Things Maltese People Like

The (new) bus system. Last July was the end of an era in Malta. A British company named Arriva took over and transformed and regulated the bus system in Malta (which we've been using to get just about everywhere). Before the teal bus takeover, Maltese buses were a tourist attraction in and off themselves. They were yellow and white with red piping and consisted of some bus models that were no longer in use anywhere else on Earth. Buses were shipped over to the islands throughout the decades and never left. Privately owned, they were detailed, repaired and altered however the driver saw fit. We were disappointed that the vintage carriers were no longer in place, but the locals are nothing but pleased. For the first time ever, there is an actual bus schedule, cemented routes, efficient vehicles. The island of Gozo has service 7 days a week. Tourists may buy nostalgic postcards and magnets and long for the old days, but Maltese people sure do like the new bus system.
Limestone. In the article about bird hunting that Merlin referenced, Jonathan Franzen calls Malta's archipelago "densely populated chunks of limestone." He's not too far off. Above is a quarry we spotted on a walk down to the Dwejra coast. The soft, yellowish rock was, for a very long time, the only building material available on the island. And you can see by any picture with a chalky khaki colored backdrop, it's still used all the time. Usually, when you walk through a European neighborhood that was completely rebuilt after WWII, you see a hastily erected lego land of concrete. Here, since limestone was employed, the new buildings blended in with the old ones. Even some of the ugliest modern apartment blocks have a timelessness about them, because they're made from the same rock as all the rest.
Light bulb trimming. These are more than just your average big bulb Christmas lights. They are full on light bulb size and they light the trimming of churches across the country. I'm sure they create very pretty silhouettes in the dark, but during they day, they add an idiosyncratic tackiness to some pretty beautiful buildings. Something about them reminds of me Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.
Naming their houses. Some memorable ones include Our Dream Home, Australian Paradise, God Bless USA and Love Nest. Most include the owner's name and, very often, a combination of names. For example, if a husband and wife are named Silvio and Marian, the house may be named Silmar. When all else fails, people tend to default to 'Madonnanina.'
Rattan door blinds. They are hung up over a majority of the doorways in Malta. I honestly cannot figure out why. I mean, there's already a door - why the second layer of covering? Maybe it's actually to protect the door from dust or damage? I did notice that during the midday break, many blinds were unrolled. So, possibly, it's the reverse of a welcome mat. When the blind is down, don't bother knocking.
Local products. Only 20% of Malta's food is domestically sourced. However, there's a huge appreciation for the products that are local. This specialty food shop on Gozo sold a plethora of products and the little stack in the foreground made up our purchase. Maltese capers, sea salt and lemon preserve. Menus specified if something was local, produce vans parked near bus stops and in town squares and you'd see people with grocery bags from the nearest supermarket stop to fill their fruit and vegetable needs with the little guys.
Butcher shops named after the butcher. This is a rare example of a name being grammatically correct. Teddy the Butcher. Usually, it went something like George's Butcher or Nick Butcher. It's like someone walked into these establishments that had been around forever and sold them a sign. Then came the task of figuring out what to put on the sign. I kept waiting for one to be open so that I could go in and ask if Teddy or George or Nick were there, but the timing never worked out.
This Land Rover. At first, we were sure we were seeing the same truck over and over. But when the colors began to differ, we realized that there are just an extraordinary number of old Land Rover Defender pick-ups on these islands. I'd never seen a pick-up Defender before and, at this point, I've seen about a dozen. I guess that's what you get from a former British colony.
Red phone booths. Speaking of Britishisms. A red phone booth, in which you can insert a prepaid card to make calls, punctuates the end of many Maltese blocks. When one happens to be placed next to a chalkboard reading "Steak and Kidney Pies," you really feel ye olde influence.

What The Heck Is Ftira?

