Cold spell brings rare wildfowl to Malta

["david camilleri" <>]

Friday, January 4, 2002

< Cold spell brings rare wildfowl >

by Natalino Fenech

 

The cold spell in December brought a large number of waterfowl to Maltese

shores, including some very rare wildfowl.Three red breasted geese, a species of

geese that has never been seen in the Maltese islands before, were shot on December 20.

Two were shot in Gozo and one in Mellieha bay. The ones in Gozo were taken at

Marsalforn and Ghasri valleys.

 

Red breasted geese breed in the Arctic circle and Russia. A peculiar habit of

such geese is that they nest very close to nests of birds of prey such as

peregrine falcons and rough legged buzzards.

 

It is believed they do so for protection as gulls and other predators would be

less likely to venture close to their nests to take the eggs or goslings.

Red breasted geese winter in Romania and Bulgaria and they are accidentally seen

in other parts of Europe from Britain to Cyprus. But it is doubtful whether the

individual birds seen in Europe are wild birds or whether they had escaped from

some waterfowl collections or parks and joined other geese on migration, as they

are often known to do.

 

One of the red breasted geese shot in Gozo was in fact observed with other

larger geese before it was shot. A bean goose and two white fronted geese were

also shot from Malta shortly afterwards on the same day. Small flocks of geese

of up to 40 birds were seen that day.

 

A smew, a duck that breeds in the northern Taiga and which winters in some

eastern European countries, was seen at the Ghadira reserve on the same day.

Smews are fish eating diving ducks with saw-toothed bills.

The smew is a very rare visitor, last recorded in 1910, when three were shot at

Ghajn Tuffieha. Other individual birds were shot in 1864.

 

Several ducks, mostly mallards, wigeons, pintails, shelducks and shovelers,

gadwalls as well as teals were seen, some in considerable flocks.

Six tufted ducks and two red crested pochards were among the other rare ducks

spotted in late December. A number of swans were also seen. A flock of 13 birds

was seen. Unfortunately, although protected by law, several of the swans were

shot both from land as well as from seacraft.

 

Apart from wildfowl, another rarity was the occurrence of a small number of snow

finches. The only record of snow finch dates back to October 1970, when a single

bird was trapped in Gozo.

___________________________________________

This article may also be viewed at

http://www.timesofmalta.com/core/article.php?id=84415

==================================================== 

david camilleri

Please now go to < http://proaction.tripod.com/malta/ >

Why don't you join < http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Eurobirder > and

< http://proaction.tripod.com/team/

< http://www.MaltaTouristAction.org

---

Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to