As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Monday 23 September 2013

Police seize trapping nets and protected rare birds – CABS

Update: CABS have said the Dotterel trapper from Sarraflu filmed by CABS this morning was identified and is being questioned in the Victoria police station at the moment.

Earlier this afternoon CABS said that its volunteers today caught a bird trapper who was trapping dotterel (Birwina) with a huge net installation near Sarraflu, Gozo. According to the conservationists, early this morning at around 08.15 a Bird Guards team filmed a man in a blue T-shirt – probably in his late twenties – activating a clap net and setting out cages containing live decoy birds.

“Shortly before the arrival of the police the man received a phone call and began to deactivate the nets. As he realised that the officers had almost reached the site, he panicked and fled with the birds in their cages,” reports CABS member Craig Redmond, whose team had discovered the site.

“His flight will not rescue him from the long arm of the Maltese law however. “We have photos of the man setting his net and with the decoy birds in his hand. Identification should be no problem for the police.” Craig Redmond comments.

CABS said that when the police arrived on the site “they discovered four 50 m long clap nets, a pond and plastic decoys and a single live Dotterel in a cage. After an exhaustive search of over an hour the Bird Guards found a further 6 cages and live birds that the man had discarded along the path of his hasty flight.


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