Rooks shouldn’t be shooting target

A READER writes to tells me he recently picked up six dead crows beneath a rookery near his home.

They had been shot. It is still, of course, the nesting season. It beggars belief that anyone could be so heartless as to slaughter parent birds when they are feeding their young which will, as a result, starve. It is equally callous to shoot birds just fledged and not yet capable of flight.

An EU Council Directive of 1979 prohibits the hunting of wild birds within the period of migration or reproduction. Apparently the Garda were well aware of this and when the dastardly deed was brought to their notice they “had words” with the perpetrator, who undertook not to do it again. He had killed the birds because they had been waking him up in the morning, he said.