Sun, Sea, Trapping - Part 2.
It's 4am and my trusty Nokia starts to come alive with it's neon blue buttons and not so silent mode ringing. A rush of anticipation runs through me as I quickly grab the phone to answer the incoming call from Bostjan. He's out in the field with Alistair on the edge of a rough area, whilst I'm tucked away off the main road in a nearby town.
As you wait for the call, your mind starts to play tricks on you as you feel the tension of waiting in the dark creeping up and up. Each stray cat initially looks the size of a Jaguar and you can't help but immediately react to every light piercing through the night.
Is it a car? Is it the poachers?
"Stop it Katie, you're being silly"
You are on constant alert and the sudden rumble of vibrations coming from a phone doesn't help when you're trying to remain calm.
I answer the phone and head straight to the pick up point. Lights off, engine off, unlock the doors, wait.
Two figures start to walk towards the car, but they're walking with odd strides. The doors open and my team is reunited...with a few extra guests. The bird bags are full.
We rendezvous with the other team made up of Carmen, Tamsin and James and get to work to free the birds. This is my first time cutting the birds free and it's an intense and intricate process, especially when the birds are screaming to be free. Here I am in the middle of the night, cutting free a Song Thrush in the front of a car. Surreal.
As I look into the eyes of these terrified birds, I can't help but apologise. Apologise for the wicked and insidious way in which our race treats them. Apologise for the sheer horror we cast upon them each night, relentlessly. It feels like I'm taking forever to cut this poor bird free, but I want to be sure, I want her to have the best possible chance at life and that means no trace of net left suffocating her small and intricate body.
Snip after snip after snip. I gently blow her feathers apart and triple check that she is free of any human trauma.
"Katie, we need to go." A quiet voice said to me as I placed a gentle kiss of good luck upon my bird. Bostjan got a call from the game wardens who wanted us to take them to the trapping site we had raided. We set off.
Filled with adrenaline, I drive back towards the trapping site, knowing that we were going to take the site down. For good. Close behind us were the Game Wardens, ready to help us in this endeavour. Behind a house, dogs barked at our irritating presence. Torches off, I see the set of 3 nets, high upon a small mound in the back garden. I am filled with anger and frustration. Looking upon the nets, the caller blaring within the night, I see the outlines of a further 5 birds in the nets. We barely left the site a mere 30 minutes ago and yet even more birds had been trapped in that small window.
I look at the game wardens and we set to work. I aim straight for the birds, as do the wardens and we set them free. As the sun rose in the distance, we cut free all of the birds. With an exhausted bird still on the floor, I pick her up and hold her whilst she regains her strength. She can't even fly, shes too exhausted and traumatised. As I gently bring her some kindness to her world, me and Bostjan hear the ever haunting sound of a caller just a few hundred yards away and then a sharp clap within the sky. A shotgun.
Ignorantly and completely unaware that we are stood watching, a poacher is illegally shooting thrushes, most likely the ones we just cut free from the nets. I cannot believe it. The game wardens quickly gather themselves and run to their cars, they are onto him.
As I drive along the coast road, watching the sun rise over the Mediterranean, I imagine the face of the trapper, coming to the realisation that all of his nets and caller have been taken along with all of the birds and a smile creeps upon my face. As we head to an area with thick undergrowth and plenty of food in the area, I gently pick up the saved Thrush from the bird bag and we release her into the countryside to hopefully live another night.
We named her Sylvia.
