Posted on 06/02/2009 3:03:35 PM PDT by JoeProBono
I’m trying to get to bedrock on conflicting assertions and policies related to free-ranging cats and songbirds. The American Bird Conservancy has posted a new video criticizing an array of programs across the country through which well-meaning animal lovers “trap, neuter and release” feral cats. Search the Web for “ trap, neuter, release” or “ feral cat coalition” and you’ll find such efforts from Indiana to Florida to Washington State. The idea is that, once sterilized, populations of wild cats will slowly decrease on their own accord by attrition. The video, and other experts on bird-cat interactions, strongly dispute this, noting that in some cases enduring communities of feral cats are a magnet for cat owners seeking a place to dump their unwanted kittens or cats.
(Excerpt) Read more at dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I love to listen to mockingbirds sing their different songs, but I don’t like it when they attack me from behind at just about this time of year - when they have young in the nest.
They should euthanize buzzards. They’re gross. And one flew up and hit my car last christmas on I-55 heading south.
One mans pest is another mans pet. Cats are both. Feral cats are VARMINTS just like coyotes and possums. Cared for, they’re sweet pets, playful with a good sense of humor, for an animal.
Off with their heads, hey, Ichabod?
If someone's domestic cat roams outdoors and gets in a fight with one of them...well, the cat will get feline aids.
So it's a good idea to have a house cat who goes outside inoculated with the feline Aids vaccine.
sw
One of my cats is quite a hunter, but rarely does she get a bird. She gets lots of rodents and unfortunately a rabbit from time to time.
>A better solution would be to introduce a predator that eats cats but doesn’t eat songbirds. Raccoons, wolverines, badgers...maybe these would do the trick<
If localities would enact cat licensing and start fining owners that let Fluffy run loose, we’d be a lot better off. Cities and even rural areas enact leash laws for dogs. Why must those of us who like songbirds and chipmunks put up with free-roaming felines?
And yes, my spoiled-rotten cat is confined to the house. She doesn’t need to roam at large, acting as coyote chow.
I suppose I just think it’s a matter of trying to maintain a balance. Too many cats and all the birds disappear. Not enough cats and the rodents multiply exponentially.
Cats can get birds by ambush. I was watching a dove on the sidewalk in front of my apt one time and suddenly WHAP it was dead... a young cat had sprung out of the bushes and that was it. It was sad. The dove’s mate hung around all alone for the rest of the summer.
Yes, I have one little princess too. She rules the house and kills all bugs and no rodent has ever made an appearance. I tried to bring a tom kitten in but I had to get rid of him, he was displacing her primacy. A domestic cat has no need to go out doors, besides she;s too runty, she just gets chased, so she hasn’t been out in years.
Cats are a very small part of the overall problem of declining songbird populations. Habitat destruction is WAY up there. Many of these bird species have very specific diets, and can’t survive when their short list of acceptable foods aren’t available. And while development is a big reason for habitat destruction, so is the artificial elimination of predator populations — in many parts of the northeast, all the natural predators of deer have been virtually wiped out, leaving deer to multiply out of control, and wipe out vegetation. There are big swaths of northeastern forest where (other than trees) virtually nothing is growing except barberries and ferns, because those are the only plants the deer don’t eat, and thus the only ones that haven’t been eaten out of existence. This has in turn wiped out populations of certain insects and worms which certain species of birds depend on. And some of the missing plant species are ones that birds directly relied on for seeds and berries.
But to a large extent, the claims of songbird destruction are exaggerated. Solid evidence of population decline of specific species should be taken seriously, but raw number claims of how many songbirds are killed by cats are idiotic. We have also decimated the populations of many of the songbird’s natural predators, so much of the killing by cats is simply replacing killing by natural predators. If we weren’t destroying habitats and food supplies, it’s doubtful that there would have been any significant decline in songbird populations — just a substitution of predators which naturally kept the populations stable.
I don’t try to control what’s going on outside. I keep my cats in 24/7/365.25, and the song birds fend for themselves. There is food out there for them, and water in the lake if they can fight their way past the ducks and geese.
Balance is not my job, and if the mice and chipmunks get to be too many, I’m sure that the raccoons will take care of the problem without me.
I’m a city girl, a former Valley Girl, and I wouldn’t know how to “maintain a balance” in Nature with written instructions. As if! Fer sher.
Are you a gun grabber too?
Two reasons:
Suburbs still have rats and mice.
Cats are a nuisance, not a threat. Dogs kill people. Cats do not.
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