Joe Zammit Ciantar

My father, Ġużeppi, was a hunter - a bird hunter, naturally. Hunting was in the blood of the Taċ-Ċiantar family, from Xewkija in Gozo. Ġanni, Salvu and Ġużepp - three of his uncles on his mother's side - were pasta makers and as well as the pasta factory they owned and managed until the late 1950s in Race-Course Street, in the heart of the village, they also cultivated large fields in the Tal-Barmil area, in front of Rabat cemetery, where they grew vines that used to yield hundredweights of grapes every year. They were hunters, too.

In the 1950s, besides hunting, my father repaired clocks and radios and stuffed birds - he was a qualified taxidermist. He used to earn more from taxidermy - which he practised with great love, art and devotion. I remember him taking very special care of the birds people from all over Gozo used to bring to him to stuff for them. He used to keep the treasured feathered creatures in our small paraffin-operated refrigerator, each waiting its turn to be skinned and eventually stuffed.

He used to explain to us, his children, how the work had to be done with great patience and attention, lest the skin be torn and ruined. There was a time when the artificial glass eyes needed in the final stage of stuffing a bird were not yet available - at least that was what we were told - and he used to paint convex buttons of different sizes according to the bird's eye size and colour. He used to cross over to Malta to buy borax which served to prevent the bird's skin from rotting and eventual decomposition. Later on, he would buy those beautiful glass eyes which made the stuffed birds look alive.

Once the bird was stuffed - with wood-straw around a thick wire that went from the head to the legs and beyond - he used to place it artistically posed on 'T' or 'L'-shaped branches that he used to cut from strong and long-lasting citrus or almond trees, fixed to a brown painted base, and then place them somewhere where we could enjoy them until each was claimed by its owner.

My mother was always lamenting about stuffed birds filling everywhere. 'Iva meta ġejjin għal dak ...?' (But when will they be coming for that ...?) was a very frequent moan of hers.

A-hunting we will go

But, as I said, Ġużeppi Taċ-Ċiantar, as my father was popularly known, was a hunter as well. And to practise this 'hobby' during the hunting season - was it all year round then? - he used to wake up early in the morning, go with his Matchless motorcycle to Xewkija in the Ta' Ħamet area - beyond the Victoria and Xewkija cemeteries - and walk the narrow paths in the fields that stretch between Xewkija, Xagħra, and Nadur, hoping to come up with some beautiful bird for stuffing or one that was good for eating. Quails and turtle-doves were more frequent visitors and in greater quantities in those days. We used to consume the meat of the birds cooked in wonderful tarts that mother loved to cook for us. Today, these are a treat of a past now gone with him - and her - and with the birds that today are very rare game.

I was never keen on hunting. However, sometimes my father used to take me with him. I used to enjoy the walks but not the waiting, nor the hunting. And I still remember, with nostalgia, the times when I used to grumble about getting my socks wet - socks and the lower part of my long trousers - with the dew on the long grass through which we stealthily walked in search of a vantage shooting place for the beautiful birds he craved to own in his collection of stuffed birds.

Once, I remember, he took me with him to Tal-Ferħa shop (near the old Leone Band Club, in Victoria) the owner of which also used to sell game birds, and from whom he bought a rarity for the Maltese islands: a very large goose that could have been either a honey or rough-legged buzzard. He was so proud to own such beautiful examples of birds that were rare migratory birds, among them the kuċċarda (ta' rasha bajda, as far as I remember father calling them and large herons.

 

Thou shalt not kill' - I killed a bird

Once he asked me to have a try and shoot a bird. I must have been 14 or 15 years old and clearly remember how hesitant I was, but I eventually consented.

'You would never be a hunter,' he teased me jokingly, as if to encourage me to the game.

We were somewhere in the fields that today form part of the race-course on the outskirts of Xewkija, on the way to Nadur. He gave me the gun and told me to aim at a house martin perching on the branch of a prickly pear some 30 feet in front of us. I can still feel the sensation of the heavy gun and my heart pounding. I remember aiming at the bird according to papa's instructions, and then - the strong kick-back of the fire-arm on my right shoulder when I fired. But, above all, I recall the cruel sight of the poor bird falling to the ground and then closing its eyes and dying in my hands. My father never learnt about my feelings of that disgusting experience. But I cried inside - and I hated myself for ever having killed a bird. I swore I'd never again touch a gun with my hands in my life. And I never did.

To date I still remember that extremely saddening experience when I find myself in the presence of a shot-gun.

 

The ornithological society

With the birth of the Malta Ornithological Society (MOS), the then president, Joe Sultana from Xagħra, invited my father to enrol as a member. He agreed and is considered as one of the society's founding members. From then on he began to interest himself in bird-watching. He ended giving up and hating hunting. And in his last years in bed, listening to radio programmes on all the stations that had opened since 1987, he used to break into tears whenever he heard listeners talking and arguing in favour of hunting. He was a decidedly converted hunter and he died as such, happy to have given up hunting in favour of an appreciation of live birds.

