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“Every year”, writes Jonathan Franzen in the July issue of National Geographic magazine, “from one end of it to the other, hundreds of millions of songbirds and larger migrants are killed for food, profit, sport, and general amusement. The killing is substantially indiscriminate, with heavy impact on species already battered by destruction or fragmentation of their breeding habitat. Mediterraneans shoot cranes, storks, and large raptors for which governments to the north have multimillion-euro conservation projects. All across Europe bird populations are in steep decline, and the slaughter in the Mediterranean is one of the causes”. Franzen’s eye-opening article is accompanied by David Guttenfelder’s affecting photographs. In this one, a songbird rescuer in Cyprus uses his saliva to remove sticky plum tree sap from a blackcap’s feather and feet, so that the bird can safely fly when released. (Photo by David Guttenfelder/National Geographic)
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