I refer to the news item Children Urged To Do Good Deed For Birds (December 20), according to which children are being encouraged by BirdLife Malta to build bird tables to ensure that birds have enough food during the winter months.

It is a mistake to make Maltese children believe that "at this time of the year birds do not find insects to eat and are therefore on the lookout for other types of food". It is a fact that robins, for example, thrive on the Maltese islands throughout the winter, finding plenty of insect life to feed on, thereby doing a lot of good by eating the harmful insects, the best natural food for them.

It is strange that BirdLife Malta should recommend feeding birds, like robins, "cake crumbs, cheese cakes, crushed unsalted peanuts, sesame seeds, raisins, biscuits, cooked rice and halved fruits like figs, prickly pears and pomegranates". The only birds likely to benefit from such food as cake crumbs, cheese cakes and cooked rice are the sparrows. Sparrows on Malta are pests, and BirdLife's efforts to "educate" children are serving to increase the damage that these birds cause annually.

Particularly in the spring and summer months these pests devastate the corn crops and fruit trees, and then turn their attention to grapevines. As a result there is hardly a Maltese farmer or householder whose grapes, peaches and plums do not end up destroyed on a large scale by these pests.

This is not to mention the devastation they cause in commercial vineyards whose owners have to resort to installing gas-operated bird-scarers. These machines are rendered useless as the sparrows soon get used to their regularly timed gunlike explosions, and as a result these devices serve only to get on the nerves of those living in their vicinity.

BirdLife Malta should certainly rethink its green-action programme for children.