Newsbook Photo by BirdLife Malta A recent conference on hunting legislation organised by the European Parliament in conjunction with the European Federation for Hunting and Conservation saw a senior official from the European Commission dismiss the derogation Malta has sought to permit the continued trapping of finches and other songbirds. Malta has controversially allowed for finches to be trapped for “scientific” reasons, but this justification has proven controversial, not least since the method used – allowing all licensed trappers to continue trapping songbirds as they had done in the past – appeared to be of dubious scientific value. Captured birds are not ringed, but merely checked for the presence of rings – which are exceedingly rare among small songbird species – and the birds should then be released into the wild.