Salina fountain

I photographed this 'fountain' at Salina at 7.30 am while on my way to Wardija. The water main that supplies Bugibba and Qawra could not take the pressure any more and broke down leaving thousands lamenting their misfortune on this hot summer day.

Ta' Ċenċ

I recently visited Ta' Ċenċ cliffs on Gozo. I spent only a few minutes there, just enough time to take a few pictures but it was enough to recall memories of July 1978 when I saw these cliffs for the first time. I was taking part in an outing organised by the Young Members Section of the Malta Ornithological Society which I had joined some months before. I knew that we had gone to Gozo to 'see' the Cory's shearwater but I had no idea what to expect. On arriving at Sannat, the small quite village next to Ta' Ċenċ, we walked towards the cliffs arriving there at dusk. I remember seeing a couple of blue rock thrushes on the rocks and somebody pointed out a short toed lark flying overhead. We also saw some shallow depressions in the dust. One of the more experienced leaders said that these were made by the short toed larks to sleep in. This was all very exciting because I had never seen these things before but this was nothing compared to what we were about to see and hear. When it became totally dark we walked towards the edge of the cliff and soon we started to hear the distant crying of the Cory's shearwaters. The crying golouder as the birds got closer to the cliffs. Within minutes the distant solitary calls became a single cacophony orchestrated by hundreds or thousands of shearwaters screaming like lost souls in the dark.

After that memorable summer I kept visiting Ta' Ċenċ every year to listen to the shearwaters. I introduced many of my friends to these birds and although many had no particular interest in nature many of them say that still remember the visit and I am often asked to organise another one for them.
In the late eighties Ta' Ċenċ was proposed as a site for a tourist village. the plan was to build up the whole plateau The 'developers wanted to have two hotels, hundreds of villas and bungalows, a church, a golf course, scening lift on the cliff face and even a helicopter pad.

When the environmentalists, who at the time were few in number got to know about the project they were shocked. The project would have destroyed one of the most important birds areas in the Maltese islands. There was no time to loose. Nature and environmental societies got together and pooled their resources to stop this madness. They organised an all out campaign to draw the public's attention to the destruction that was being planned. The campaign was not easy. Most people had not been to Ta' Ċenċ and did not even know about its existence. There was little awareness about the need to protect nature and the environment and there were no legal structures which could be utilised to stop the project . The campaign was successful. After months of campaigning Ta' Ċenċ was saved but it seems that we have not learnt our lesson. Twenty years later environmentalists still have to campaign to stop attempts to destroy Malta's natural treasures while speculators are still nibbling away the last few remaining open spaces.

Cutting the Waves

A few evenings ago I joined a BirdLife Malta boat trip to watch the Cory's shearwaters. The boat left from Ċirkewwa sailing towards the southern coast of Gozo. Just to visit this area and seeing the majestic Ta' Ċenċ Cliffs lit by the reddish sun as it is about to dip below the horizon is already a beautiful experience. The shearwaters are an added bonus.
Shearwaters are medium-sized long-winged seabirds that fly on stiff wings by utilising the air currents formed above the waves with minimum active flight. They spend most of their lives at sea visiting land only to breed. Two species breed in the Maltese islands. The Cory's Shearwater (ċiefa) and Yelkouan shearwater (garnija). These two species of seabird have managed to survive in the Maltese islands because they nest in crevices in inaccessible cliff faces. They approach land only during the breeding season and when they do, they do so under cover of darkness. They start approaching land at sunset. They conglomerate in rafts on the water a few hundred metres from the cliffs. When it is completely dark they take off to search for the exact crevice in which their partner is brooding the egg or young bird. They spend a long time flying opposite the cliff face crying like a baby. A haunting cry like that of a lost souls or evil spirit.
We saw them coming when we were about one kilometre off the coast. They came in one by one flying straight to a spot on the water close to the cliffs. There they settled down in groups floating like ducks on the water. While flying in several birds flew very close to our boat eliciting several muted oohs and aahs from the other people on the boat.
What an experience to watch these superb fliers. They seem to cut the air effortlessly as if balancing on an invisible tightrope moving smoothly just above the surface of te sea.
A few decades ago this was a very dangerous time for them. Fishermen used to shoot them from boats just to take a few feathers from their underwing to use then to make a special fishing lure known in Maltese as rixa. These lures were replaced by plastic ones and the fishermen had no more excuses for shooting at these birds but there were others who were shooting at the shearwaters just for fun. Sometimes veritable massacres took place. These hunters (at the time nobody called them poachers) chased the shearwaters from fast dingies and after shooting them did not even bothering to pick them up. As far as I know these massacres have now stopped but the shearwaters are still at risk. The biggest threat probably comes from artificial light which forces them to abandon their colonies and desert them. Many breeding sites have been lost because of this.
These magnificent birds have survived for thousands of years in the Maltese islands and I just hope that they will be here for several thousand more.

