We are lucky to be visited daily by a resident bird population of doves and blackbirds, and overhead, the occasional hawk or falcon (ironically, as I write this, I overhear warnings from staff that if we continue to feed the birds, we will receive violations).
It is a major asset to be a hawk in a population of doves because such a hawk will prevail in all combat without cost.
Patently, a bourgeois invasion against a completely dove population would be successful as well, gaining the bourgeois 6 offspring.
Until this year, that was a question that no one had even thought to ask, because no one knew that a scourge was stalking the dove population.
These opt-outs are based on a European court of justice (ECJ) ruling, which permitted Malta to seek such derogations on the basis that the turtle dove population remained at a favourable level.
The turtle dove population has fallen by 96% in Britain since 1970 and its numbers have fallen across Europe by more than a third in the last 16 years.
Once widespread in the south, the turtle dove population – which is currently estimated at 14,000 pairs - is now "balancing on a knife-edge in the UK", with nearly 60 per cent lost just in the five years to 2010, the RSPB said.
The turtle dove population has dived by 85 per cent since the survey began in 1995 as these seed-eating migratory farmland birds suffer from a loss of countryside hedgerows and rising pesticide use.
Turtle dove populations are in an even worse state, with 96% of the birds lost between 1970 and 2012, conservationists fear the bird could become extinct in all but the lines of the Christmas classic.
Sitting in his cool, stone home, Mifsud Bonnici rejects arguments about the turtle doves' decreasing population, saying the decline is not alarming, even to EU officials.
