Francesco’s amazing journey nears Malta. Let’s hope he moves quickly along...

As concern mounts on the safety of protected turtle doves, which arrive in Malta towards the end of April, valuable information on the bird’s migratory patterns will be provided by one bird tagged in Malta back in 2017.

The incredible migratory journey of the Maltese satellite-tagged turtle dove – named Francesco – across the Sahara and the Mediterranean, can be followed online on a live map on BirdLife’s website.

But there are over 6,000 hunters in Malta who are currently allowed to shoot at quail. Hunting for turtle dove was stopped in 2015 when the bird was recognised internationally as a threatened species.

Now concern on the fate of turtle doves set to arrive in Malta is now growing due to the opening of the spring season – always a controversial derogation from the EU ban – despite concerns on the authorities’ ability to enforce regulations during the COVID-19 emergency. Various cases of illegalities have already been reported by BirdLife.

The situation may escalate as the arrival of turtle doves coincides with the last days of the Spring season on 30 April.

Francesco, a turtle dove tagged on Comino in April 2017, has been followed by Birdlife for the past four years. The bird started off this year’s journey back to a breeding area near Naples in Italy from Ghana on 13 March 2020, and has already crossed over Burkina Faso and Mali. When he arrived in Mali, he surprisingly turned 100 kilometres to the east, crossing the Niger river to spend some time in the Ansonge Menaka reserve, a game reserve in southern Mali near the Niger border.   

Subsequently he edged closer to the Sahara and in to Algeria. If Francesco follows the same route as in previous years, he will likely move to refuel in Tunisia before crossing over the Mediterranean in the last week of April. In fact, this is when we see the peak in turtle dove migration in Malta.   

The turtle dove has roughly following the same trajectory crossing two huge hurdles – the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea – including the Maltese islands which could be his resting spot as he migrates to Italy, as was the case in April 2017.

But the turtle dove is presently facing serious threats and its numbers have plummeted by 80% in the past 30 years, due to habitat loss from industry, development and agriculture along with hunting.

In June 2015 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) acknowledged the decline of the species placing the bird on the Red List of Threatened Species and listing the Turtle-dove as ‘vulnerable’. As a result, the Maltese government enacted a moratorium on the hunting of turtle doves during spring.

The satellite device attached birds like Francesco weigh only 5g and does not harm the birds. They transmit hits through the satellite system giving the accurate location of the birds and valuable information to ornithologists studying their migratory patterns.

The turtle dove is most common in Malta during spring while smaller numbers arrive in autumn. Turtle doves from Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy and Poland are known to visit Malta. Many migrants arrive at night, while some arrive in the early hours of the morning in flocks.   

In the past flocks to Malta could reach several hundred, and breeding pairs spotted in the Lunzjata valley in 1956 and 1963 were later killed. The hunting ban has seen more prospective breeding birds recorded but they eventually disappear within days of the opening of the rabbit hunting season in June.