Leandro De Itaquera

Not for us the honeymoon perks offered by our luxury hotel - a trip on the "love boat" at sunset and an upgraded fish supper. We put on hold thoughts of cascading waterfalls in the Bambou Mountains, Dodos, an unpronounceable airport and a range of mountains memorably called the Three Breasts Instead, there was work to be done. For my wife, Heather, and me there's something more to sustain the memory of our honeymoon in Mauritius, though. In the lives of those of us who have chosen to marry, the one holiday you're guaranteed to remember is the honeymoon, if only because its grand title distinguishes it from every other holiday.

Bucks are chasing does around in the open, in their own form of ritual, and by the time the predators' chicks hatch out in April, there will be plenty of easily-caught flopsy bunnies on which their parents will be able to feed them.. In the centre of an untidy mass of sticks they line a cup with grass or bracken, and both sexes take turns to incubate the clutch of two, three or four eggs. Fortunately for the buzzards, rabbits are also starting to breed. Every now and then a crow pushes its luck too far and gets grabbed in mid-air. Soon the buzzards will start building nests, or repairing old ones, high in trees on sites well away from human habitation. In twos and threes - sometimes even five or six at a time - the big hawks soar above the escarpment as they pair off and stake out their territories. On set wings, keeping their upward-curved primary feathers separated like fingers, they cruise in wide spirals for minutes on end without any apparent effort.

Sometimes the birds are mobbed by crows, which deliberately harass them, making recklessly close passes and occasionally forcing them into sudden changes of course. PIERCING WHISTLES ring out over the valley every day now as buzzards start up their annual mating routine. Yet even if an official decision is taken to exterminate them, the practical difficulties will be enormous. It is more than 50 years since captive animals made similar escapes in Sweden, and their descendants are still very much on the rampage.. Already there have been many instances of feral animals breaking into farm enclosures and mating with domestic sows.

If swine fever, for instance, became established in the wild, it would continually re-infect domestic stock.A more immediate danger is to people walking their dogs in the woods. Sows with litters can be extremely aggressive in defence of their young - and, as one farmer's wife put it: "If a dog got involved in a fight, an English person would go in to try to rescue it. The outcome would be exactly like someone going out on to ice: the person dies and the dog is saved."The general view, then, is that wild boar are a menace, rather than a desirable addition to our fauna, being too large and destructive for our tight-knit island. Plants such as bluebells would be rooted up, the nests of ground-nesting birds such as pheasants and partridges gobbled.Another worry is that wild boar would spread infections such as swine fever and foot and mouth disease. If they came back in large numbers, the chances are that they would cause havoc, not only on farms but also in woods, and especially on Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). Our forests are far smaller, and our environment has evolved to its present state without the influence of wild pigs.

In Germany alone, some 300,000 boar are shot every year, in drives and from high seats set on the edges of fields and forests. The sport and the meat are in strong demand, and the payment per animal amounts to nearly pounds 170.Here, we have no system or tradition of that kind. The supersonic crack of a bullet passing close by my head was instantaneously followed by the thump of its impact in a bank behind me.In many European countries, the revenue raised from hunters helps pay for the damage pigs cause to farm crops. In Poland, I once got an unsolicited demonstration of what the military call "crack and thump".