Time to ban callous shooting of birds

MANY of us enjoy feeding the birds in our gardens. This is because we are concerned about them and would like to see them thrive. The very last thing most people would want to do is harm any of the birds, and we would be saddened if we knew that they had been injured or had died.

Yet, there are a minority of people who (bizarrely) seem to get pleasure from shooting and killing birds for so-called sport. For example, the woodcock is a wading bird that occurs in the UK. An attractive bird with a long beak and complex behaviour pattern, its population here is declining, yet each year about 160,000 woodcock are shot for fun.

I am at a loss to understand what kind of psychological inadequacy would cause people to want to cause such unnecessary harm, but a minority somehow continues to get away with hurting and destroying the wildlife that most of us value so much.

There is currently a petition to reduce the shooting season for woodcock so that they can no longer be killed during their breeding season (effectively moving the start of the season to December rather than October). It would be good to sign this – the petition already has 72,000 signatures but needs 100,000 (available at https://petition.parliament. uk/petitions/619615 on the UK Government petitions website).

However, what would be far better would be if such activities were banned entirely and the callous killing of the birds was ended.

It’s about time we called out the minority who cause so much harm. David Grimsell

Ciliau Aeron, Ceredigion