Ftira seems like a simple concept, but it's not. And it might not even really be ftira.
Malta isn't a big place, and Gozo (the "other island" in the archipelago) really isn't a big place. But it's big enough to have culinary specialties, and ftira - or is it ftajjar? - is principle among them.
We journeyed all over this speck of rock, getting confused, finding clarity, getting disappointed and, finally, finding the best ftira on earth (probably). So, what is this thing? It took us a while to figure that out.
Ftira, we knew, was a Gozitan specialty that was something like pizza, but also different from pizza. But I'll get to that in a minute.
Trying to be good about tasting local specialties, we stopped - on our first noon in Gozo - at the Clock House restaurant in Victoria, in front of which was a blackboard advertising Ftira. There was a list of different options, and the waitress was very flattering when I ordered. "Ah," she said. "You've ordered the one that we order. That's the traditional Gozo choice."
Well, this is what I ended up with. A tuna sandwich. It turns out, Ftira is a little more complicated than I'd thought. The clockhouse wasn't being misleading.
This is the second ftira I ordered, in the seaside town of Xlendi, and probably the worst. The sandwich, at least, was flavorful.
So, here's the thing. Ftira is a specific type of Maltese bread - not Gozitan bread, but Maltese bread in general. So, sometimes, a sandwich made on Maltese ftira bread can be called a ftira. That's a country wide thing. But Gozo has a special kind of this bread, which is similar to a pizza. But a pizza with Gozitan ftira toppings - anchovies, olives, onions, capers and slices of potato - isn't really a ftira either. This was basically just a pizza, masquerading as something else. It was dry and uninteresting, with no sauce or cheese. I was beginning to think that eating ftira was a worthless experience.Here's one problem - what I was looking for is actually called ftajjar, but is listed on menus and referred to as ftira (or, even, pizza). Here's the first good one I had a slice of, at a place called (inauspiciously) Victoria Hotspurs Sportsbar and Pizzeria.
It had all the elements - a strange crust, all the traditional toppings and the thinly sliced potato, plus a generous drizzle of olive oil.
Just across the square, and even less outwardly appealing, we found Rizzle's pizzeria, which was attached to a sweets shop and sold a lot of deep-dish pies and green pea pastries called pastizzi (another local treat). In their window, though, were some excellent examples of classic ftira.
The crust is unleavened, but still bouncy and doughy. It's reminiscent, somehow, of focaccia or - as Rebecca noted - very thick eggroll wrapper. The texture is chewy and it oozes oil, almost as though it were fried.

We bought a small one and decided, at that point, that Rizzle's was the best. We almost decided to stop eating this stuff - ftira fatigue, one could call it.
Malta is often mistakenly thought of as somehow Italian. In fact, it's decidedly un-Italian, with its own language, traditions and feel. Much of the tongue and culture is more north African than anything, and modern influences are heavily British. The word ftira is actually Tunisian, and calling this stuff pizza, just because it's round and flat (and Malta is close to Italy), is an attempt at fitting something exotic into a familiar role. That's what had me confused at first, and what has every pizzeria in the country offering inauthentic "gozitan ftira."

Above, premade, frozen ftira sold at Jubilee foods, in Victoria.

So, what does a perfect ftira look like, and where can you find it?

On a sun-baked street, in the quiet maze of little Nadur, is the incomparable Maxokk bakery. Open for over fifty years, the little storefront initially baked and sold all kinds of bread, but then gave in. Their ftajjar was so popular that they decided to dedicate their whole business to it.

Run by a small old lady and a large young man, Maxokk sells ftira either cooked, and ready to eat, or "half cooked," designed to be finished at home. There are no tables, just a couple of benches under a tree in the square outside. There is pizza on the menu, but nobody orders it - everyone comes for the specialty.
And it is delicious. The potatoes are crisp and well cooked, the tomatoes are melted, the capers and anchovies add a perfect level of salt and brine. We ate our ftira in a reverent state, in awe. This was completely different than pizza or bread - it was a kind of heavenly, savory tart. This is what a local specialty should taste like: surprising, interesting, specific and confusing.

