Birdwatchers said today that they had found piles of manure, broken glass, animal intestines and pieces of wood embedded with nails in sites they use for birdwatching and to look out for illegal hunting.

Axel Hirschfeld, press officer of CABS, the Committee Against Bird Slaughter, said illegal hunting this autumn was worse than last year, and the discovery of a 'cemetery' of birds in Mizieb was one of the worst environmental crimes in Europe.

Mr Hirschfeld said that apart from the ‘gifts' left by the poachers, there had been an incident where a trapper spit at a birdwatcher . After the trapper was arrested, the police confiscated 29 birds from his house and found he had been arrested for similar reasons in August. Yet a few days after he was arrested a second time, his trapping site was up and running again.

The CABS official reiterated his organisation's criticism of police inaction at Mizieb, insisting the area should have been preserved as a crime site.

He said a dossier about what was found in Mizieb would be sent to FACE, the federation of European hunting associations, and the European Commission.