Re-assessment of the Rock sparrow Petronia petronia record of 1957

Abstract

A thorough examination of the National Ornithological collections housed at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Mdina was undertaken by the author from 2002 to 2006. This entailed taking a photographic record for each specimen, as well as a new digitized cataloguing system. This exercise also included the identification of every individual specimen as well as cross-referencing dates and any previous publication references. Several interesting specimens, previously unreported or misidentified and reported in past works were found in the reference collection. Among these specimens the author found one bird listed as a Rock Sparrow Petronia petronia, which was labelled as taken at Tal-Ħandaq on 2nd November 1957. This specimen was first reported by Vella-Gaffiero (1975) on whose authority the record was also published by subsequent authors (Bannerman & Vella Gaffiero 1976 and Sultana & Gauci 1982).