Megalithic Temples of Malta

If someone had told me that the oldest free-standing structures on Earth were in Malta, I wouldn't have believed them. Especially if said person was Maltese (I'm skeptical of hyperbolic national pride). But here we are looking at the megalithic temples of Malta, which legitimately do take the cake. Still standing after all these years, they are a thousand years older than the oldest Pyramid. The oldest and, arguably, most important of Malta's ancient temples is Ġgantija on Gozo (seen above). Imagine Malta, an archipelago in the Mediterranean of which Gozo isn't even the largest island, that far back in time. Metal tools weren't a part of their existence yet. The wheel hadn't even been introduced.
Many archeologists hypothesize that Ġgantija was built as a place for fertility rites. A number of excavated statues (in what positions, I wonder) support the theory. Ancient animal bones at the site suggest that sacrifices took place as well. According to Maltese folklore, however, a giantess erected the temples for her own private worship. "Ġgantija" means Giant's tower. Residents knew about the ruins long before it was paid any official scientific attention. French and German artists traveling to Gozo in the late 1800s depicted the not-yet excavated site. In 1827, the Lieutenant Governor of Gozo cleared the site of "debris." It was a partial excavation which probably did more damage than good and the temples sat, decaying for about a hundred years afterward. But a hundred years of hard weather ain't nothing for these guys. They were studied and cared for properly beginning in the mid 20th century and declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.
There are two temples in the Ġgantija complex. Encircled by a perfectly preserved wall, they were built in circa 3600 and 2500 BC, respectively. The older temple is actually better preserved and one can still see traces of original plaster. By all expert accounts, these temples are not just impressive by virtue of the fact that they were constructed at all, but more so because of artistic and architectural flourishes. In fact, the entire period of 3000 - 2000 BC is referred to as the Ġgantija Phase of Maltese history. It's an archeological point of reference in a history steeped country. And, yet, we walked around the temples completely alone.
In 1992, five other temple complexes in Malta were added to the UNESCO listing and it now reads "The Megalithic Temples of Malta," all of which fit into the Ġgantija era. Of the five, we visited two and they felt not only different than Ġgantija, but also different than one another. The Mnajdra temples have been covered by protective tents since 2009 - as is its neighbor the Ħaġar Qim temples. Unfortunately, this means that you can no longer see the sunset perfect in the doorway of Mnajdra's lower temple on the two equinoxes. The structure is perfectly astronomically aligned. However, protecting the structures is undeniably important.
The temples show signs of benches, tables, vaulted ceilings. Bowls, tools, moving stones and statues were found during a 1949 excavation - along with the requisite animal bones. The architectural design itself is amazing even to a layman like myself. Two different types of limestone were employed, one for the interior and one for the exterior. Small-stone corbelling supported the now-gone roof. Walls were built post-and-lintel with some pretty huge slabs of limestone. Some doorways are squares, some are arched and these pockmark designs look like prehistoric wallpaper. Each "room" has its own feel. The main altar is geometric perfection - so well lined that its image appears on the back of the Maltese euro one cent, two cent and five cent pieces.
A famous Maltese linguist suggests that the name "Mnajdra" comes from the Arabic word "manzara," meaning 'a place with commanding views.' I believe it. Mnajdra is coupled with the Ħaġar Qim temples by this simple walkway. An island floats out in the sea, shrubs are almost swallowed up by wildflowers. It is a beautiful place to worship, both for the original patrons of the temples and the rest of us, there to pay homage to the craftsmanship, skill and creativity of the ancient Maltese builders.
I wonder just how amazing it was to approach Ħaġar Qim from Mnajdra and vice versa with nothing but the beautiful Maltese landscape as their backdrop. Ħaġar Qim, though, severely needed the tent. These temples were made with a different, softer limestone than Mnajdra (globijerina, which flakes with age). The complex feels like a maze with a sort of hallway joining at least six different rooms. The spaces had different uses, according to the buried clues: pretty pottery, statues of obese women, animal bones. While this last one is a common finding, Ħaġar Qim appears to have been a particularly popular place for ritual sacrifices.
One of the things that makes all of the megalithic temples of Malta so intriguing and unique is the fact that not a single human bone has ever been found. Structures as old as these were always graves or burial plots. It gives the sense that the builders here really just wanted to create something for the beauty and communal purpose of it, as opposed to necessity or out of the human desire to honor one's dead.
Ħaġar Qim is ridiculously impressive and there is loads of information about every individual area. There's the fire place, the square reservoirs that collect rain and distribute the liquid down in a line, like an ice tray does when you tip it a little. A number of the pieces present are reproductions with the originals placed in a museum for safer keeping. You could walk around and try to spot everything in a book. While we were there, many people did just that. But it's also nice to just walk and marvel at the 17 foot tall, 57 ton slab of limestone set upright in the temple's facade. It is the largest stone of any in the megalithic temples of Malta.

