Illegal hunting activities “are reaching new heights” in Malta, BirdLife said yesterday.

The lobby group said that only a poor spring bird migration had prevented a massacre.

BirdLife said that illegal hunting was carried out on a daily basis including on Sunday afternoons and it had received reports of illegal hunting at sea.

Protected birds that have fallen foul of hunters’ shotguns include bee eaters (qerd in-nahal), hoopoes (daqquqa tat-toppu), marsh harriers (baghdan ahmar), lesser kestrels (spanjulett sekond), little bittern (russett tas-sigar) and other species, BirdLife said.