These past few weeks have been good for birdwatchers with two very rare birds being spotted and photographed.

Two great tits, of which there are only 16 known records so far, and a female ruddy shelduck, which has only been recorded 13 times in Malta, have been spotted.

A great tit was at Simar reserve at the end of last month while another was heard calling at Buskett a few days later. The one at Buskett was finally spotted and photographed by ornithologist Natalino Fenech, who also managed to capture the ruddy shelduck.

“A hunter, a friend who recently started taking photos, called to tell me that a rare goose, probably an Egyptian goose or a ruddy shelduck had been seen at Pembroke in the evening.

“I was lucky enough to see it and managed a few shots before it alighted on the coast not too far from where I was waiting hoping to see it. It then flew off and headed out to sea,” he said.

The last known record of ruddy shelduck in Malta was at Għadira reserve on November 30, 1995. One was shot at the White Rocks, Pembroke, on December 19, 1988.

There are very small resident populations of ruddy shelduck in northwest Africa and Ethiopia but the main breeding area of this species is from southeast Europe across central Asia to southeast China. Some occur in Sicily and Italy, as well as in Tunisia. Great tits, on the other hand, are found across all of Europe except for Iceland and northern Scandinavia and then across the Middle East, Northern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and parts of central Asia as far as Japan. In Malta it is a vagrant.

There are only 16 known records so far, two of them this year. The last record before these was a bird noted at Buskett by Michael Sammut in October 2011.

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