The RSPB lists their status as vulnerable. And throughout the 1970s and 1980s, numbers in France declined dramatically, as poachers caught vast numbers to supply restaurants, where the bird has long been considered a rare and expensive delicacy. Some restaurants would charge well over £50 for the dish. France’s League for the Protection of Birds claimed ortolan numbers plunged 30 per cent between 1997 and 2007, with as many as 1,500 poachers catching an estimated 30,000 live birds a year in the south-western Aquitaine region. In 2007, the French Government vowed to strictly enforce some existing rules about banning the practice, with the maximum fine set at €6,000 (£4,800). Killing and cooking ortolans is banned across the EU.