Statistics & Records

The interest for bird observation from the hunting community and the general public had increased in the last few years, whilst the technological progress had lowered the prices to purchase photographic equipment which makes good quality pictures affordable.  

Social media have thus became sources that are being used to take statistical data of sightings.

Every so often, new bird species are recorded from social media platforms, splits in the taxonomy order and genuine sightings recorded from the hunting community, which sightings are usually seen by a number of hunters whilst being out in the countryside.

As of 2024, there are 432 bird species recorded in the Maltese Islands, excluding hypothetical records. These are split in 'Sighting occurrences' and identified as per hereunder. 
 
In this page we have included a table of all the recorded bird species, their occurrence and the months in which it is best to encounter (denoted by 'o') and those other months that a species can be seen occasionally or have been recorded in the past (denoted by 'x').
 
Vagrant species have the number of known records listed in the 5th column, which also includes the latest date of known sighting. It should be assumed that the number of vagrants is far larger than what is denoted. However, the number of known records can be used for comparison between one vagrant and another.