Castle Hunting: Victoria Citadella

Tiny Gozo is dominated by its diminutive capital of Victoria (population: 6,500), which in turn is dominated by its old walled city, the Citadella. Set in the center of the island, on a rocky hill, the Citadella was, for years, home to essentially the only community on Gozo – a people terrified of marauders and pirates, afraid to leave the shadow of their capital’s walls. It turned out they had good reason to worry. In 1540, Ottoman admiral Turgut Reis captured the Citadella, razed the island and took the entire population of Gozo into slavery.

The castle remains, its yellow limestone a bright mass in the middle of town. From the top of its walls, one can see virtually the entire island. It’s a beautiful, green sight – a far cry from the horrors of the middle ages.

Malta has two main islands – Malta itself and Gozo, which is quite a bit smaller. While Malta was heavily fortified by the Knights of St. John, with massive castles, walls and coastal batteries, Gozo was left mostly exposed. Piracy was a continuous problem, before and after Turgut Reis decimated the place, and raids on islanders were common. In fact, until the late 18th century, there were no real coastal villages of any kind – almost everyone on the island huddled around the relatively safe Citadella.

A long list of peoples and rulers have captured Malta and Gozo, and settlements here are often defined by numerous architectural and structural influences. The hilltop where Victoria and the castle stand has been fortified since pre-history, when bronze age citizens used it as a watch place and may have built some wooden walls. The Phoenicians and Romans enlarged the fortifications, and some foundational aspects of the current structure date back to those periods. The kingdom of Aragon built much of the northern side of the present Citadella, while the town’s most prominent rulers – the Knights of Saint John – enlarged and gave shape to the rest, especially where the castle meets the town.

The Knights of Saint John, also commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller, were a strange, religiously based group of country-less warriors who were nominally attached to a hospital in Jerusalem. Dedicated in theory to the crusades, even long after the crusades were over, the militaristic arm of the group developed to protect pilgrims in the holy land during Christian occupation. After the fall of Jerusalem in 1209, the knights were a group without a home. They lived a semi-itinerant life on the continent and on several Mediterranean islands for centuries, never able to find a real place to settle, relying mostly on kindness from a group of Christian monarchs to survive. In 1530, after being pried away from Rhodes and spending a last seven years on the move, the order were given Malta as a gift. Malta became their stronghold – the knights would reshape and rule the islands until Napoleon showed up.

Malta under the Knights faced threats from corsairs, North Africans and others, but the most important assailant of the early years was the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans during the 16th century had launched a powerful naval force, and were attempting to claim as many of the Mediterranean islands as possible, as well as land along the southern coast of the sea – it had been them, in fact, who had dislodged the Knights of Saint John from Rhodes.

Recognizing the huge threat, the knights undertook a huge fortification project that was centered around what is now Valletta. In contrast, Gozo was left mainly to its own devices. The fact that there were so few people actually helped the defense of Gozo – there wasn’t much to attack, and the knights considered the Citadella strong enough to protect the few people there were. It was a lonely, isolated place.

