A BOY of four has been pictured in a shooting mag holding a gun and a dead parakeet he had just shot.

The smiling lad, wearing his stripy wellingtons, posed with the single-barrel .410 which was taller than him.

In the letter published alongside, his dad boasted: “Bang! And the parakeet was history.”

But it has outraged animal lovers who condemned the father and the magazine for glorifying killing. Julie Doug wrote: “Teaching such a young child to kill for fun, turning that child into a potential psychopath. I think that’s child abuse.”

The letter and picture were sent to Shooting Times by a dad identified only as Mr Moss. He says he bought the weapon for his son as an early fourth birthday present.

He said as he was teaching the boy to pull the trigger to shoot on their Hertfordshire farm, a group of parakeets landed in a tree. The dad wrote: “With a little excitement and a steady helping hand from me, we lined up on the one at the front. As I called ‘now’, bang! And the parakeet was history.”

The magazine defended the picture, which appeared under the headline: “One Less Parakeet.” It said the non-native birds were now thought to number 30,000 in Britain. Editor Patrick Galbraith said: “This invasive species competes with the likes of nuthatches.”

He added: “Many young people in the countryside learn from an early age that firearms are tools which must be handled responsibly.

“The reaction largely stems from people knowing very little about rural society.”