Lady Theresa

I hope that I never have to meet Lady Theresa again. Its actually not her fault but the driver's because Lady Theresa is the bus I rode to get from Valletta to Paceville this afternoon. I suppose the proper name should be Leyland Bristol but I prefer to use the name Lady Theresa which was proudly painted inside at the front just above the driver. This chance meeting was the result of an instantaneous decision I took this morning after dropping my son at my mother's house. The morning trip to Valletta was fine. I do not even remember what the bus was like but the afternoon ride I will not forget no matter how much I would like to.
It was one of those box-like buses which was at its best fifty years ago. The driver was about ten years older than his bus. Slim, with long white hair and a black baseball cap. The first part of the journey was typical for such a bus, that is, very noisy and half the exhaust fumes entering the bus instead of polluting the road. When we reached Pieta the driver stopped in the middle of the road, got out of the bus and started offending somebody on the bus stop because apparently he raised his hand to signal for the bus to stop but changed his mind. Most of the people on the bus were foreigners and they could not understand what was happening. This experience seemed to have effected his mood and his driving. The next stop was at Msida in front of the old people's home where a nervous foreign lady who was sitting right behind the driver pushed the bell button twice. What a mistake. He turned around and shouted at her "I know I know. I am not deaf".
By the time we went past the roundabout his mood was even more lousy. An African man who was sitting at the back did not jump off the bus too quickly and by the time the bus started moving he was still fighting his way through more than a dozen bodies to the front of the bus. The other passengers asked the driver to wait and somebody even pressed the bell button. Another mistake. He again turned round and started to shout at this poor man "One hour you take". At least the driver was not racist and did not reserve his comments only for dark-skinned persons. From the next bus stop he started to urge the passengers who were getting off to hurry hurry. At the next stop in Gzira two wise Maltese girls with three young children decided to avoid his wrath by starting their journey to the front of the bus while the bus was still taking up passengers so that they would reach the front of the bus by the time it reached the next stop. The chaos this caused had to be seen to be believed. As is to be expected this brought about another tirade from the driver. This time it was "Hurry up. A million times I tell you to hurry up" but he wouldn't listen to them when they tried to explain that they did want to get off at that stop. While this group was getting off the bus a foreign lady decided that she too wanted to start moving to the front of the bus before it started to move. This time getting to the front of the bus was even more difficult as the lady was pulling a large piece of luggage behind her but before he had a chance to open his mouth with a fresh tirade she started screaming at him that it was all his fault because he sent her to the back of the bus when he should have allowed her to sit at the front. She was a real fighting lady but he fought back like a real Maltese patriot by shouting even louder at her to "shut up I want to work not talk" but her impact on him was dramatic. Of course he would. He had never been shouted at by a little old lady before. He became so depressed that he remained quite for the rest of the journey and decided to vent his anger by driving dead slow except when he was approaching a bus stop. There he accelerated and then slammed his foot on the brake throwing all standing passengers on top of each other. This part of the journey was so slow that by the time we reached Spinola Bay in San Giljan two other buses had overtaken us. No wonder the number of passengers has decreased so much and this man has his job guaranteed for the next ten years with the new company that will be running the new bus service next year!

Pigeon man

A young man who lives across the road spends most of his time on the roof of his mother's house. He keeps pigeons in a loft and lets them out to fly every evening. I enjoy watching them performing aerobatics as they go round and round in a large circle around his house. He is not the only pigeon fancier in the area which is a good thing as whenever you look at the sky you can see a flying bird a sight which I would miss because of the lack of wild birds in the Maltese sky.

I like it most when his birds fly low over ourhead. I often close my eyes to concentrate on the sound of their wings cutting the air. It is a beautiful sound that reminds of a much louder sound I once heard while visiting the Tour de Valat in France. One day we were taken to a spot to hear ducks flying overhead. When it was completely dark, we started to hear a sound like a strong wind in the distance. Within seconds the sound was right above us as thousands of ducks crossed from their feeding area to their roosting place. What a beautiful sound it was. It started like a distant hurricane and within seconds it reached full crescendo overhead. I do not know how long it lasted could have been seconds or it could have been minutes.

The sound of my neighbour's pigeons is not as loud as that of the ducks but during summer it provides a background sound during our roof-top dinners. I just hope that this young man does not decide to set up home in some other place as I would certainly miss his pigeons.

