The Bird Market in the Mediterranean

The government official, Hani Mansour Bishara, pointed out that, along with two live quail, the hunter had a live songbird in his bag.

“No, that’s a quail,” the hunter said.

“No, it’s not.”

“OK, it’s a wheatear. But I’m 20 years old and we’re living from this net.”

Jonathan Franzen has a story in this month’s issue of National Geographic looking at the killing and capture of millions of migrating birds in the Mediterranean. The birds are killed for sport, but also sold in markets for their meat.

Photographer David Guttenfelder, who usually photographs wars, took photos for the story, and talked a little bit in the video above about how photographing the songbird slaughter made him realize he was doing a story about conflict.

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