The two main issues that have dominated the media so far this year, the reduction of public holidays and the inquiry into whether the army used excessive force to control irregular immigrants, do not even feature in the minds of the four people living a tranquil life on Comino.
Maria Said, 78, brothers Salvu, 54, and Anglu Vella, 57, and their cousin Evangelista Buttigieg have lived in Comino all their life and none of them would ever dream of leaving, even if offered a villa anywhere else. Ms Said went to Gozo a couple of times and found it "too noisy".
Salvu crosses to Gozo and Malta a little more regularly. But he too finds it too hectic. "Malta is just too noisy. Here, it is the silence that hurts your ears or the sound of the wind when it howls! Still, I prefer the wind than the hustle and bustle that many bring here in summer," he says.
Ms Said sat on a wooden box, opposite Kemmunett, cutting up shrimps to lace a fish hook. Veggie, as Ms Buttigieg is known there, and Anglu were with her, fishing for bogue.
"We would be better off eating these shrimps ourselves as we are not catching many fish today. But we can still make some soup with what we have," Ms Said says.
"In summer you won't see me here. It is just too noisy with so many boats and people. This is the best time of the year for us here. It is peaceful and quiet," she adds.
Theirs is a simple way of life, revolving around what nature brings during the four seasons. They till land and fish, and Salvu, a keen hunter, reminisces about the days before Comino was turned into a bird sanctuary.
"When I was young, whatever my father and, later, we used to shoot, was eaten. We never shot birds to stuff them here. We always shot for the pot. The only exception was perhaps in 1959 when my father had shot two pelicans. They were given to the Zammit Cutajar family as one of them was a keen hunter and they were the landlords here. But turtle doves and quail regularly went to the pot here," he said.
Salvu says that although the place is a bird sanctuary he and his brother should have a licence to hunt there as they live there all year round and would only shoot "a few quail and turtle doves on migration and perhaps a few woodcock in autumn".
"We are not the kind who shoot at everything that flies. We are well past that age now anyway," he said.
Because of the scarcity of game on Comino, eight years ago Salvu released some pheasants, golden pheasants and chukars so that they would start breeding.
The pheasants have not been very successful and there are still only around six pairs but in the case of the chukars the situation is a lot better and there are a good 300 birds at the moment. He also built a large pond, where two pairs of mallards breed.
Salvu walks around, trying to flush out a chukar to show how it flies. At this time of the year, they stick together in coveys of about 18 to 20 birds and as soon as one flies, the rest follow suit in a noisy flutter of wings. Later on they start pairing up and disperse to breed.
"Initially I wanted to rear them to have something to shoot. But now I sort of pity them and I do not want to see their population dwindle," he said.
Ms Said recalls times when the community on Comino numbered 80 people and included some people who had come to till land and live there from Sicily, where times were tough.
"I recall when we even had no electricity and no refrigerators. When my father shot a lot of turtle doves we used to lower them in the well to keep them cool so that they would last a little longer and we could eat them over a couple of days. Life was hard and there were years when the fields did not yield enough to feed all the hungry mouths. But I think we were happier, even though we had less," she said.
She recalls seeing quails coming in flying low over the sea and her father would send her to fetch his gun from home. "I used to be afraid of the gun but always fetched it for him when he asked. It was a means of getting us food," she said.
The police were always present, and one used to be stationed even on Kemmunett. He lived with his family on Comino and Salvu recalls in his childhood he once saw him catch 70 turtle doves in one haul with his nets.
Salvu says he could probably make it to the Guinness book of records on many counts but the distance he had to walk to go to school was certainly a record. "All I had to do was walk a few paces down the corridor. The class room was just next door to where I lived. I was the last one to go to school here. We had a Gozitan priest as a teacher and he was a strict disciplinarian. But I was always thinking about the catapult and catching birds rather than about what he was ranting about," Salvu recounts.
He recalls they used to graze sheep before they went to school. "Again, it was an adventure. Sheep were left to wander and we chased birds armed with catapults. We were brought up like that. There was no education on protection and all the things we hear today. I recall I had the first book about birds in 1972. In my childhood we had nothing of the sort," he said.
"When my father shot the pelicans it was my brother who had seen them and he had mistaken them for sheep and he went to try and chase them back to re-join the flock. When he realised they were large birds, he went to tell my father who was reluctant to go to see what they were because at the time there were a pair of wary cranes that were unapproachable."
In spite of his lack of formal education, Salvu is a self-taught mechanic and very good in mechanical engineering. His latest project is designing and making a remote controlled trailer for his boat so that he could call it down on the slipway when he returns from fishing. But birds remain his life-long passion and it is not long before his conversation drifts back to them.
"In winter, up to about 30 years ago we used to catch manx shearwaters from Kemmunett. We used to grill their flesh and used it as bait for bream.
"Starlings started breeding here in 1993 because I released several birds after they bred in my aviaries and failed to raise the young. They raised seven birds in the first year and 17 or 18 young the following year. They have been breeding here since but there is always the same number of birds that fledge and their population does not seem to increase. In winter we get a flock of about 10,000 birds but they start thinning out and by March most are gone," he said.
"I released turtle doves that I bred in my aviaries but they leave with others during migration and do not stay to breed here.
"A long-eared owl bred here and raised three young in May 2002. It had a nest in a pine tree but I did not want to tell anyone about it as I was afraid there would be more regulations or pressure on us here," Salvu said.
"I was digging up potatoes from fields at Santa Marija and I heard weird calls like cats at night. It was the first time I heard them. Then I fetched a torch and I went looking for them but their voice was ventriloquist and it was difficult to see where it was coming from. But in the end I saw one of the young birds. They had just left the nest. Then I saw the other two fletched young and the adults too. In the morning I went again and found the nest in the same tree. The birds had moved away but the area around the nest was littered with droppings, pellets with fur and bones," he said.
"We kept seeing them or hearing them from different parts of Comino for about a week and then we did not hear or see them anymore."
It is the first time that such an owl was recorded breeding in the Maltese Islands.
"Things have changed here. I recall cranes used to winter here every year. They used to be very wary and flew off at the sight of people and no one could shoot them. The biggest flock that settled here had at least 85 birds. I was still a young boy and I recall my father had killed one of them and we had eaten it. My father and uncles always shot a crane or two every year but now you hardly ever seen them anymore. Its flesh was not too good but we used to eat them. Things were different then. Flocks of plovers and lapwings used to winter here. My father's nickname was Il-Venewwa as he had a live lapwing. The only flocks you see these days are starlings and rock doves," he says.
"People who come here in summer say they are jealous because we live in peace. You have too much noise and hustle and bustle in Malta. We too have to work hard for a living but I am happier to live here than to live anywhere else," Salvu said.