Our Cranes
The national bird, perched proudly on every horizon.
Once, visitors came to Malta for the gulls wheeling over the Grand Harbour. Today they come for a hardier species: the tower crane, Gruidae industrialis, now thriving in record numbers across all three islands.
You will not need binoculars. Step off the plane and they are already there: a dozen of them at least, swivelling lazily against the blue, jibs crossing and re-crossing in a slow aerial ballet. They roost on rooftops, nest between townhouses, and migrate only when the project is finished, which is to say, rarely.
Each has its own call: the warning beep at first light, the long groan of a load swinging overhead, the cheerful clank of the hook returning for more. Learn to tell them apart. The luffing jib. The flat-top. The self-erecting model that appeared overnight where your favourite view used to be.
No trip is complete without a session of crane spotting from a rooftop bar, counting how many you can see at once. The current record is, frankly, all of them.
A protected species? Not yet. But certainly an unstoppable one.
