Natik Fataliev from Liverpool was ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work after admitting to selling wild birds at one of Britain’s biggest aviculture shows.
Fataliev, originally from Azerbaijan, admitted six charges linked to the possession and selling of illegal birds, including Lesser Redpoll, Siskin, Bullfinch, Goldfinch, Chaffinch and Yellowhammer.
Natik Fataliev from Liverpool was ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work after admitting to selling wild birds at one of Britain’s biggest aviculture shows.
Fataliev, originally from Azerbaijan, admitted six charges linked to the possession and selling of illegal birds, including Lesser Redpoll, Siskin, Bullfinch, Goldfinch, Chaffinch and Yellowhammer.
The 43-year-old, of South Highville Road, Liverpool, was originally identified when he sold three birds to covert RSPCA inspectors at the Stafford Spring bird show on 4 March. Two of those birds – a male Chaffinch and a male Goldfinch – could not be proved to be legally bred in captivity. He also pleaded guilty to one further charge of failing to keep these birds in a suitable environment at the time of the test purchase.
Fataliev was ordered to pay £1,000 costs during his appearance before Liverpool Magistrates’ Court and admitted purchasing a total of nine rare Red Siskins – an illegally imported endangered species from Guyana, South America – on two separate days of last year’s Stafford Show.
A warrant was carried out in June last year, when 74 British and European birds were examined by an independent expert at his house on South Highville Road. Of those 74, 28 birds were recovered from the address and 26 of these had tampered identification rings.
Chief inspector Ian Briggs, of the RSPCA’s special operations unit, said: “It is no excuse to plead ignorance. Everyone who keeps captive birds has a duty to ensure their origin was legal and that they were not taken from the wild. The simple fact is that this man broke the law by keeping and selling wild caught birds. Wild birds suffer horrendous stress by being kept in cages – it is a life of misery for them.”
Fataliev claimed during interview that he did not understand the law on keeping birds since moving to England from Russia. However, he then admitted he knew it is illegal to take birds from the wild because he had seen programmes on television which said this.
