SIR - I am not clear why some of the hunting fraternity claim that the Hunting Act is not working, since I have read in the press of at least three individuals who have been successfully prosecuted this year for breaching its terms.

It may not go far enough but that sounds workable to me. I don't think that those hunters who, to get around the terms of the Act, have turned to misusing birds of prey as part of the hunt do themselves any services.

This is not how these birds would expect to be spending their day.

So, yet more birds of prey are kept captive, chained to a perch for the rubber-neckers to gawk at and to be exploited to take part in activities which are foreign to them.

Are these people respecting animal life?

WENDY HANDS Upton upon Severn.