The BBC World’s most recent Hard Talk programme dealt with environmental conservation and Maltese hunting of quail and turtle doves featured prominently.

The interviewee had been to Malta and claimed that diminishing numbers of the birds mentioned above and increased numbers of hunters on a tiny crowded island was, in his opinion, definitely not on and he could not understand how Malta got away with the derogation.

He proceeded to make an analogy with outlawing whale hunting and fishing quotas.

Some years ago, a Maltese individual from Australia wrote in these columns that as a youngster in Malta he remembered “clouds” of quail and turtle doves which, at times, “hid the sun”.

It was possibly an exaggeration but the gist of his contribution was to highlight his claim of the now sharply diminished numbers of these birds.