A stork flying over the airport in the area of Ħal Far was shot at on Thursday evening, the same day that a young black stork was killed.
According to CABS, the international NGO against bird slaughter, the second shooting took place at about 6pm.
“We had been following the stork for about an hour and a half when it attempted to land. We heard five shots and saw the bird falling some 50 metres,” said CABS officer Axel Hirschfeld, who recorded the incident on video.
“Wisely, the stork decided to change plans and not land,” Mr Hirschfeld said.
It was difficult to locate the perpetrator, he said, because the area was ridden with high walls.
In the meantime, ornithologist Natalino Fenech said the black stork killed at about 7am on Thursday was only three months old.
Wisely, the stork decided to change plans and not land
Dr Fenech, who witnessed the shooting and was the first to locate the lifeless bird, said that traces of dried blood showed that the creature had already been shot at a couple of days before.
“Every day we see migrating birds with missing feathers, clearly shot at,” he said.
Storks would have been coming from Northern Europe, probably Lithuania or Poland.
“That’s a journey of about 3,000 kilometres. Can you imagine walking 100 kilometres non-stop? Birds on migration very often fly for much longer than that,” he said.
Dr Fenech, who wrote A Complete Guide to Birds of Malta, said that migration – the movement of birds from northern Europe to Africa in search of better weather – was the most perilous journey of a bird’s life. Birds have to fly over harsh terrain, deserts and mountain ranges, experience cold, winds, storms and inclement weather, face predators and man-made obstacles.
Most prefer travelling over land as they are able to rest.
Some, however, brave the sea: “Sometimes fishermen tell me that birds stop on their boats to rest.”
Although some hunters are knowledgeable on migration, Dr Fenech believes there is need a “strong education campaign”.
“If people knew how difficult it is for birds to migrate, the less likely they are to raise their gun at them to shoot them,” he explained.
The Parliamentary Secretariat for Hunting and Animal Rights condemned “any incident” of illegal shooting of protected birds and said it was coordinating with the law enforcement authorities to ensure that offenders were swiftly apprehended and prosecuted.
“What matters, however, is that whenever a crime is committed, it is rapidly detected and offenders are brought to face justice,” said a spokeswoman. “Our record of prosecution for bird-related crime shows that over 95 per cent of prosecutions result in convictions and that offenders invariably face the full brunt of the law.”
FKNK, the hunters’ federation, said that such accidents harmed the reputation of “bona fide hunters” and it would expel the hunter who killed the stork, “if caught, arraigned and found guilty – and he’s a member of our association,” said CEO Lino Farrugia.
“These people harm our hobby. They are not even hunters but killers of protected prey,” he told Times of Malta.
Mr Farrugia explained that hunters were in favour of biodiversity but the problem was “miscommunication” among the hunters, the media and the public.
“People do not realise the work carried out by the hunter to protect nature,” he said, lamenting the fact that there were no journalists who specialised in environment studies.
FKNK, he said, regularly held district meetings to raise awareness among members on protected birds.