Mike goes to Malta

Earlier this month Mike was over in Malta volunteering with CABS
to prevent illegal bird hunting and trapping.

See this excerpt from the report below from:
www.komitee.de/en/index.php?index

MALTA: Final Autumn Camp Report



In the course of the 3 week operation a total of 486 cases of illegal hunting were recorded. These included 23 directly observed shooting down of birds of prey, some of which were captured on video. In addition 24 observations or finds of protected birds, with what were evidently shot gun injuries, were registered. Four cases of illegal wader species trapping and the discovery of one illegal cage trap containing a dozen freshly-caught Turtle Doves were also recorded.

In the course of nightly mapping of illegal electronic bird lures, used by hunters and trappers to lure birds to their nets or shooting hides, 119 ‘bird callers’ were located. Between 15 and 30 September CABS teams registered a total of 286 shots after the afternoon hunting curfew imposed by the government

The final report from the CABS autumn migration camp - Operation SAFE HAVEN - is now online and available for download below. It includes all incidents and other observations made by our teams over three weeks and a short evaluation of the collated data. Our sincere thanks go to all 32 team and staff members from Bulgaria, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Malta, Poland, UK and the USA who contributed to the success of our operations. We hope to see them all back in 2010.

You can download a detailed report as pdf here simply cut and paste the link below:
MALTA_final_report_autumn_2009-2.pdf



For more information and details on how you can add your support visit : http://www.komitee.de/en/index.php?index

Migration.....

Well the birds are definitely on the move now.

This morning while drinking my tea in the kitchen I was able to witness a
fabulous sight.
Thousands of swallows taking a short break and sheltering from the rain,as best they could,on the electric and phone wires outside our guesthouse and all up and down the street for as far as I could see!








It was truely amazing.I have seen large numbers do this before but never so many.



























































They were coming in from all directions .These pictures really do not capture it but there must have been 4,000 or more.
Beautiful!


This year we have also the pleasure of seeing large numbers of Bee-eaters every day over the garden and over the past week this very special vistor here.....







Quite a few pairs and juveniles have been helping us to keep our wasp population down in the garden.









This one here was resident for 2 weeks outside the kitchen window eating all the wasps it could that were trying to nest in our roof!
Sorry wasps but we could do we these Red-backed Shrikes visiting more often!