I would like to raise a point about the "noble sport" of hunting, as I often hear our illustrious camouflage-clad "conservationists" describing their hobby. The other day a friend of mine found a Starling, which is a legally huntable species (most unfortunately). I am sure everyone is familiar with this species - it is the one being blasted out of the skies every morning in their hundreds, in a countryside teeming with hunters. I have often seen hunters, eyes glazed and crouching as if they were little Rambos, blasting away at flock after flock of Starlings. As usual, give the hunters an excuse to kill something and they do so with apparent abandon leaving the ground littered with broken and dying bodies.

The Starling my friend found had been shot and had a badly injured wing. However, to add insult to injury the bird then had all of its primary feathers hacked off with scissors. Somehow the bird had either miraculously escaped after being mutilated or most probably been thrown out. Now, here is a young bird, fresh out of the nest from Europe, and now in a miserable, badly injured and mutilated state in Malta. The reason for this? Simply because hunters can. Not for food, or survival, but simply for the fun of it, the fun of slaughter. Nobody can accurately call this hunting.

The fate of the Starling of course does not even touch upon the usual concerns about being woken up every single morning (even a Sunday) by continuous gunfire, being afraid to walk in the countryside because of angry men with guns, concerns about lead poisoning in our water sources from tens of thousands of spent cartridges, having lead raining down on you when you are sitting in your own garden, seeing innocent birds being blasted into bits, finding crippled birds hopping about on trails when you are trying to enjoy an afternoon's walk, hearing about yet another Flamingo or bird of prey being shot, etc.

So I leave it up to readers after taking a look at the photo above, to say what is so "noble" about this hobby.

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