Winged food
Bird-shooters are forever in the news in Malta, but few of the birds shot now are eaten. In the past, hunting birds for sport was only for the truly privileged. For everyone else, a bird in the hand meant the staving-off of hunger pangs and near-starvation for a few more days. Even before the advent of guns, ways and means were found to catch wild birds for food, because there wasn’t much else available to the poor by way of protein, except perhaps for snails scavenged from fields. When guns arrived, they too were for the privileged, a luxury unaffordable to those who could not even pay for a pair of shoes. Rural people were heavily dependent on any kind of wild bird they could find to supplement their meagre rations: turtle doves, garden warblers, quails, nightjars, Scops owls, short-toed larks, yellow wagtails, and even humdrum sparrows. Even as late as the 19th and early 20th centuries, all kinds of game-birds were sold at the Valletta market: two dozen warblers for one shilling, for example, or the occasional bustard for an extravagant 10 shillings. The birds were caught in quantity and then kept alive until they were needed for the table, there being no refrigerators. That is why catching them in nets was considered preferable to shooting them.
The historian Count Giovan’ Antonio Ciantar, in his Malta Illustrata (1772), describes how the pigeon-shooting season went on all through June and July. Hunters with guns took to the sea on boats beneath the cliffs, while beaters on the cliff-tops roused the birds from their nests and hiding-places. Ciantar also told of the practice of catching pigeons by climbing down rock-faces, disturbing the nests, and netting them. The risk to life and limb was a necessary evil.
There was an easier way to get pigeons for the pot, of course, and that was by keeping these notoriously prolific breeders in captivity. The next best way was to build a dovecote, or barumbara, as an integral part of the house – except that it wasn’t for doves, but for feral pigeons. Barumbara is actually a corruption of the Italian word columbara, or the Sicilian palummara meaning dovecote. This was a wall with little holes for nests, from which the pigeons could come and go at will. The birds were encouraged to breed in the upper section of the house, where four or five rows of nesting-places would be made in each of the walls. There might be up to 100 nesting-places in even a small room. These gave the household a ready supply of young pigeons, or bċieċen. During the hegemony of the Order of St John in Malta, the building of barumbari was encouraged. They were, after all, a ready supply of plentiful meat, and for free, in a protein-deprived society. There were heavy penalties for anyone caught disturbing dovecotes or trying to steal from them. The household records of many of the knights in Malta show that pigeon soup, pigeon tart and roast pigeon were part of the regular menu.
You can still see old rural dwellings today with just a few nesting-places for pigeons incorporated into the façade. Pigeon-meat supplemented the protein that came from rabbits, chickens and lamb, which was reserved for very special occasions. The 19th century saw a fad for the building of tower-like dovecotes that were not an integral part of a dwelling. In Siġġiewi there is one which is three storeys high, and which is covered with nesting-holes.
Though meat from pigeons must have been plentiful, given the ready supply, there was no waste or feasting, not even within living memory of those interviewed for this article. There were far too many mouths to feed for that kind of behaviour, and not enough other food to go round. One pigeon was made to go a very long way: pigeon broth was eaten with bread at noon, and then the meat was mixed with garlic and tomatoes and eaten with pasta in the evening. Only young pigeons were eaten – older ones were too tough.
Sparrows were trapped as they drank from water-holes in the country during the summer months. Elderly men we spoke to remember doing this on Sunday mornings with their fathers. Adult birds were released to breed again, and younger sparrows were taken home, plucked, cleaned and roasted or fried. Even the bones were eaten. Sometimes, the flesh was made into pies. Sparrow-holes were built into house-walls in the same way that barumbari were built for pigeons. The bird’s name in Maltese – l-għasfur tal-bejt – literally means ‘roof bird’ or ‘house bird’. Sometimes, stones in the walls around the house were hollowed out to provide space for sparrow-nests, or bits of old drainpipe, or gin and beer earthenware bottles with the bottom removed, were hung from the walls to serve the same purpose. Sparrow nesting sites were a planned part of the building, and not an after-thought.
The practice was not restricted to the countryside. In 1911, C. B. Ticehurst, who had stopped in Malta while on a voyage to Alexandria, wrote in an account of his visit that in Floriana “long earthenware bottles, with the bottoms knocked out, are put up under the eaves for (sparrows) to nest in.”
The practice of catching and eating sparrows was not peculiar to Malta. In England, France and Holland, sparrows and starlings were encouraged to nest in sparrow-pots hung about the house. The young were taken from the nests and eaten. These sparrow-pots were shaped like a woman’s breast, and a candid comparison between the two is made in the poem To My Well-Timbred Mistress (c. 1600) by Thomas Randolph, who describes that mistress as having “breasts like pots to nest young sparrows in”. She must have been very flattered.
Matty Cremona's pigeon recipes
Imported frozen pigeons tend to be very expensive, so ask around for a good source of fresh local pigeons. A good starting-point might be your vegetable vendor, or the person from whom you buy rabbits.