Where, when and how to enjoy bird migration
Bird migration is that spectacular journey many birds make. Some of these journeys are short – like coming down a mountain to spend winter in the lowlands – and some are seriously mind-bogglingly long. Whether or not you believe that the pigeon-sized Arctic Tern does a 70,000km round trip from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back in one year, the facts are there and undisputed. Of course, birds don’t take on these feats of endurance for fun or to wow us ground-bound humans. They do it to survive, to escape bad weather and to look for milder climates where food is plentiful. It’s a good strategy for survival but the journeys are fraught with dangers, not least some formidable geography, like the sea. Most birds cannot swim, so they avoid lengthy sea crossings. Many find a route strewn with islands along the way where they can stop for the night. And that’s where Malta comes in. Birds crossing between Europe and Africa find places like Malta a convenient motel where to crash for the night, so to speak. Happily for us nature lovers, Malta is on what we call a migration flyway. And that’s the reason no less than 400 species of birds have so far been recorded in this arid,...