Listening To The Birdsong

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By Sally Zalewski

In northern Tunisia, people are careful to protect sparrow hawks, even though they are netted and briefly held in captivity for use as hunters. But a thriving trade in other wild birds is taking its toll.

Tunis, Tunisia: The residents of Cap Bon, on the north-eastern tip of Tunisia, facing Sicily, are passionate about birds. But that passion is now threatening some of the very species they prize so highly, and efforts have begun to persuade the locals and other Tunisians to change their ways.

This Mediterranean landscape of pine-clad hills, rolling dunes and unspoilt coastline is the kingdom of the sparrow hawk, but that is a bird handled with extreme care in Cap Bon, where falconry is almost an art form.

Every year, between 15 March and 15 April, men leave work, home, and families to occupy hillside hides where migrating sparrow hawks are netted for training by falconers, to be used mainly in hunting partridge. The activity is strictly controlled, with permits required and a maximum haul of four hawks per person per year.

Then, when the hunting season is over, every single hawk netted at some 300 points of capture is released back into the wild during the Festival of the Sparrow Hawk on 20 June. Selling the birds is absolutely forbidden.

But the local obsession with bird life extends beyond the predators, and other species are not as fortunate as the sparrowhawk. Faouzi Maamouri, leader of the WWF*World Wide Fund For Nature Tunis Project Office, comes from Cap Bon and quotes a saying from the area: "If you cut down an old tree, plant 10 seedlings to replace it. The birds' songs will be your thanks." The problem is that many people in Tunisia like to hear the song in their homes, too, so goldfinches and other species are a highly marketable commodity.

A significant decline in the wild goldfinch population has already been noted in a field study carried out as part of an investigation funded by WWF-Netherlands into the trade in wild birds.

The survival of the birds is also threatened by lack of water as open irrigation canals are replaced by drip methods. When exhausted migrating birds stop for rest and water in desert oases, they are an easy target for children, who can simply pick them up. They are also trapped with glue, nets, and water baits.

"Unfortunately the migration of these birds coincides exactly with the March school holidays, when many boys capture the birds to play with and help pass the time," says Faouzi. To help tackle the problem, the WWF office in Tunis is recruiting an officer who will concentrate on the consumer end of the market, encouraging people not to buy fragile wild species * which die easily when removed from their natural habitat * but to choose instead budgerigars and canaries that are bred in captivity.

Unless other species are treated with as much respect as is given to the sparrowhawk, the birdsong of Cap Bon may soon become a thing of the past.

Sally Zalewski is a freelance writer based in Paris