Two children discovered a European bee-eater with serious gunshot wounds on its wing and chest during a primary school visit to Simar Nature Reserve last week, BirdLife Malta said yesterday.

The school children alerted reserve staff who retrieved the bird and passed it on to a veterinarian.

BirdLife Malta conservation manager André Raine said, “It is particularly sad that young children had to see such a beautiful bird in a mortally wounded state. This is hardly the image we want our children to have when they are out in the countryside learning about our rich natural environment.”

European bee-eaters are a particularly beautifully coloured bird, with a vibrant mixture of blues, yellows, greens and reddish-browns. They are a migratory species that pass over Malta in large numbers every year on their way to breeding grounds in southern and central Europe. Due to their declining populations in Europe, they are a protected species.

Five more shot protected birds were reported to the BirdLife office over the last few days. These were two more marsh harriers, both shot in the wing, a little bittern, blinded in one eye and with one wing completely blown off and the other hanging by a few scraps of skin, a barn swallow, shot through the neck, and a female golden oriole, shot in the head and chest. All incidents were recorded by BirdLife and were also reported to the police and to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.

Ornithologist Joe Sultana also informed BirdLife that two other injured protected species, a bee-eater and a kestrel were on Sunday reported to the Administrative Law Enforcement in Gozo and the birds were passed on to the ALE unit in Malta.