I wonder who else saw that rather curious documentary on TV some years ago (I’ve seen it on TV at least twice) about the “bird people” from the Arabian marshlands (I think that was where it was). In that these people have what we might think an extraordinary and totemic relationship with a whole range of water birds, (rather one sided of course – the birds are just birds). They build bird masks to move among them and use them as pets and in ceremonies. As I recall it all birds are protected from hunting for food, except for the coots (that look almost the same as ours, so presumably taste the same). The Coots are migrants there and when they arrive, they are harvested for food with great gusto and cruelty. The end message is that among all these birds, these people are only (or almost only) interested in eating coots.
Notwithstanding respect for our local laws, I don’t regard killing a coot as necessarily different from killing a duck. Not that I am in favour of either idea for wild fauna. Apart from issues of cruelty, conservation, danger to other people, etc, I am unhappy with the philosophy that ownership of the needed weaponry gives person A some kind of illusion of the right to take wild fauna for their own benefit, with no input to the system, that person B without this, would not.
Philip