Turgut Reis (also known as Dragut)is a famous and beloved figure in Turkey – and an infamous, hated man in the rest of the Mediterranean. Born a Greek, he was himself captured and enslaved by corsairs as a child. After converting to Islam, he eventually had a long and (almost impossibly) eventful career in the Ottoman army and navy, becoming a master cannoneer and having various enthralling exploits. In the 1530’s he was installed in the somewhat humdrum position of governor of Djerba (in Tunisia), which was a little too boring for him – so he captured a few Genoese ships and went marauding on his own. It was then that he sacked Gozo. When he arrived, his force was met with almost no resistance, the Citadella was too poorly armed to put up a fight.

Turgut Reis returned to the Maltese islands twice more, after he had been promoted to Admiral of Turkey and Chief governor of the Mediterranean – both these later trips ended in defeat, and he was killed trying to take Fort St. Elmo near the Valletta harbor.

The Citadella began as a fortified town, with the majority of Gozo’s population living within the walls during the early medieval period. The fortifications that are visible now mostly date from after Turgut Reis’ sack, built up from 1599 to 1603 as the Knights of Saint John were expanding and solidifying their small kingdom.
Walking around the castle today is enjoyable mostly for the views. The buildings inside date from later periods – a church, a few fine houses (now mostly museums), a pretty little square. Interestingly, most of the space inside the Citadella has been left in ruin. As Gozo was being repopulated by people from Malta, the fortifications were considered strictly defensive and the new settlers built mostly outside the walls. There are still low walls, filled in with grass and cacti, where once stood small townhouses. The outline of streets are still visible, the place would feel eerie if not for all the tourists.
Visiting is fun to a certain point – but there’s not a whole lot to see. There’s no entrance fee, but all of the museums and shops are overpriced. The most fun we had hunting Victoria's Citadella was trying to get a decent shot of the front of the walls. Victoria, or Rabat as it's known to the locals (not to be confused with Rabat on Malta island), spills directly down from the old gate, and there's absolutely no way to get a clean line of sight up at the fortifications. To get the second photo in this post (the distant shot of mostly sky), we had to sneak into an office building and make our way out to a balcony through a disused space. Quite the adventure, but the picture still isn't great.

