They were all massed in 40 boxes normally used to transport vegetables, hidden on a lorry that was on its way to Capo Passero, the tip of Sicily’s southeastern coast.

Inside the boxes, heaped on top of each other, were 2,000 songbirds of various species, some at risk of extinction.

What brought them together on such a terrible journey was their ability to sing and be heard singing, wrote Maurizia Brici in a searing report that appeared in La Zampa, the animal-friendly supplement of La Stampa.

Awaiting the arrival of the truck down at the sea front, was a fishing boat, with no lights to be seen, all ready to sail to Malta.

“The illegal trafficking of animals in Italy is only inferior to that of drugs or of weapons,” said WWF Italia’s Massimiliano Rocco, “ also because the penalties are so light.”

Trappers around the Strait of Messina had caught the birds in the previous days. Each had been sold for three to five euros and would be resold in Malta for a price nearer EUR200. The demand on the black market this season is very high.

The captured birds are put in a small cage next to the trappers’ nets so that their song attracts the birds passing by and bring them to within the range of the hunters’ rifles or near the nets.

As reported in this newspaper last week, the Italian Guardia di Finanza found the birds in a thoroughly pitiable state – in the dark, without water, and covered in excrement.

“At least 1,000 had already died,” explained Gianni Insacco, who is in charge of the regional centre for the recuperation of wild animals and birds, “due to stress and the very cruel way they were being transported. I have been doing this work for many years but I have never seen anything like this. The gains to be made from such an operation were such as to allow for the loss of half the birds during the 300km voyage across Sicily.

Had they arrived in Malta, the birds would not have found a better situation: they would have been kept in the dark, for weeks, in stores or in some old basement. Why? The aim of the trappers is to trip up the birds’ biological clock, to make them sing in winter just as they would have done in spring. Sometimes birds are even given hormone-based medicine so that they get over-excited and sing for hours. Some even die from the effort – their hearts cannot resist the stress, they literally sing their hearts out.

The four (Italian) men on board the truck have been charged. The birds that survived were set free earlier last week.