File photo of Eurasian hobby (Falco subbuteo).
(ECNS) -- A college student in central China's Henan province has been sentenced to ten and a half years for hunting nationally protected species of birds, reports said.
The suspect surnamed Yan discovered a bird's nest in a tree outside his house in a village of Hui County during summer vacation last year. To kill time, he and his friend Wang climbed the tree and caught all 12 Eurasian hobbies (Falco subbuteos), listed as a class II protected species in China.
After one flew away and another died, he sold the remaining birds to three buyers and earned more than 1,000 yuan ($156.3). Several days later, they caught four more birds from the nest.
Last September they were arrested and sentenced to ten years and ten and a half years separately, with fines of 10,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan.