 

The Sonnenberg experience

Back in the summer of 1983, I was attending one of those interesting 10-day courses held in the International House, Sonnenberg, then in the Federal Republic of Germany. One evening I was at table having supper and one of those attending the course, who was sitting at the same table facing me - Heinrich Schlunke - asked if I liked bird-watching. I admitted that I had never had such an experience and he asked if I would join him on a bird-watching walk in the woods surrounding the place the following day.

But the next day the heavens opened and we had a taste of what rough weather in the Hartz is like. And Heinrich, along with all of us, was confined to the Sonnenberg conference grounds.

He and I became friends and used to meet at meal times, go for long walks together and sit next to each other on coach-trips. We used to talk about everything: the course talks and discussions, our experiences - both being teachers, Germany at war and the Maltese, and the Maltese Islands which he wanted to visit so much. Eventually, he came to Malta some four times - on three occasions bringing with him a group of adults to whom he used to teach English in adult evening adult classes in Dusseldörf.

 

Maltese criminals

'Then you are not one of the Maltese criminals,' exclaimed Heinrich with a sardonic smile on his face to me, while talking about the bird-watching experience we missed.

"What do you mean?", I asked, stunned by his statement. "What criminals?"

"Malta is full of hunters. The number of Maltese hunters is second only to that in Belgium," he replied. "The Maltese hunters have been labelled criminals because they shoot all kinds of birds, all year round."

I was perplexed. Here was someone, standing in front of me, who was prepared to bombard me with information about a subject on which I was totally ignorant: hunting in Malta. I did not have any answers to either his accusations or the comparison he was making between Maltese and Belgian hunters. I had no idea of figures and statistics on the subject but at the same time I felt exceptionally embarrassed and offended. I felt I wanted to try and defend the Maltese as much as I could. I said I was afraid he must have got some very wrong impressions, because the Maltese are very friendly people. I tried to soften the bad impressions with every type of 'good' I knew about the Maltese.

It was then that he took me to his room and showed me a copy of a German publication which I still keep in my little library at home: Vogel 5, Year 14, (Kornwestheim, Germany), September-October 1982.

On the cover of this magazine was a picture of the national bird of Malta: il-Merill (the blue rock thrush, Monticola solitaries) perched on one of Malta's cliffs. The magazine contained a special eight-page article about bird-lovers and bird-hunting in Malta, illustrated with pictures of stuffed birds and birds shot and abandoned dead in the countryside.

 

The feature in Vogel 5

The feature in Vogel 5, started with a commentary by Dr Claus König, who stated that Malta forms an important stepping-stone for birds on the move. The birds cross over the Maltese Islands in spring and autumn. A couple of species were threatened by extinction because of what he called "senseless shooting of birds on some of the Mediterranean islands". Dr König expressed his fear that the extinction of the Eleonorenfalcon (Eleonora's Falcon - Falco eleonorae) could have been caused by this uncontrolled shooting and suggested that further damage could be prevented if there was international coordination among bird protection societies.

At that time - it was stated in the feature - there were about 400 organised bird protectors in Malta who were fighting alone against more than 20,000 hunters. Although the German Society for Bird Protection had helped in the establishment of the bird sanctuary at Għadira, and some laws enacted by the Labour Government in 1980 intended to improve the situation, there was still a lot to do. It was then recommended that the Maltese population be sensitised towards animals and their rights.

In 1978, the MOS had been successful in obtaining a declaration of the Bird Sanctuary in Għadira, near the popular sandy Mellieħa Bay, as a protected zone. This was followed by the creation of small ponds and the erection of a bird-watching place financed by the Malta Bird Reserves Overseas Committee of the UK. It was towards this project that the German Society had contributed DEM60,000 (around €25,000).

Heinrich was a bird lover, and knew that Germany had subsidised the MOS project at Għadira.

 

The Sagħtar experience

The MOS national magazine Sagħtar is widely read all over Malta and Gozo. At that time, besides being a member of the Editorial Board, I was also very actively involved in the production of the magazine and we used to borrow the costly colour separations to reproduce on its cover.

MOS was by then the publisher of, among other material, two books about Maltese birds, J. Sultana and C. Gauci, L-Agħsafar, Malta 1979, and id. A New Guide to the Birds of Malta, Malta 1982, both of which included colour plates reproducing drawings by Rodney Ingram (who died only a few weeks ago). I had already made use of the colour separations of one of these plates for the cover of Issue No. 80 of Sagħtar in June1981. I had no problem borrowing another set of separations for another issue of the magazine in which I would reproduce the translation of a letter given to me by Mr Schlunke together with some of the pictures published in Vogel 5. MOS president and fellow teacher Joe Sultana would immediately help.

This happened in issue 98 of Sagħtar in November 1983.

There was a reaction to the letter by Heinrich Schlunke and the pictures from the German publication from three teachers who swore they would not distribute the magazine Sagħtar in their schools any more.

