Mr Mark Mifsud Bonnici of St Hubert Hunters (‘Maurice Mizzi, hunting and his Hoopoe’, 15 November) writes that I have tried my hand at ornithology and failed miserably. For his information I have been following all kinds of birds since the age of 21.
Talking about credibility, the hunting lobby has fooled the European Union into thinking that the season which opens in September is not as important as spring hunting since less birds fly over Malta. This is not the case, since the parents will be traveling from Europe to Africa together with their new offspring and my basic arithmetic tells me that four birds amount to more than two. People who live in the countryside will tell you that there are more shots fired now rather than in spring a few years ago.
I reproduced the photo of the Hoopoe in my article ‘A Greener Shade of Green’ from the internet in order to show my readers and Mr Mifsud Bonnici this bird in all its glory and how wicked hunters can be when shooting this kind of bird.
Unfortunately, the photos that I had taken in my garden were not so perfect, hence my reason for using the Internet photo.
However I am attaching one of dozens of photos of this bird which I had taken in my garden from two feet away a few weeks ago. For four days this bird slept in my Aleppo pine and allowed me to get close to it on the lawn as it spent all day sweetly digging up worms with its long beak.
Thanks to the ban on spring hunting I have started to enjoy the birds which I have not been able to see and hear throughout my entire life. It would be criminal for anyone to even think of bringing back spring hunting.
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