Say goodbye to the cuckoo

Every now and then, I like to spend Saturday mornings skipping in the fields. Or what's left of them.

Last weekend, we hit the terraced cliffs of Fawwara. As my daughter and I lay in the green grass, gnawing on stalks of qarsu flowers, I thought, hmmm, if I squint - just enough to block out the rusty ovens, fridges, washing machines and car carcasses - it could almost look like the Tuscan landscape.

Please don't go pfft! It's true. The green terraced fields, the patches of earthy soil, the olive trees, the bright yellow of the flowers - aren't these the very same colours of Tuscany?

It was my perfect idea of peace and quiet: no cars in the vicinity, no sign of any activity at all except for the rustling of the trees and the scurrying of insects, and well, my daughter's incessant enthusiasm at every different bird sound she heard. Spring was well and truly on the way.

Then I squinted a bit less, and then, hang on, what was that? A trapping site. The season being closed, it was, of course, an illegal one.

When I opened my eyes, they all but popped. The whole area, further down below from my vantage point, was ridden with trappings: cleared patches of earth and songbirds in cages.

Yes, me darlings. Although the season is closed, trappers, in their quiet, ultra-green-conservationist mode, keep on practising their lifetime hobby, despite this being illegal under EU, and hence, Maltese law.

Naively, I had thought that this spring-hunting business had all been sorted last year when Malta was found in breach of the EU Birds Directive by the European Court of Justice.

I was incredulous when the papers starting reporting discussions about the possibility of getting another derogation for this year. And then came the Ornis Committee's approval of Mepa's proposal - for spring hunting to be allowed for three weeks in April, during which each one of our 10,000 hunters would be able to shoot two turtle doves and one quail per head.

Puurlease. Who's gonna be doing the counting? Will every hunter be buddied with a law enforcement officer to count the booty?

I cannot for the life of me comprehend how the government is actually considering risking Malta being taken to the European Court again. This time we could be fined. Are we as a society always to be held to ransom by the hunters' and trappers' votes?

"The government evidently sees this as the price for staying in power," said the British journalist Charles Clover in a column in last Sunday's The Times of London, mortifyingly entitled 'The first sound of spring is illegal bird slaughter'. (He also astutely observed: "Instead of fluffy dice, local bus drivers hang greenfinches in cages alongside flags of English football clubs.")

That's a balloon burst in the face of all Malta Tourism Authority's effort to attract intelligent visitors to the island. And by the way, can we stop for a moment to think about the new kind of tourists we've been working hard to attract: the agri-tourist.

What are we going to tell the Danish tourist when he's showered by lead shot while out for a walk? "Ouch, don't worry, that's bird number three, all will be quiet now."

And, more importantly, who's going to pay for the cancellation fees of these eco-holidays? You guessed it. You and I.

Although I'll never understand the joys of hunting and I cannot expect it to be abolished, there must be strict parameters for legal hunting. Because frankly, I am sick and tired of seeing the money I pay in taxes squandered in the name of trying to find loophole excuses to kill birds: it's a mockery; sheer short-sightedness.

We've got to start thinking long term and invest in plans that are sound both economically - such as by turning our landscape into a Tuscan one - and environmentally - not just ours but the world's.

Nature-wise, our island is incredibly privileged. Every spring, our island serves as a stop-over for thousands of tired birds migrating from Africa to northern Europe. Here they feed and roost before they resume their journey.

One of them is the cuckoo: the shy, secretive bird, which has inspired composer after composer, from Handel in his The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, to Beethoven in his Pastoral Symphony.

Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo is a terribly moving book by Michael McCarthy about the vast numbers of vanishing spring birds. Clearly, Malta is an accomplice in this wildlife tragedy disappearance act.

I read the book and felt so helpless, because I realised that in a few years' time, thanks to our lust for blood, votes and power, the only spring sound my daughter will ever know is the sound of silence.

krischetcuti@gmail.com