The other day, the Minister for Transport told us not to expect a traffic miracle. He was only partly right. We didn’t get one traffic miracle. We got three.
The advantage of sitting in a car practically motionless for hours is that you get to look at things differently. Life is slowed down, and what usually passes by in a blur comes into studied focus.
Take butterflies. There are two reasons why these busy weeks of September and October matter. First, to even think of them while driving is to court a big accident, at any other time. These few weeks, however, are a chance to sit in a comfortable armchair in the middle of the road – not quite notebook in hand, but very nearly.
Second, this happens to be the best time of the year for migrating butterflies whose credentials include evocative names like ‘Painted Lady’, ‘Red Admiral’, ‘African Monarch’ and ‘Clouded Yellow’.
They also include colour schemes that you couldn’t make up. The Red Admiral, for example, is black with white trimmings and red bands. It also has two blue spots on the hind-wings.
Migrating butterflies may reach Malta in a sporadic trickle, but late spring and early autumn are the seasons for some very heavy traffic. By a lucky double coincidence, roads are an excellent place to observe them. Even the most colourful of butterflies do a good job of blending into the vegetation. The uniform backdrop of grey tarmac and sky is another matter.
On three occasions last week I found myself counting migrating butterflies as they flew south-southwest over the congested roads. I got low double figures, but a simple computation taking a given stretch of road as a sample yielded big numbers. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of butterflies chose the last week of September to fly over Malta towards Africa.
Because the life span of a butterfly is what it is, they will have been the descendants of the ones we saw flying north in May and June. Their grandparents probably hatched in North Africa in March. They spent the first weeks of their lives as voracious caterpillars and quickly metamorphosed into adult butterflies. They then flew as far north as their little wings would take them – in some cases up to Iceland, where the cycle of life made one more turn.
It took scientists in Britain a long time to solve the mystery of return migration. They have always known that Painted Ladies, for example, fly north in spring. What was hard to believe was that a tiny insect could somehow find the energy to fly back south in the autumn. Thanks to what is known as ‘citizen science’ – and that includes citizens stuck in traffic on Maltese roads – the puzzle has now been solved.
It is less easy to explain why butterflies so passionately prefer traffic to quiet roads. There is no question that they do. Wildlife author Patrick Barkham tells how, during the Second World War, military observers spotted a great yellow cloud of what they thought was poison gas drifting across the Channel. It turned out to be a mass of migrating Clouded Yellows. While I’ve never been so lucky, I know people who have seen the same in Malta.
On three occasions last week I found myself counting migrating butterflies as they flew south-southwest over the congested roads
It’s probably several things that come together at exactly the right point in time. The thing with butterflies is, they’re fragile. Only the most perfect of winds and weather conditions will avoid major disaster. On those auspicious occasions, they take off in their millions.
As do the protagonists of the second traffic miracle. Birds of prey are not quite the wimps of the avian universe. They are armed with tremendous beaks and talons and think nothing of ripping animals to shreds. And yet, in matters of migration, they retreat to the safety of numbers.
Many species of birds migrate on what are known as ‘broad fronts’ – that is, along no particular preferred route. Birds of prey, however, tend to fly along very definite lines, and in considerable numbers. In Europe, the best-trodden of these lines are Gibraltar, the Bosphorus and the Straits of Messina.
The last of these puts Malta on the ornithological map. Every year, and especially in autumn, flocks of birds of prey routinely make an appearance. Since the 1970s, birdwatchers from Birdlife have kept up a daily watch at Buskett throughout September. That’s because birds of prey love traffic so much that they even congregate in special bottlenecks.
The numbers can be impressive. On one occasion this year, a flock of 60 Black Kites was spotted at Buskett. Hundreds of birds in a single day is not uncommon.
My counts on the road last week were nowhere near that. Still, I did manage to tick a few species, and I even spent 10 minutes watching a Kestrel hover over the clogged artery that links Mosta to Mġarr. Once again, roads and traffic are an excellent combination. The first afford good all-round visibility, the second the time to sit back and enjoy the views.
The third miracle had little to do with roads but a lot to do with traffic. Last Tuesday night, 66 hatchling turtles dug their way out of the sand at Golden Bay and marched to the sea. It was all over in a couple of hours.
This was several miracles in one. Possibly my most terrible memory from childhood is that of a massive turtle (it must have been many decades old) having its head sawn off at Mġarr ix-Xini. That savagery turned to reason so quickly is a remarkable thing.
Second, turtles are not the most committed of parents. The female lays her eggs – at considerable risk to her own safety, it must be said – and leaves the rest to luck and a few million years of evolution. Even the sex of the hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the sand. Somehow, it all works.
Third, turtle hatchlings are small, tasty, and have many predators. It would be against the odds if even a single one of those 66 made it to adulthood. And yet a few probably will, and a process known as ‘imprinting’ will bring them back to Golden Bay.
The answer to that riddle is traffic. Mass hatchings like last week’s lower the chances of any one hatchling being eaten by a fish as soon as it hits the water. On such occasions, it pays to be one of very many. So much so that nature has seen to it that no one hatchling would manage to burrow its way out of the sand alone.
What’s the final verdict on traffic, then? A more adventurous writer like Desmond Morris would at this stage bridge the gap between butterflies, birds, turtles and humans. For my part, I’m happy to sample the divertissement in low gear and the knowledge that I’ll be terribly late for work.
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