I REALLY want to apologise to Marianne, for not answering her PM to me.
My answer is to reproduce it here.
I would like to become involved. A difficult job. But very worthy!
Here is the PM report..from Marianne....
BirdLife Malta Springwatch camp
Hi Phil,
We got home from Malta late Tuesday night, leaving the remaining volunteers to keep fighting the good fight on the Springwatch camp. Here's the promised PM about what it's like
The routine is essentially the same each day. We make a very early start (out at 5.30 am, before dawn) and spend three hours in the field, then back to the hotel for breakfast. Most people take a break from 9 am-2.30 pm, including lunch and a debrief, then the afternoon/evening session runs from 2.30 to 7.30 pm.
The group is divided into teams of three or four, each with a team leader - someone with a bit more experience at the camps and/or a Maltese speaker. The teams are regularly mixed up, though they kept Mr aiki and I in the same team throughout. Each team needs at least one driver and at least one birder. At least one person on the team carries a camcorder at all times.
The people on the camp while we were there ranged in age from late teens to 50s or 60s. There were more women than men, and more non-birders/inexperienced birders than serious birders.
What happens? The team drives to a particular spot and from there either surveys the scene from a viewpoint for the duration, or walks (sometimes good distances). All sightings of migrant birds are noted, in particular of raptors, herons and other larger birds, and the camcorder person should attempt to film any low-flying raptor for as long as possible - to catch the moment it gets shot down if that should happen. The teams are also looking out for signs of illegal hunting and trapping activity - people carrying or using guns in the close season, hearing gunshots, seeing birds with gunshot injuries (depressingly common), the use of electronic Quail or Turtle Dove lures, etc. Everything dodgy should be caught on film if possible as well as noted on paper.
Sometimes, when a rare bird is found in the evening, there will be a night watch through til dawn, with two shifts by two teams. This happened during our week when a Glossy Ibis roosted at the salt pans near the hotel.
The hunters quickly wised up that Springwatch had begun, and almost everywhere we went we got 'death stares' and abuse shouted at us. They also vandalised our watchpoints, there were two incidents of stone-throwing, and two guys were knocked down and their camcorder stolen. Through intimidation like this they are trying to drive away the volunteers, but the Birdlife Malta response is to keep sending teams (perhaps larger teams) to areas where bad things have happened. My own experience was that the hunters we met were basically cowardly, preferring to shout at us from a speeding car than make any direct confrontation, but that wasn't always the case.
The autumn camp, Raptorwatch, is apparently more chaotic, as it takes place during the open season when several species are legal quarry, so the countryside is full of legitimately armed hunters and the trick is catching them going after protected species.
We didn't see many birds during our stay - a good thing, really, given the fate of so many of the birds that do stop on Malta. The countryside is really astonishingly impoverished for birdlife. Nice resident birds include Blue Rock Thrush, Zitting Cisticola, Spanish Sparrow, Sardinian Warbler, Yelkouan Shearwater... migrants seen on our trip (not all by us) included Collared Flycatcher, Subalpine Warbler, Red-rumped Swallow, Alpine and Pallid Swifts, Bee-eater, Golden Oriole, Pallid and Montagu's Harriers and Lesser Kestrel.
It would be a mistake to have high hopes for this trip as a birding holiday, it's really all about conservation. That can be disappointing too, as the police force is so slow to respond (if they respond at all) that they will usually fail to catch the guilty party. BUT! it is impossible to quantify crime prevention, as one of the wise men at the camp said, and there's no doubt that the presence of the BirdLife volunteers across the Maltese countryside has a deterrent effect. The hunters we actually spotted might not often have been caught but at least they stopped hunting for that day and perhaps thought twice about going out the next day.
If you go, I would advise you to bring any and all spare optics you have (some of the volunteers when we were there had no bins, others had only rubbish ones), also still cameras and video cameras if you have them. Take warm and comfy clothes - those early starts are chilly - and strong boots for the walking. Most of Malta is limestone pavement so the walking can be quite hard-going. And don't go when an Icelandic volcano is about to blow its top
I probably forgot some stuff! Feel free to ask anything about it
I am writing blogs about it here -
http://robandmazza.blogspot.com/ and am writing an article for Birdwatch - not sure when it will be out though.
Best wishes,
Marianne (aiki)
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http://robandmazza.blogspot.com/
Hope you don't mind Marianne?
You did a GOOD JOB!!!!