Sex on the Rocks

I got this set of pictures four years ago during a weekend in Gozo with my family. We were visiting a small freshwater pool at Dwejra. My intention was to take some photos of damselflies and dragonflies but as happens often in nature photography I ended up taking pictures of something totally unexpected.

I saw this beautiful male lizard sunning himself on top of a boulder. It looked tame and I moved close to it to get some pictures. Lizards on Gozo are tamer than those on Malta and I managed to get some beautiful closeups.

Half way through the photo session he was distracted by a female lizard that was passing by in the vicinity. He looked only once (it must have been love at first sight) and he left his boulder to follow her.

When he reached her he placed himself in front of her and started to show off his bright yellow throat. She must have been impressed by his display because she slowed down her pace.

When she passed by he ran after her and caught the tip of her tail in his mouth. She seemed to be ignoring him and continued walking. Sometimes he held placed his front leg on her tail to slow her down.

He then moved his mouth, one small bite at a time, towards the front part of the tail and beyond and continued until he was holding her from the abdomen.

While this was going on he was oblivious to the fact that I was taking pictures and three other people including two noisy young girls were watching him closely.

He then entwined himself around the female and twisted himself so that their genital organs were touching. He remained in this position for several seconds. When they were ready she continued walking in the original direction and he went back to his boulder.

The whole photo session took about five minutes but the actual courtship and copulation lasted less than a minute.

I had never seen this behaviour before and I have not seen it since even though I spend many hours every week in the countryside. One might call it luck but if you spend enough time out in nature you are bound to meet interesting situations.

Homemade Yoghurt

Yoghurt tastes good and is said to be a very healthy food. At home everybody loves it. Up to the end of last year we were consuming so much that that we were ending up with piles of plastic containers. I used some of them as pots for vegetable seedlings but at the end the pots still had to be thrown away. Furthermore buying so much yoghurt was expensive so I decided to try my hand at making my own yoghurt.

I found several websites with instructions for making yoghurt but they all required sophisticated equipment. I had no intention of spending money on such things but I found out that the principle for making yoghurt is very simple and once I understood that I realised that it was possible to make yoghurt very easily. Now I have been making my own yoghurt for more than six months.

Yoghurt is milk fermented by a certain kind of bacteria. The bacteria multiplies and does its work at a certain temperature and it does not like competition so no other bacteria is to be allowed in the milk during the fermentation.

These are my instructions for making home-made yoghurt:

Get a 1 litre glass jar with a tight-fitting lid and clean it thoroughly. Boil a little water in a small pan, pour the boiling water in the jar, put the cap on and shake it well to sterilise the jar. Throw the water away and pour small fresh plain yoghurt in it (one small container is enough). Warm a little less than 1 litre of long-life milk in the pan. The milk should be at a temperature between 43 and 45 degrees. I never use a thermometer for this -I touch the pan and when it is just about to become too hot to touch I remove it from the fire. Pour the milk into the jar, close the lid and shake it well. Remove the lid and place the jar in a warm place. I place it in the (electric) oven which has a very good insulation. Place a kettle full of boiling water in the oven. This will keep the oven at the right temperature. The yoghurt is ready six or eight hours later. Warm yoghurt is fantastic but it does not keep long so just close the lid and place in the refrigerator. The yoghurt should last for several days. I have never tested this because it always finishes in a very short time.
My method is very unconventional but somehow I always got it right. The milk used does make a difference. Full milk tastes better but is more fattening. Long-life milk gives better results. If you use the normal pasteurised milk I think you would have to heat it to a higher temperature and allow it to cool which I never do because I do not use a thermometer.

Once you have your first batch of yoghurt you can keep some for the next lot. To save time and energy I now produce two litres of yoghurt at a time and instead of boiling water in a kettle I time the process with the cooking of a pasta dish. I pour the boiling pasta water into another pan and use it to warm the oven.

I calculated that I am saving about Euro 200 per year and all it takes is about 5 minutes per week and a little planning.

Birds and Swans

Can somebody organise a course in basic ornithology?

Dragonflies are beautiful

Dragonflies are my favourite insects. They are fast, agile, colourful and have an interesting life-cycle. Despite the fact that in Malta we do not have many areas with aquatic habitats one can find a good number of species. The commonest is the scarlet darter which can be seen throughout summer wherever there is fresh water. It does not need large amounts of water and is quite happy near a drinking trough or garden pond.

Scarlet Darter

Dragon flies are voracious predators. They hunt smaller insects such as mosquitoes. They chase them and catch them in their front legs. They are extremely agile and have very good sight- their wings and eyes are in fact their most characteristic features.

