Stuart wrote :
>
> <stuff on the Turtle Doves' hunting in the Medoc >
>
> The only good thing about it, is that there were very few young, ie less than
> fifty, people involved. So hopefully it should die out in about 20 years or
^^^^^^^^^
I wish I could share your optimism, Stuart...
Often when I go out during the hunting season, I am quite depressed by younger
hunters, for they seem to be even worse than their elders: they never hunted
because of a REAL need of meat (as opposed to their grandparents and maybe
their parents), they seem to be merely fed by TV (no, I'm not talking about
Turkey Vulture ;^) and the daily violence on the screen, and they just want
to shoot. They won't tell a kind of Pigeon from a kind of Harrier (true story !)
and of course will shoot both :-} ...
> so. I only hope that Turtle Doves can hold out that long.
>
> Incidently this activity is banned under European law, but the French
> authorities are not very keen on doing so. Same problem with the Spanish,
> Portugese, Italian, Greek and German governments.

And it doesn't get better in France at the moment because of the presidential
elections. Some candidates even flame european "technocrats" and their law
for dictating the French hunters and fishermen "what to do on their own
homeland" :-((

> French birders are doing wonders. Buying up the hunting sites, monitoring the
> migration, etc, etc. Lots of work gonig on buying hunting estates in the
> Pyranees, particularly some of the high mountain passes which birds must fly
> through to get down through Spain and into north Africa and beyond.

I went there a couple of times to see and count the migrants at the end of the
summer. The stories about hunters shooting Storks, Kites, Lammergeier, Vultures
not to mention the "regular" Pigeons and Thrushes are really depressing.
Last year, they bought another hunting estate. More than never, they need
money to pay for these estates...
I can only encourage people going to Europe for holydays to visit these sites
in the western Pyrenees (and "forget" a few bucks there too :-). These sites
are very close to the Pyranean border, near Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, in the
"Pyrenees Atlantiques".


James West wrote :
>
> Europe's smaller migrant passerines migrate through Italy, for reasons
> that a glance at the map will clarify. Country Italians enjoy a delicacy
> they call "beccafica," which is whole small birds pickled in a jar, eaten
> ...
> whole of the rest of Europe. European conservationists predict a
> population catastrophe for Europe's bird population if Italy keeps this
> up. Depressing.
>

I think Greece and Spain are as bad as Italy.
Mediterranean islands are even worse with Crete and Malta. I am more aware
of Malta, being closer to France, where thousands of raptors, warblers (all
these being protected species) being slaughtered each year, just for fun.
Again, there, the government doesn't seem to be willing to do anything to
stop this...

I will stop this very optimistic message there ...

-Serge

A bird in the bush BLAHBLAHBLAH...