Posted on 03/02/2019 12:29:49 PM PST by Albion Wilde
Here’s an alarming but little-known figure—stray cats and pet cats allowed outdoors kill 3.6 million birds every day on average in the United States, for a total of at least 1.3 billion birds per year. That’s most likely a sizable chunk out of the U.S. land-bird population, which the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center estimates is around 10-20 billion....[snip]
But some cat lovers are also bird lovers. Two of them, a birdwatcher named Nancy Brennan and a bird biologist named Susan Willson, have developed what they believe is a solution...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
The article, had you read it, explained that cats become skilled at stealth movement that doesn't even ring the bell when they are skulking in shrubbery sizing up a bird.
i tuoi gatti sono magnifici. piacciono anche gli spumoni per dessert?
Jeez, I’ve heard it all when supposedly sane people start talking about cats “murdering” birds. They don’t murder, they kill. They kill because they’re predators and nature made them pretty efficient ones. I like them as pets but feral ones are a problem, they’re going to do what nature designed them to do. I don’t doubt that they reduce the number of birds because most of them are pretty good at killing.
I live in the country and years ago we had three cats. A feral tomcat showed up one day and my wife started feeding it. It would run the other cats off of the food and after a few days one of our cats came up lame, it was limping because of its hind leg. I told my wife I needed to shoot the feral but she didn’t want it shot. The next day a second one of our cats was limping and the day after that the first lame one disappeared never to be seen again. My wife’s attitude changed to “shoot that effing thing!!!” which is what I should have done day one. It quickly soaked up a .22 LR bullet.
Cats are what they are and have to be controlled whether that be by keeping them inside or through other means. Not all outdoor cats are uncontrollable but if they get too destructive sometimes you’ve got to step in an take care of it.
You need one of these Savannah cats so it can run with your big dogs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSqb6DvyGDs
Cats should be trained to have a preference of Canadian geese.
seriously? Because they are cats.
They stay on my property.
actually they have a cat door.
I am well aware of the wild animals. We have a bobcat now, and we do not let them out when the packs are running.
My daughters cats were 15 and 5 years old when they moved out to the city a few months ago. Our last cat was 13 when she died.
The cats all stayed on our property except for the last cat who used to follow the stream to the cemetery when she caught mice for hours and was well known and loved by the neighborhood.
To me, cats are a pleasure and they also are working animals.
I brought my cats to our vet years ago. He wanted stool samples, and when I explained that the girls were all outdoor cats, he looked them over and stated he had never seen such healthy specimens of cat. A couple of years later he said that he too had started letting his cats outside too.
House cats are an invasive species.
40 million feral are not native to North America ... extinct birds, etc.
“...Undocumented birds are running our native birds like purple martins, bluebirds and woodpeckers out of our neighborhoods.”
So now you say invasive bird species are the problem?
Here, where we live anyway, barn swallows, blackbirds and woodpeckers are plentiful, and the woodpeckers are problematic.
Cats, not so much. Of course, our city apartment cat is strictly indoors. Outdoor apartment cats get eaten by coyotes or run over by cars. The people here who live rural lifestyles need their outdoor cats to keep the rodents in check.
Wait a minute....
There is a new a Freeper rule to feed the article? /s
Corn on the cob - a piece a couple of inches long. You can buy a bag of these for feeding squirrels. They’d been coming to corn on the cob set out on a nail on the fence. Once we moved it to the trap, they knew what it was and went in fairly easily.
The other thing I found that works really well in a regular trap with a trigger plate is a cracker spread with peanut butter & black oil sunflower seeds on top. I have not tried this in the squirrelinator, but I’m guessing it would work, especially if the squirrels were raiding the bird feeders & were familiar with sunflower seeds. I think the PB smell helps attract them & they love the sunflower seeds.
Cuz of laws set by man.
Thanx much! Never heard of the scented collars. I have four cats. I will check it out. So far, they bring home mice and voles, then devour them on the front porch and vomit the whatevers in the yard.
Good observation, TalBlack.
When we lived in the Poconos, I distinctly remember a Blue Jay teasing our very active gray cat, Romeo, in a tree. Each branch Romeo climbed, the Blue Jay would flutter down to tease him. It was no contest.
But I suppose Romeo has some fun.
Ummm...calling it “bird murders” when cats follow their instincts just plays into the leftist dogma...more worried about birds than babies who are actually murdered by sentient beings while in/partially in the womb. Next up, they be in Africa railing against eland murders committed by lions...
Wife and I both love watching birds and I really used to like squirrels. With outside cats, squirrels are gone and birds are few. It’s a choice of having birds and squirrels to watch, or having mice finding ways of chewing into hour home.
Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
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