We could not stop gawking as we watched, awestruck, four falcons gliding in the sky, soaring and swooping, in harmonious synchronisation for a good 20 minutes.

Deep down we were all dreading the sound of a loading gun; expecting it to come any minute now. Astonishingly, even more because this was Gozo - never an island to stick to imposed laws - it never came.

What a glorious sight those birds were. What a huge lift to our spirits the moment was. I'm sorry I'm aware I'm getting carried away. You see, it was the first time in the 30 odd years I've lived here that I saw a sight so mesmerising. Usually when I look up it's all bare and bereft of anything except pigeons. The hunting ban has finally sparked a bloom in our skies.

So now we can actually enjoy spring without the fear of a hunter's wrath. We can go for a walk in the countryside without having to witness birds plunging to death from the skies. We can camp out without being trodden on or woken up at 4 a.m. by hunters who claim the site as theirs. We can picnic without our kids believing that cartridge pellets are part of the soil texture, without them seeing the evidence of early morning hunting everywhere.

And if this all sounds like Mills and Boon writing then I make no apology. I don't know how to impart relief other then enthusiastically. No one is happier than me that the spring hunting season was closed last year and closed again this year.

Hunting has been impover-ishing our lives - cruelly depriving us of the beauty of nature around us.

So no one cringed more than me when I read last week of Malta's 'do-or-die hearing' before the European Court of Justice to retain spring hunting.

The European Commission, which took Malta to court, holds that under the EU's Birds Directive, the island cannot allow hunting to take place in the rearing and reproduction season.

Malta - which up to last year was implementing a transition period which allows hunting to take place in different seasons where "there is no other satisfactory solution" - is insisting that a ban on spring hunting would effectively mean the end of hunting on the island as too few birds are available for hunting during the autumn season.

We are being represented by our Attorney General. But the truth universally acknowledged is that he is only representing a minority percentage of our society. Most of us are fervently hoping that when the judges give their ruling in about five months, Malta loses the case and the spring hunting ban stays. It will be an anxious wait.

In an odd way, although I can never understand the thrill of the kill, I do sympathise with the hunters. Theirs is a fascinating, inward-looking world full of determined individuals with a deep, passionate love of what they do. They have intricate, superbly followed traditions and rituals and to lose that which they have been doing for a lifetime must be for them like losing a language.

But the problem is that hunters think hunting is Malta's way of life. It isn't. Hunts exist for hunters, not for farmers whose land they cross, not for the rest of us who want to see birds live and not on television and certainly not for the welfare of the hunted.

Hunting is finally being hunted. That is why hunters have to understand that this has to be a compromise. Surely no one is expecting hunters to simply give up hunting and take up golf.

But then they have to accept the fact that there is no longer a place for spring hunting in a modern, humane society.