The Spanish Sparrow (Ghasfur tal-bejt or ghammiel) can be seen all over the island, even along busy streets in towns and cities. People often put out scraps of food for them on pavements or back gardens.
But this was not always the case and sparrows were, until quite recently, a source of food for humans. A number of people found out how to "manage" them by providing places where they could nest so that they could catch the young and turn them into sparrow pie.
This practice dates back hundreds of years and in a number of old farm buildings one can see stones forming part of the outer walls into which holes were cut so that sparrows could nest in them.
Sparrows provided a welcome addition to kitchen tables in days of yore and hundreds were trapped in summer.
The trappers made use of a small single clap net over man-made water holes. The net was hidden in a small clearing next to the water hole. Dry leaves were placed over the net to camouflage it and the sparrows are trapped as they flew down to drink.
The water holes were topped up every day and the shrewd trapper used to dip his finger into it and taste it because rivalry between trappers sometimes resulted in salt being thrown into the water so that the sparrows would not drink from it but move on to a water source manned by another trapper. Sometimes trappers urinated in each other's water holes.
Old people who trapped sparrows recounted how they used to keep a few small stones handy and if a single bird went down to drink, they would flick the stone to scare off the bird. But because a very small stone was used, the thirsty sparrow used to sit on a perch close to the watering hole and wait until it perceived the place to be safe again. It was only when a few sparrows went to drink that the trapper pulled his net.
Sparrows were killed by bashing them against the ground. They were either plucked or skinned. Some people used to put them in warm water before plucking them to avoid having a lot of fine feathers flying about. The birds were either roasted or fried and eaten or the morsels of the breast meat were picked clean to make up the pie filling.
Considerable numbers of sparrows could be caught over water holes. The more nesting sites there were, the greater the numbers that could be caught. Taking into account the fact that sparrows have at least two broods a year with an average of four birds each, 10 nesting sites produced about 80 birds that could be trapped.
If one bears in mind that some people had in excess of 100 nesting sites, the amount of sparrows that were available was considerable.
Saver and his sister Lonza, who live in Msida and who have earthenware jars and holes in which sparrows still nest hung around their farmhouses, recalled that boys would get hold of a piece of stone and hollow it out with a pick axe to shape the nests in which the sparrows could nest.
Lonza recalled how her father spent Sunday morning trapping sparrows and when he caught 30 or 40, he would take them home and his wife would kill them, pluck them and serve them in pies or broth. Saver recalled that children often roasted them on twigs in the fields.
One can now find various shapes and sizes of such stones and some were cut out in such a way that enabled multiple nests to be built in them.
Such stones can be found on the very top of roof perimeter walls but may sometimes be found forming part of the exterior walls, between two and six courses below roof level. This shows that sparrow nesting sites were a planned part of the building and were placed there for a purpose, and not as an afterthought.
In most cases, people had no access to the nests, neither from the inside nor the outside of the house, as the hole on the outside was too small for one's hand to pass through and there were no openings on the inside. Hence the only possible purpose was to provide a nesting place so that the young could be caught once they fledge.
A tower-like structure in Msida, erected between 1550 and 1650 has a number of such nesting stones. Another farm house, also at Msida, dating back to between 1700 and 1750, also has a number of stones in which sparrows could breed.
A shallow depression dug in the rock that served as a water hole is still visible in the yard of the farm.
Stones in which sparrows could nest have been seen in a number of buildings in Birkirkara, Msida, Mgarr, Mosta, Naxxar, Imriehel, Siggiewi, San Gwann, Qormi and Zurrieq.
Earthenware gin bottles, with the bottom sliced off by means of heat, and sections of drain pipes with one side blocked, used to be hung so that birds could nest in them. Such a custom of providing nesting places was popular on the continent for starlings from the 15th century onwards. The nesting pots were called sparrow pots.
In 1911, C. B. Ticehurst, who had stopped in Malta while on a voyage to Alexandria, noticed that "in Floriana long earthenware bottles, with the bottoms knocked out, are put up under the eaves for these birds to nest in".
Sparrows were also shot in summer and hunters used to wait for them in their flight paths leading to their roosts and shoot them on the wing as they flew home in the evening. In places where they roosts were among reeds, hunters waited for them to congregate and fired two shots in quick succession, aiming at the top foliage where the birds congregated, and then picked up the dead and wounded birds.
By shooting and trapping sparrows, men literally killed two birds with one stone: for them it was an enjoyable pastime, a way to while away the time - and the sparrows provided them with something for the pot.
The sparrows are still using the nesting sites of old but the practice of trapping them has declined sharply. Sparrows are protected by law and people now complain about the bangs produced by bird scarers to keep sparrows away from vineyards.