One of the main reasons for the declining numbers of the gardener's friend the thrush (Opinion, April 25) is that each autumn in Malta, as they migrate south to their winter feeding grounds, some 500,000 of them are shot for fun by Maltese so-called hunters.

Some 500,000 swallows are also shot for fun and 300,000 finches are trapped, many of them put in minute cages, very often hung on a wall without shade from the burning summer sun.

They are left in a state of terror until they slowly die, only to be replaced by another.

The use of thousands of tonnes of chemicals on our farmland and gardens is also taking its toll.

There are other reasons for the large decline in numbers of our wild birds - for example, the 20 million migrating birds trapped or blasted out of the sky by the merciless killers in Cyprus.

The common denominator in all of this is man.

-L Eldridge, Buci Crescent, Shoreham