THE letter from Malcolm Gibb (HAS, Apr 30) with regard to

the shooting and trapping of our migratory birds on the Continent

took me back many years when my wife Carol and I used to holiday on the Greek island of Corfu more or less due west from where ITV’s the Durrell’s lived.

I used to go on long walks into the hinterland of the island while my wife sunbathed on the beach.

I used to study an ordnance survey map the night before so as not to get lost. One of the things I noted on my 15 or so mile walks was vast quantities of 12 bore shotgun cartridges on the rocky tops of the many peaks on the island where the locals used to shoot the migratory birds.

These cartridges were about three inches deep and there were many thousands of them.

We never saw or heard any shooting in our four visits to this wonderful island.

Not sure if they ate their tiny quarry or just used them for target practice.

We in this country many years ago used to make lark’s tongue pies and how many skylarks were killed for that.

American passenger pigeons were so numerous that we used to use them for fertilizer. They became extinct in 1914.

I never saw a Swift, Swallow or Martin all last year. Something very wrong out there.

Malcolm Rolling, Carrville