Now here’s a thing: The authorities, in an attempt to stop ‘hunters’ poaching prohibited avian species, are sending in the cavalry... also known as the mounted police, to further deter these criminals.

When I read this, my first (and last) reaction was to laugh hysterically and read the paragraph again. Can you imagine this scenario: Some Neanderthal with a 12-bore in his hands brings down... say, a flamingo, over a nature reserve. Then, while same Neanderthal grabs his trophy, up gallops sheriff whatever on his milk-white steed and apprehends the culprit. Oh yeah, really? I don’t think so.

For a start: Are we to believe that your average unfriendly neighbourhood bird poacher is going to wait passively around – after bagging his flamingo – for the cavalry to come crashing through the undergrowth, to arrest him?

Or... maybe the mounted police department is going to invest in shoe muffs for all its horses.

Better still, will the authorities cough up for enough black and white paint to camouflage every one of their horses as zebras?

I’m sorry, but I find the whole thing too silly for words.

So, you may well say, what would you do to deter those people who tour the countryside, shotgun at the ready, itching to blast away at anything that flies? I’ll tell you:

I would adopt the strategy of... cunning. Outdo the Neanderthals at their own game.

The police, Birdlife, CABS and the rest know who most of these illicit poachers are. So when they call in at their ammo store to pick up some more boxes of cartridges, they should sell them boxes of blanks.

Or better still, sell them cartridges packed full with coloured paper, so that when the low-life pulls the trigger... a beautiful cascade of multi-coloured flowers emerges from the barrel of his gun... to a volley of applause from any anti-hunting lobbyists in the vicinity.

Another variation on the same theme would be to fill each cartridge with a folded flag that would open out when the trigger is pulled to reveal the legend: “shoot pool not birds”.

It is a generally accepted fact that the vast majority of troll-hunters are not over-blessed in the intelligence department

One suggestion I heard recently involved recruiting several sharp-shooters from the Malta Land Force or the Bidnija shooting range; get them to infiltrate the ranks of the illegal hunters, then tell each one to make sure that when they get a rare bird in their sights, they shoot first and – deliberately miss, thus scaring it away and freeing the endangered avian to fly on to Tunisia, Libya or Egypt... to get blown to pieces in one of those countries.

But the deterrent that I personally favour entails getting hold of a whole lot of remote-controlled model aircraft. These are not cheap, so it might be worth tapping up the EU for a few spare euros, in the cause of animal welfare.

Each model plane would then be camouflaged in a mock-up of some highly prized and off-limits bird... the larger aircraft could be disguised as flamingos or storks, the medium-sized and smaller ones could be dressed as wild geese, buzzards, hawks or hoopoes.

It is a generally accepted fact that the vast majority of troll-hunters are not over-blessed in the intelligence department, so they are fairly certain to fall for this one. I’d really love to see the look on some dingbat ħamallu hunter’s face as his dog retrieves a heavily disguised model tiger moth biplane, instead of a mutilated and extremely dead honey buzzard.

About a year or so ago I was walking in the countryside when I encountered a large, unshaven, camouflage-fatigues-clad bozo, with a 12-bore under his arm and, what looked like, a deceased sparrow hawk dangling from his belt. This ‘brave’ hunter was bold enough to engage me in conversation, where he boasted of ‘bagging’ the hawk.

He was a fairly formidable size, so I’ll admit I balked at the prospect of arguing with him. But I did mutter that I thought that just possibly it might – only might, mind you – be against the law to do what he had obviously just done and killed a protected bird.

His mood darkened and he raised his voice to inform me that... if he hadn’t shot it, then someone else would have, and – it would look a good deal nicer stuffed in his vetrina than in that of his neighbour.

Send in the cavalry? Ha!