Quirky Gozo

This is Manuel Xerri. His grandfather, Anthony Xerri, discovered a cave beneath their house while digging for a well. Anthony stopped his digging when he hit the impressive system of stalagmites and stalactites - and moved onto another spot, still intent on finding a well. "Water was the most important thing," Manuel told us. Since then, his find has been carved out a bit more to make it walkable and visitable. Manuel, who grew up and continues to live in the house above, acts as guide.
Amazingly, there are two caves inside private homes in the little town of Xaghri on the island of Gozo. We only visited Xerri's. A buzzer at the entrance brought Manuel down and he let us in with all the casualness of someone who listed a washing machine on craigslist which you are there to inspect. Grandfather Xerri's framed portrait hung on an otherwise bare wall. Manuel led us down a very pretty, tightly wound spiral staircase, with his cordless phone in one hand and a laser pointer in the other.
What are you to do when giving a tour of your very own cave? Instead of the lengthy facts about how stalagmites and stalactites are formed and how old certain elements of the cave are, Manuel walked around pointing at formations that resembled animals. Above is a sheep. There was also a turtle, snake head, ostrich "or flamingo." There was a formation that English visitors had told him looked like a castle on a hill and a wall that resembled lava, according to Sicilian tourists who had seen real lava before. Xerri's Grotto was a hoot. You could imagine what it must have been like to grow up with this cave in your basement - carving them into figures like you would clouds. In just two days in Gozo, we've seen a trio of places that are equally impressive as they are quirky - and undeniably memorable.
The first was the village of Gharb's Folklore Museum. Set in a 300 year old farmhouse, it is the private collection (or "brainchild," as they say) of Silvio Felice. A man who seems to have obsessively collected as many tools of any and all trades. When we arrived, Gharb's pretty square was being torn up. They just got a big shipment of tiles from Italy and are in the midst of paving the street. The private museum was closed and, without a cell phone, we couldn't call the number posted on the door. Instead, we hovered, kicked at dirt and moped until the overseer of the construction telephoned Marian Felice - wife of Silvio Felice, whose collection it is. People on Gozo have been incredibly intent on helping us out at every turn.
Still in her gardening shoes, Marian gave us a full tour of the 28 room museum. The old farmhouse was impressive enough, but the stuff inside was remarkable. Each room had a theme, the blacksmiths room, the mill room, the "liquid candle" (wax) room. Above, a display case from the "baby Jesus making" room. Hey, its an age old craft. Not only did she know every nook, cranny and British biscuit maker in the place, she regaled us with stories of what Malta was like when she was growing up. When showing as a traditional black silk għonnella (a black cape with wide stiff brimmed hood) she told us how an old woman wearing one would push a baby carriage full of capers, marjoram and basil through her village every morning. Door to door she would go selling her herbs in Sliema "before all the buildings."
All her sentences ended with 'dear,' and every room was fascinating. From an ornate children's hearse to a room full of paraffin stoves to hundreds of molds used to make toys, the collection was impressive and all over the place. A much hyped Christmas crib (which I only later realized meant 'nativity scene') was given its own little room. There were loads of people at this particular depiction of Jesus' birth- near to a hundred tiny statues. Lights and music came on via a motion detector. As she spoke about the crib, the music and lights would shut off and she'd wave at the sensor. It was a bizarre addition to this awesome house of curios.
Before we left Gharb's Folklore Museum, Mrs. Felice told us where to find her (exact address) if we should need anything. One couple called her for help with medication once, another with a broken down car. We hoped that we'd have no disastrous need to call upon her, but appreciated the offer. When told that we were off next to nearby Ta' Pinu, the national shrine to the Virgin Mary, Marian gave us specific instructions to go the Miracle Room. Difficult to find, its door was pointed out to us in a photo of the interior of the basilica. When we arrived, we bypassed the prayerful visitors and made a b-line to the hallway behind the altar. The Miracle Room was a trip.
Framed letters, photos, casts, prosthetic limbs and locks of hair filled one, two, three hallways from floor to ceiling. A bent bicycle wheel punctuated a wall full of framed onesies. It felt like the inside of a very grim person's locker, lined with newspaper clippings about car accidents and photos of people in hospital beds. Being as this was the Miracle Room, we could assume that everyone shown had survived - which took a little bit of the grave edge off of things. Letters from around the world thanked "Il-Madonna ta' Pinu," to whom they'd prayed during their time of need.
Of course, the word "miracle" is relative. In the photo above, Beverley Bracken from Manchester, England writes : "Thank You Our Lady of Ta Pinu. You answered my prayers. I passed my Nursing Exams." A little bit of a stretch. Still, the rooms were absolutely captivating to walk through. What an amazing hodge-podge. What a quirky island, that Gozo.

The Worst Place to Be a Bird

This is a bird "hide." It's a blind in the Gozitan fields, where a hunter sits and waits for songbirds. These hides have dotted the Maltese countryside for centuries - they're part of the country's culture in a unique and peculiar way. They're also illegal. Most of them are now abandoned, but this one was definitely still in use. There we found a sun-faded office chair, a burlap "door" and wires stretching out to carefully laid "clap traps." On the board attached to the roof was a mirror, so that the hunter could see someone coming. We took pictures and left as quickly as we could - Maltese people do not like foreigners messing with their tradition.
It's estimated that, of the five billion birds that migrate between Europe and Africa annually, one fifth are killed or caught by hunters. That's a billion birds every year.
Malta sits at a crucial point both for migratory birds (in real space) and hunting law in the EU. Bird hunting in Europe is heavily regulated because of how serious the risk is to the winged populations of the continent. Already, most species of songbirds in Europe have been severely depleted - some (like the Song Thrush) have seen their numbers halved in a decade. Some of the problem is, of course, habitat change, and there are other factors at work, but the biggest one is likely hunting. Because these islands sit at such a perfect point on the migratory lane between continents, birds had always been plentiful in Malta, especially in the spring and fall. Now, even here, the numbers are dwindling.