Sagħtar is educational and it stands for 'life'. We, on the Editorial Board, believed that we had a mission to foster in our children and readers, a great devotional love for nature, and especially birds. We had embarked on a programme - and this we were following in many ways, especially with articles by Alfred Baldacchino, Guido Lanfranco, and others - publishing literature accompanied with illustrations and beautiful photographs of flowers, plants, trees, reptiles, butterflies, insects and birds, and the environment in general. All this was, and is still, inculcating in our thousands of readers a love and appreciation of nature. We used to include - nay, fill every little corner available with - all kinds of slogans encouraging readers to stay away from drugs, refrain from smoking, learn to say 'no' to cigarettes and drugs and also not to touch birds' nests and to treasure nature. We also published the Charter for the Rights of Animals, then scholarly translated by Prof. Oliver Friggieri who regularly writes the monthly magazine's editorial.

People who believe in Sagħtar and its educational potential always praise the editorial board's efforts, stand by its policies, and encourage its members to carry on.

One of the people who always expressed great esteem for Sagħtar and cared to show his feelings about it was President Emeritus Dr Ugo Mifsud Bonnici. When I was forming part of the liaison officers' pool in his office while he was Education Minister, he used to care and would pass encouraging remarks such as 'Qegħdin tagħmlu biċċa xogħol tajba!' (You're doing a fine job). He really believed in Sagħtar.

 

The trophies of the past

My parents spent their last four years with my sister Marija and her family, a few hundred metres from the home in which we had been brought up in Sannat Road, just in front of the Dominican Sisters Mother House, in Victoria. During these years, rarely did any of us go to our former home, where my father's collection of stuffed birds - trophies of his youthful hunting days - lay in a large mahogany showcase. And there they remained, untouched, for who knows how many years in an empty house, glaring at each other in the darkness of the landing where they had been diligently placed years and years earlier, waiting for their second death.

When our parents passed on - my father in 1994 and my mother in 1995 - we did not succeed in saving more than one or two of the once beautiful and skilfully stuffed birds. Apart from the dust that had gathered on them, moths and silver fish had infested most of them and we had to take them and 'put them to rest' at the dump site on the outskirts of Xagħra. I felt so sad about this; my father would have enjoyed seeing them appreciated in our homes. And I felt a broken heart for them, and for him, because of this. But who would keep those trophies reduced to straw, and pieces of featherless decayed skins of birds?

I had, in those days, spoken about them to Frank Psaila, then permanent secretary in the Gozo Ministry. I asked him if the Ministry would take them and place them on show in the Gozo Folk Museum, in the Citadel.

'No, Joe, we would not. It is not nice. We are for conservation. Besides, many tourists - especially those coming from Germany - hate to see stuffed birds, even in museums.'

I did not dare say another word. I imagined Heinrich Schlunke, there, in front of me, smiling. And in my conscience I heard a mild scolding. My mind was telling me that once these birds had been stuffed, and so long ago, there would have been no harm in finding a place for them where they could be enjoyed as part of a traditional hobby.

"No, Joe, they would be an encouragement for future young potential criminals," was Heinrich's reprimanding statement.

And so the trophies of my father's hunting days ended up unwanted and condemned, because they were a threat to their fellow and future similar species.

 

Home sparrows for clay pigeons

Some 35 years ago, when my children were still young, my wife and I used to take them for walks in the fields around Santa Luċija (in Malta), where we live.

One evening, as we were taking our usual path that led to Gudja, we were barred from continuing on our way. A man stopped us and told us it was dangerous. We learnt that there were several hunters on training in a large area nearby; they were squatting by a rubble wall, waiting for a bird to 'be let free' and were then shooting at it.

"We have no clay pigeons," I was told. "But what kind of birds do you have in those cages?" I asked.

"Għammiela, (house sparrows), was the apathetic response. "They are harmful pests, especially to farmers," the person who had approached us continued, in a sort of apologetic excuse.

'And what do you do with the dead birds?' was my instantaneous immediate question.

"We fry them, and eat them."

At home, instead of throwing away the left-over bread, I put it in the garden for the house sparrows and other birds - among them a regular annual visiting Robin Redbreast - to come and feed on!

 

Hunting and politics

I do not agree with those who label politics as dirty. But I hate the politicisation of national issues such as health and education - and also bird trapping and hunting. I think, and sincerely believe, that there are certain values regarding the latter that should be safeguarded by one and all, by both sides of the House, by all men of good will. Whatever derogation on hunting was obtained with Malta becoming a member of the European Union, I believe that today we are mature enough to appreciate birds alive - remembering that many of are, at this special time - Spring - flying home to nest and breed.

Let us decide that, above everything else, the birds that nest on the Maltese Islands and those that come to visit us at some time of the year or other, are wonderful creatures we can, we should and we ought to enjoy watching alive and free.

Voting 'No' in the forthcoming Spring Hunting Referendum will give us more countryside to enjoy but, above all, give freedom and life to OUR birds.