By Albert Fenech
If you go out into your garden or are walking around a public park, do NOT bother to search for to see or to hear the melodious singing of a Monticola Solitarius.
Great, many thanks for the tip – but what the heck is this?
Yes, I am a bird lover and I love walking around private and public gardens, to see them flying free and unhindered and hear their beautiful and melodious tweets and chirps. What I detest is to see them caged and therefore prisoners within the environment, tweeting for their freedom.
The Blue Song Thrush
And so, what is a Monticola Solitarius? It is the BLUE SONG THRUSH. “Monticolo” in Latin means mountain dweller and “solItarius” means solitary and so, why its name?
The Blue Song Thrush is a cliff dweller using cliff cavities to roost, nest and lay eggs and does not frequent low ground. There is a distinct colour difference between the male and the female because the male has a distinct and attractive blue plume colour while females are an unattractive brown.
That’s all very well for the male to plume itself and show off – but with human beings that works against it as does the beauty of its melodious singing – and the result is that the males are captured and caged and the unattractive and non-melodious females are left free and unencumbered. Better breeding opportunity for the still free flying males!
The female thrush
International travel writer Melanie Drury was born and raised in Malta but has travelled solo around the world several times and wrote of her perturbation of the plight of the male blue song thrush.
She wrote:
“The male sings a clear, melodious call that you can hear frequently from February to May and again in the autumn. Unfortunately, it is that very song which has threatened the Blue Song Thrush (Monticola Solitarius). Since 1971, this – the National Bird of Malta – is a protected species.
“There were days when people enjoyed keeping the beautiful blue bird in a cage to enjoy its melodious call. The young would be stolen from accessible nests to be raised in captivity, causing a marked decrease in the population. Despite protection by law, alas, this practice has not stopped entirely.”
Birds in Malta – the Blue Song Thrush is second row on the left
Known locally as “il-Merill”, the Maltese Blue Song Thrush, nests in rock cavities mainly in the western cliffs of Malta. It lays three to six blue-tinted eggs, with a pair sometimes having two broods in one breeding season, from May to June with a brief break in between.
The omnivorous bird grows to 20-23 cm long and has a long slim bill to eat worms, lizards, skinks, grasshoppers, as well as other insects and berries.
In 1971 it was declared by the Malta Government as being endemic to the country and because of its diminishing numbers was given Legal Protection and declared to be one of Malta’s National Emblems.
It may be endemic to Malta but it has a wide-ranging migration trend. Besides breeding in Malta and southern Europe it also breeds around the coasts of Sussex Cliffs as well as other areas in Britain but also in northwest Africa, central Asia, northern China and Malaysia.
Breeding haunts in Malta Cliffs
A well-travelled bird indeed, taking its beauty around the world.
And how does this link up with Sussex?
It is described as one of Britain’s best-loved bird songsters, found across Britain.
Unlike its more captured and caged colleagues in Malta, the bird is described as having perhaps the most obliging habits because of habitats in dense woodland (which Malta does not have), parks, hedgerows, and well-vegetated gardens but the rarely stray from cover and have a tendency to mainly inhabit south Britain.
Laying blue-tinted eggs
However, very, very said to see that the Blue Song Thrush is now a Red-Listed Bird and one of great concern throughout Britain with data indicating a steep decline in numbers in 1970 though a slight recovered was notices over the last ten years.
Did something happen to the bird throughout the world in the early 70s? In Malta in 1971 it became a highly protected bird and declared a national symbol while in Britain in 1970 it became Red-Listed as being in danger of extinction.
Near Seaford in East Sussex
Beachy Head and Seven Sisters in East Sussex
In Sussex it was classed that the degradation of both nesting and feeding habits had had a huge impact because of a vast increase in farmland, meaning less roosting and less food.
The natural remedy was to relocate to the cliffs of Sussex and away from human intervention and interference.
May it remain that way. The loss of such a bird as a result of human beings would be a world travesty.
ALBERT FENECH
Malta