Male Emperor Dragonfly

Pesticide-free Strawberries

Some years ago I bought some beautiful strawberries from a van at Mosta. After paying for them I popped one in my mouth and as I did so the lady who sold them to me screamed for me to stop.

Too late.

I had already bitten through it and realised that it had such a very bitter taste that I had to spit it out. I asked the lady whether the strawberries had just been sprayed with pesticide and she vehemently denied saying that her husband never sprays the strawberries but insisted that I should wash them thoroughly before eating them.

There is no need for pesticides but farmers have been brainwashed. They are convinced that without pesticides they would not be able to grow any vegetables. But their parents did not have pesticides and organic farmers are managing as well. I also can also confirm this because during the past three years I have grown vegetables on my roof without using pesticides.

Rooftop onions

A couple of days ago I harvested my first onions. I have neither field nor garden so I have to make do with growing vegetable on my roof. Three summers ago I started with a couple of cherry tomato plants. The following summer I increased the number of pots and containers and grew cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, beans red and yellow bell peppers, aubergines and strawberries. During that summer we had a homegrown salad every day. After summer I planted winter vegetables which included cauliflowers, broccoli, purple cabbage, onions, garlic, kohlrabi etc. I also planted about 30 strawberry plants which I had propagated from the three original plants I had in summer.

This spring we are already preparing salads using lettuce, cucumber and cherry tomatoes. In a few weeks time I should be harvesting more vegetables every day and I am already thinking about what I will be planting next autumn.

The caper flower

Last Sunday as I was taking pictures I decided to collect some capers from the plants that grow on the walls along the road at Chadwick Lakes. I was not the only person picking capers but I was probably the only one who looked closely at the flowers of this common plant. Perhaps it is the photoagrphy which makes me see things that others often fail to see as we have a tendency to overlook common and familiar objects, especially if they have a utilitarian value. The flower of the caper is one of them as although it is extremely common throughout the Maltese islands, few people are able to describe its flowers in any detail. Five minutes of close observation is all it takes to discover the delicate beauty of this ubiquitous flower.
The caper is a common plant found growing out of cliff faces and rocky habitats throughout the Mediterranean. It is also found on stonewalls and bastions which to the caper plant, are the same as a cliff face.
It grows in the form of a bush with fleshy round leaves which fall off during the winter months. Large white flowers, which can be up to six centimeters in diameter, appear between May and July.

The wild artichoke

The wild artichoke has several English names. This is probably because it is edible and has medicinal properties. It is known as the artichoke thistle, cardoon, cardone, cardoni, carduni or just cardi. In Maltese it is known as qaqoċċ tax-xewk but probably in different parts of the Maltese islands it has other names as well. It is the wild variety of the cultivated globe artichoke, what we in Malta know as qaqoċċ.
Wild artichoke is common in clayey areas and disturbed ground especially abandoned fields and roadsides. It is recognized by the large spiny leaves and also by the large bluish flowers. They appear from late spring to early summer so now is the time to go and look for them. There are many growing along the road that runs along the valley leading to and from Chadwick Lakes. You can get there either by going down a steep hill that starts from Rabat or else through a narrow road outside Mosta on the way to Rabat. The flowers resemble large blue-purple thistles. If you look into the flowers you should be able to find many small insects especially beetles.
The wild artichoke grows up to one metre high. The cultivated variety can grow up to two meters but I have not seen any higher than a metre in Malta. The globe artichoke is now grown widely especially around the Mediterranean.
About twenty five years ago I was watching birds of prey migrating at Cap Bon in Tunisia and the guard of the nature reserve shared his dinner with us. It consisted of a meat stew with the thick central part of the leaves of the wild artichoke which grows abundantly in the area. I have been thinking of trying the recipe since then but spring comes and goes and I have not yet got around to collecting some leaves. I will try to do it next spring when the leaves are at their best and I promise to write about it in this blog.

My Blogs

I have been writing about nature and the environment since I was in my teens. I wrote my first articles for the newsletter of the youth members section of the Malta Ornithological Society. When I started working I used my first salary to buy a camera and immediately started taking pictures, mostly of plants, animals and landscapes. After some time I started using these photos to illustrate my articles and I have not stopped writing and taking pictures.
In 1996 I started writing weekly articles about nature in the Times of Malta. The articles are still appearing every Wednesday in the Times. This blog will compliment these articles. Those who not read my articles in the Times have an opportunity to read my work here and those who like reading my Times articles should visit this blog as what I will be writing will be be complimenting these articles.
I hope you enjoy reading these blogs as much as I enjoy writing and photography.

Paul