NGOs are lobbying the EU to put pressure on the Maltese authorities to ensure hunting laws are respected, and the European Commission is being regularly updated on the prevailing situation.
"We are being given information by NGOs on a daily basis and we are carefully following what the international media are reporting," an EU official told The Times yesterday.
"Unfortunately, it seems laws are not being respected during the current autumn hunting season. We will be raising this with the government during a bilateral meeting on environmental issues to be held in Malta in the coming days," he said.
British newspapers The Telegraph and The Guardian yesterday carried damaging reports on the hunting season in Malta, claiming gross irregularities by hunters all over the island.
Quoting conservationists who have participated in a recent Raptor Camp organised by BirdLife Malta to observe what happens during the open season, The Telegraph said hunters were "indiscriminately blasting birds from the sky".
Graham Madge, a British member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), who has just returned from Malta, said the scale of slaughter going on in Malta is beyond belief.
"A rogue element of the island's 12,000 hunters will blast at anything that flies. On good days for migration, when several hundreds of birds of prey pass through, the hunters are stirred into a frenzy - desperate to shoot as many as possible, even within protected areas," he said.
"Visiting Malta this month has been the only occasion in my three decades of watching birds when I've not wanted to see great views of birds of prey. When I saw a marsh harrier or a honey buzzard flying low, I was just praying that it climbed higher to soar beyond the reach of the hunters' guns."
Malta is already in trouble with the EU over hunting.
Earlier this year, following an urgent injunction by the European Commission, the European Court of Justice ordered the Maltese government not to allow spring hunting.
A court case over spring hunting is still pending before the ECJ.
According to EU rules, hunting should be held only during autumn and only on a limited number of species, such as turtle dove and quail.