Above, a small private collection of hunting paraphernalia.
A few years ago, I read a fascinating article in the New Yorker about European bird hunting, written by Jonathan Franzen. So interesting that I remembered a good deal of it, the piece specifically detailed bird trapping and shooting in Cyprus and Malta, two of the worst hotbeds for poaching (It's a great article, and you should read the whole thing - it's been reprinted by the Telegraph). We never saw any evidence of anything fishy while we were in Cyprus, though I was looking out for it, and so I began to suspect that maybe international pressure had begun to work.

In Malta, we first saw hides when we were visiting the Ħaġar Qim complex of ancient temples. A sign pointed them out, calling them "ancient" blinds, now disused. At the Museum of Natural History, we saw a dusty old display (shown above) about how binoculars and observation had replaced the shotgun and net. When Malta joined the EU in 2004, it was required to sign on to laws that prohibit most hunting - outwardly, the Maltese try to display piety.

Yesterday, walking through a built up village, I saw a young man scanning the sky with binoculars. It's likely he was watching for birds, but unlikely that he was bird watching. Spent shotgun shells litter the Maltese countryside. You cannot walk more than a quarter mile in the fields - I am not exaggerating - without coming across hides. Gunfire is far from rare. Hunting didn't stop with EU regulation. It's just illegal now.

In the beginning, the people of these islands hunted birds to survive. The seas were dangerous because of piracy, so fishing activity was limited. Water was scarce, agriculture was difficult. People ate rabbit and birds - namely pigeons and songbirds, which were species that stopped by the archipelago on their way between continents. Before the shotgun, it was impossible to hunt birds that didn't land.

Today, unlike in Cyprus and Italy, most of the hunting on Malta isn't done for food. Taxidermy is oddly popular, with many families trying to complete a full ornithological collection (this merlin we found in the Natural History Museum). But indiscriminate shooting is also a distressingly common problem, and often birds are simply left or buried. Limesticks, essentially twigs covered in glue, are rare here, because they tend to damage plumage or the bird. And Maltese hunters want their songbirds live. That's why they prefer traps - and why they've gotten so good at setting them.

This is the clap trap that we found near Dwejra, Gozo. It's difficult to see in the picture (not easy to see on foot either, until you're right next to it), but there are two long, rectangular nets set parallel to one another. When wires are pulled, the trap flops over itself, catching any birds in the middle. Live birds used to be used as lures, set out in cages to call others, but recorded birdsong is much more common now, and much more efficient.

We were actually quite nervous when we found this - even when there was clearly nobody around. In 2006, a conservationist was shot in the face and three BirdLife Malta (an anti-trapping group) vehicles were set on fire. The Maltese haven't embraced this particular part of EU membership.

Above, another hide, near Xlendi. This one was possibly still in use, though the traps weren't set out when we poked around.

The birds that are caught are mostly kept as pets, the hunting groups will tell you, or maybe sold for a small profit - something to give the rural farmers a little much-needed extra income. But this misstates the problem. Often, birds are caught indiscriminately, and unwanted species simply killed or left to die. And even if birds are caught and caged, a large percentage of them die quickly anyway. Wild birds don't do very well in captivity.

It's hard to say that another culture's traditions are wrong, and I'm certainly not against hunting in general, but it's sad to see this kind of needless killing and trapping. In fact, I'd be much more likely to give the Maltese a pass if they were eating the birds, like the Cypriots and Italians do. And even wanton, unnecessary sport hunting can be defended on some merits (the Maltese hunters associations call it a hobby, which is perfectly valid) if Europe wasn't coming so dangerously close to the extinction of so many of its songbirds.