During Spring, the Cypriot Hunter’s Fancy Turns to Thoughts of Birds : Environment: Officials are under heavy pressure to stop Europe’s last spring shooting season.

It’s springtime in the Mediterranean, and the warblers, thrushes and bright-colored bee-eaters are on the wing, joining hundreds of millions of migratory birds--more than 200 species--flying north to their European breeding grounds.

On the island of Cyprus, a stopover on the flight path, an army of hunters is getting the itch. And no bird is too small for the sights of its shotguns.

This is the last European country with a spring shooting season, and the government is under heavy pressure from environmental organizations to ban the annual April slaughter. A decision will be made soon, government spokesmen say.

Whichever way it goes, feathers will fly.

“We do not even want to believe that the licenses might not be issued,” said Christodoulos Michaelides, chairman of the Hunting Federation of Cyprus. His association represents 40,000 licensed hunters in a population of 650,000--numerical clout that the National Rifle Assn. might envy.

Against the hunters are ranged a growing flock of environmental groups, armed with international treaties that prohibit killing of migratory birds, particularly during the breeding season.

“Figure it this way,” argues Adrian Akers-Douglas, head of the Cypriot branch of Friends of the Earth, “for every bird you kill in the spring, you’re killing three or four. These are mating birds whose eggs will never be laid.

“Spring shooting is making enormous inroads on the population. And these are wild birds, migratory--they’re not Cypriot birds. They’re not ours to be decimating.”

The problem is longstanding in the Mediterranean countries and involves both trapping and shooting.

“The illegal and indiscriminate killing of migratory birds is a common practice,” noted Alistair Cammel, head of international affairs for Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. “It’s been outlawed for 10 years by the European Community and international legislation (a convention on wildlife and natural habitat signed in Bern, Switzerland), and while governments profess to the public that they protect these birds, they actually do nothing about it.”

A society report, “Birds as Prey,” details what it terms a massacre. Some examples:

In Italy, notorious for its heavy toll, the low estimate is 100 million birds killed each year. A popular practice, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean, is “liming,” coating tree branches with a sticky substance that glues the bird in place for later retrieval.

Spain has developed an industry exporting thrushes. The birds are trapped, plucked and frozen, then shipped to Japan and France for use in pates and casseroles.

On the island nation of Malta, more than 3 million birds are trapped each year, with robins and finches high on the list.

In Britain, the United States and the northern European countries, game birds--pheasants, duck, quail--are larger species. Doves are considered a small target by American hunters. But along the Mediterranean shores, bite-size songbirds are fair game.

Originally, Cammel speculated, the migratory flocks of spring were hunted for sustenance, “rather like manna from heaven.” Now, he said, “it’s essentially a recreational sport. . . . They’re shooting them because they think it’s fun.”

In Cyprus, environmentalists insist that the good times have gone too far. A recent photograph in the English-language Cyprus Mail outraged sensibilities. It showed five Cypriot hunters who had gone to Egypt for some off-season shooting. They were squatting beside a pile of dead turtle doves, and the caption noted that they had bagged 3,500 in a week’s stay.

Akers-Douglas, the Friends of the Earth leader here, called such photos, which environmentalists collect like court evidence, illustrative of “the Mediterranean passion for killing birds.”

And the evidence is widespread here. In March, the rocky hills and small valleys are painted with the palette of early spring, but on closer inspection, the blues, reds and greens dappling the knolls are not always wildflowers but spent shotgun shells.

David Pearlman, an American promoting walking tours of the Cypriot countryside, told an audience: “I have chanced upon a place in the Akamas Peninsula so pristine that there was not a shell casing to be seen.”

A strong argument of the environmentalist lobby is that hunting hurts tourism, or at least what they see as Cyprus’ potential with a new type of tourist. With its picturesque villages and beach resorts, the country attracts more than 1.5 million tourists annually, the large majority European sun worshipers.

But environmentalists insist that the European tourists, affected by the Green political movements in their own countries, are now looking for a different experience in Cyprus, an opportunity to walk through the country and take in a little nature with their sun. The newcomers, they say, are up-market tourists with money to spend.

Akers-Douglas asserts that hunting-mad Cyprus has a bad name in the Green movement and that approval of another spring shooting season will darken it further.

There are three hunting seasons here beyond the controversial spring season, in late summer, late fall and winter. Hunting is officially limited to certain areas. Even environmentalists agree that most hunters play within the rules, and the sound of a shotgun is seldom heard out of season. Violations of territorial limits are more frequent.

But in season, anything goes.

Liming, illegal year-round but still popular here among the villagers, seems a particularly cruel practice. The trappers coat a stick of oak with a mixture of honey and the meat of a Syrian plum, then place it in a tree or bush. At evening or the next morning, they retrieve their catch, what Akers-Douglas calls a “totally unselective” batch of small birds that have perched--and stuck--on the gummy limb.

“They throw away those they don’t want, what you Americans call trash birds, I believe,” he said, “and take the rest home. Some they grill for their own use; some they sell to restaurants for about 50 cents (about $1) apiece.”

Many end up, plucked and beheaded, in a Cypriot peasant delicacy called ambellotoullia , small birds pickled in vinegar and sold in jars at island markets.

“You just pop them right in your mouth,” Akers-Douglas noted.

While the trappers, who also use nets, take most of the estimated 3 million to 5 million birds taken here each year, it’s the hunters who get the bad publicity.

They’re dressed to kill, outfitted in military camouflage and top-market hunting jackets, draped with leather bandoleers filled with shells. They oil their $3,000 Berettas and Brownings in anticipation of the rite of spring, another season of blasting the bushes for migratory birds, which their spokesmen describe as an important contribution to balancing the environment.

In some popular areas, the fields are jammed. “It’s getting dangerous out there,” conceded a Nicosia gun salesman.

“They’ll shoot anything, from swallows to eagles,” Akers-Douglas added. “There’re some native birds here--quail, chukar--but anything that moves is a target for these fellows. One of the favorites is the blackcap, a little warbler.

“A few years ago, some swans showed up here, and they shot them. Happily, I suppose, they found they were not good eating. Now the swans have been coming back and resting at a small lake near the airport. The people take their children down to see them. So, you see, Cypriots can admire birds.”