French delicacy among birds seized by police at Żurrieq

The police yesterday arrested a trapper in Żurrieq allegedly caught red-handed with a selection of protected song birds including a very particular species called ortolan bunting.

Besides being a threatened species, the ortolan also happens to be a forbidden French delicacy, which created massive controversies when its sale was outlawed in 1999 but only enforced in 2007.

The birds seized and later released at the Għadira nature reserve, included 11 short-toed larks, a red-throated pippet and four ortolans.

Hunting the bird is banned throughout the EU but French law made selling (though not eating) it illegal after the species was almost driven to extinction in France by hunters.

The forbidden delicacy, however, is still being served at specific restaurants, fetching up to €250 (Lm107) when sold illegally to trusted clients or given away "free" along with massively overpriced wine or side dishes. The maximum fine is €6,000 (Lm2,576) but two of the three poachers caught last year escaped with verbal warnings.

The ortolan is drowned in armagnac, plucked and stripped of its feet and a few other tiny parts. After roasting in a ramekin for eight minutes, it is brought to the table while its pale yellow fat still sizzles, for the diner to take whole into his/her mouth.

The bird was even reported to have been a main course in the former French President François Mitterand's "last supper" in 1995. A week before dying of cancer, Mr Mitterand had apparently ordered a banquet for 30 that included oysters, foie gras and a row of two-ounce ortolans.

Axel Hirschfeld, from the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), who is in Malta for a bird watch camp, said they were thrilled at stumbling over the ortolans catch.

The trapper was reported by them, after they had been observing the man setting up his nets early in the morning. "We could see there were call birds but we weren't expecting to come across such a rare species," he said.

"We weren't even aware that the bird was trapped here," he said, commenting that while elsewhere hunting and trapping is often about business, here it is purely about passion.

A German national, Mr Hirschfeld says the ortolan has disappeared from areas such as the North Rhine-Westphalia, where it used to breed.

As was reported recently by BirdLife, which also held a watch camp in the past weeks, he said that while illegal hunting remains (they counted over 1,000 gunshots in five days), not opening the spring hunting season this year led to a drastic reduction in the scale of hunting and the toll on the birds.

"The hunters are obviously frustrated, some more than others, but, overall, we have to say that in the past days they appeared to be very calm. We were concerned, especially, after the vandalism on the cars of BirdLife birdwatchers," he said, also commending the police for their prompt response.