Puzzled by the lack of birds in Malta

I’VE just come back from my first visit to Malta. I found it to be a fascinating and charming country but I was puzzled by the lack of birds. 

I spent a week there, much of it walking in open countryside or along the shore, and I saw plenty of butterflies and some lizards but the only birds in the entire week were some feral pigeons and a few sparrows.

The sparrows were interesting because they were subtly different to Irish house sparrows — slimmer and less boldly marked. When I got back I consulted reference books and the internet but discovered that the experts don’t agree on the classification of Maltese sparrows.