keen bird hunters. It is known that some of these individuals take their guns out with them while at sea and target protected species that happen to pass by. On many occasions they would be miles and miles beyond Maltese territorial waters, with the result that several specimens of rare or vagrant sea birds to the islands have ended up in local private collections, where although they are claimed to have been taken in Malta or just offshore, there is no data to prove this. Up to the 1960s, the compiling of records of rarities was mainly based on the birds which were shot or trapped. This continued to a large extent even up to the early 1980‘s, as until then very few local birds and some common migrants were legally protected. This meant that all the other species, including scarce and irregular migrants and accidentals could be shot or trapped at liberty and most of these ended up in private collections of stuffed mounted birds. Prior to the 1960s bird watching was only carried out for a period of a few years in the late 1940s and early 1950s by a few British servicemen who were stationed in the Islands (see Gibb1951; Roberts 1954). In the meantime MOS created a licensed bird-ringing scheme in 1965 with the help of the British Trust for Ornithology and as the Maltese member of EURING (European Union for Bird Ringing). Not only did bird ringing allow for scientific studies contributing to an international understanding of bird migration, but it also meant that licensed ringers recorded several rarities, mostly passerines, some of which are regarded as accidentals to the Islands. It was after this development that bird-watching started to be taken up by a few young people when they were attracted by bird-ringing to join the society as a means to study birds. In spite of this development the number of ‗keen‘ bird watchers always remained very low particularly up to the late 1980s, and to this date they still do not exceed thirty in number. A Rarities Committee has always formed part of the organisation since 1966 following the strict guidelines of, and being the Maltese representative of, the Association of European Rarities Committee (AERC).In the mid 1990s the Rarities Committee went through a metamorphosis, due to an increase in bird-watching, particularly offshore bird-watching.