Birdlife Malta trustee Mark Sultana was quoted as saying that it is only the strongest turtle doves that pass over the Maltese Islands during their spring migration. Sorry, they don’t.

The strongest birds follow their usual shortest turtle dove migration route over the Central Mediterranean by flying from Cape Bon in Tunisia to Sicily, some 100km to the northwest of Malta.

Should these birds meet with a contrary wind during their spring migration, the ‘strongest’ make it to their breeding grounds while the ‘weakest’ are blown off their course.

Some of these species fly over Malta – our game birds. Any ornithologist worth his salt could have told you that.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.