The great Maltese bird massacre

From yesterday's edition of South Africa's Sunday Independent by Mike Cadman:

Every year the migrating birds run the same gauntlet of death. As they fly
across the Mediterranean Sea southwards towards Africa, tens of thousands of
raptors, swallows, bee-eaters and other migrants, tiring from their long
flights, descend towards the Maltese coast to rest - and are greeted by a
maelstrom of shotgun lead. Some of Malta's estimated 16 000 hunters and trappers
await the birds in power boats, shooting them out of the sky over the sea.

Others set up hides near well-known roosting spots in nature reserves,
while others simply shoot from country roads or wherever they see the birds.
Some ornithologists estimate that more than 1,5 million birds are shot or
trapped in Malta annually. As many as 10 000 raptors (birds of prey) are shot,
most illegally. Malta is an important resting point for birds using the Central
Mediterranean Flyway migration route into Africa.

Some of the migrants, including honey buzzards, European hobby falcons, lesser kestrels, barn swallows and European bee-eaters, are headed for South Africa 6 500km to the south. Others are en route to central or east Africa. These prodigious journeys require remarkable feats of stamina and navigation, and the birds need to cross deserts and mountain ranges and negotiate bad weather and other hazards to reach their destinations. Nature takes its toll through exhaustion, starvation and injury but many fall to Malta's shotguns even before they reach Africa's coast.

Read the full article here