"And how many birds does a bird-killing cat kill in one year? (Perhaps three dozen.) Each of these multipliers had a range of uncertainty, so the model needed to be run repeatedly. The number it generated most often was 2.4 billion birds a year. Outdoor-cat advocates were quick to dismiss the paper as 'junk science.'... But I, too, at first, being skeptical of models, had trouble believing that the numbers could be so vast.... The most dismal number in the Nature Communications paper was its median estimate for the birds killed annually by cats with owners: six hundred and eighty-four million. Unlike the death toll from unowned cats, this number could be zero, because tame cats can be kept indoors.... I... have friends who, if I suggest that they might not want to let their cats outside, respond not with rationales but with uneasiness. My guess is that, just as I will sometimes eat a tuna sandwich, despite knowing what I know about tuna fisheries, my friends are doing a small thing that they know isn’t right but is convenient. In a darker way, I wonder if one of the attractions of having cats as pets is precisely that, however affectionate they may be, they have a savage side as well, sharp of tooth and keen of claw...."
Writes Jonathan Franzen, in "How the 'No Kill' Movement Betrays Its Name/By keeping cats outdoors, trap-neuter-release policies have troubling consequences for city residents, local wildlife—and even the cats themselves" (The New Yorker).
Much more from Franzen — the great novelist and bird defender — at the link.
१२७ टिप्पण्या:
Unlike the death toll from unowned cats
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for sparrows.
Glad to see someone talking about this. Not a big fan of Franzen, but I suspect many 'cat people' are, so maybe they'll listen. I like cats, but left outdoors they are an environmental menace.
I know several people who like to care for feral cats, thinking they're doing something good, and I find it infuriating.
We MUST do the right thing when it comes to our cats and keep them indoors so they don’t harm any birds.
But let’s build those wind mills to generate the electricity we need to drive our electric cars. They cause ZERO bird deaths.
ZERO I TELL YOU.
Green now, Green tomorrow, Green forever!
I saw that bird movie. They’re providing a public service.
Perspective matters. My entire life I have had to suffer lectures from deer hunters that there are too many deer…
Is he advocating eliminating outside cats? That would have no effect on the mice and rat populations at all. None. No way. Yeah, that's the ticket!
I read that article a few days ago. It seems to have an exclusively urban perspective and concludes that all cats should never be allowed outdoors. Brought to mind those memes claiming people are upset that the animals national parks are not brought in overnight.
Completely ignores the cat's real job: catching vermin. Cats may not be native, but level of vermin attracted by agriculture at any scale and human life urban or rural is also not part of the natural landscape. Yes, they're also going to kill birds, and they're going to have fun doing it. So, help the birds by putting out a feeder where the cats can't get them.
Brings to mind the gun debates: urban and suburban numbnuts on both sides arguing about whether Justin can wear his fancy accessorized penis compensator to work. Ignoring the actual function: shooting destructive or tasty animals out here in the sticks.
In this area of the Illinois Fox River Valley we have developed an extremely efficient cat control system. It's called "coyotes".
Where do the bird people stand on bird on bird violence?
There's nothing wrong with allowing your cats outside if they want to go outside.
At the rate Americans mow their lawns, there should be no lawns left?
Birds compensate with offspring numbers. Say 20 offspring a year who themselves start producing, and out of the thousands possible in a couple of years only two have to survive for a stable population. The rest are food chain material and meant to be.
The trouble with tame cats outside is that they don't obey the Lotka-Volterra equation (wolf and rabbit population evolution). When rabbits are plentiful the wolf population grows. When the growing wolf population kills off most of the rabbits the wolf population decreases again.
With owned cats, the owned cats don't starve with they reduce the number of birds around. Somebody feeds them. So they can quite possibly reduce the bird population to zero.
Bird Lives Matter... but not excess deaths in Green solutions.
The quality of cats' lives matter. Their diet, their choice. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
Jim above has it right. I live in an ag setting and we have feral barn cats (that we get from the feral cat humane society) as rodent control and they do an absolutely fantastic job. Sure they get the occasional bird now and again, but I can't imagine the rodent takeover if the cats weren't there. Not a pretty thought.
Orthodox Jews are fairly prolific. Breeding like rabbis, as the saying goes. Speaking of the Lotka Volterra equaton.
I don't have a cat, but have two roaming cats on my block, have seen both in my yard. There are birds in my yard, and there should be bird carcasses in my yard, but I don't see any. There's a small park behind us - again no carcasses. I do see bird carcasses in the neighborhood, but they're all in the road or very close to it - where dead birds would be if they had been hit by cars.
My Persian-Anerican cat does not have a taste for BLM, but rather exercises equity and inclusion of Wagyu Lives Matter (WLM). Her choice.
"The cat’s in the well and the barn is full of bull
The night is so long and the table is oh, so full"
Brings to mind the gun debates
Some people... persons wield scalpels #PenisEnvy?... in self-defense?
The lament over "non-native" house cats being the source of the "problem" of bird decimation by cat is specious, IMO.
Domestic cats are native to the Near East and were spread all over the earth for the last nine millennia. When exactly do they become "native" to those areas to which they were spread ninety centuries or so ago?
And what about the Near East? Don't cats kill a lot of birds there, and haven't they always? I believe that the answer to that must be 'yes', making bird-killing by cats eco-natural, right? So what really is the difference between cats killing a lot of birds in the Near East where they are "native" and cats killing a lot of birds in LA, where they supposedly aren't? Pffft...Mother Nature at her work.
I live in a "wildland-urban interface". The number of rabbits, mice, and rats has skyrocketed over the last twenty years. I blame the lack of outdoor cats. I've paid out over $15 grand in five years for rodent damage repair, and suppression. I have hopes that the local bobcat population is on the rise, but they are lazy bastards who mostly take rabbits.
(Around here, the WUI is also commonly known as the wildfire zone. California, of course.)
Deer are common, but seem to be being controlled by the coyotes and mountain lions.
Here in the suburban hilly communities around Los Angeles the combat life expectancy of a cat allowed to go outdoors is around six weeks. Coyotes solve Franzen's problem. Of course the coyotes also eat vermin--just like the cats. Maybe they are not so successful hunting the bird population.
Coyotes are equal opportunity eaters--if a cat is not around, a small dog will do.
I find it strange to be exclusively focused on birds. With more than 50 years of domestic cat experience, most of them being part time outdoor cats, I have observed far more predation on small mammals, lizards and even insects than birds. Maybe the fauna of SoCal is uniquely rich in these types of prey but we’ve always had plenty of avian activity in and around the yard. In the current environment with very wild wilderness on two sides of our property we have a wealth of ground dwelling birds as well. Quail and roadrunners occasionally visit but a lot of plump little birds we can’t identify live in the bushes around the pool and the large lantanas along the north-east boundary. Still I’d put their chance at being harvested by our prolific short hair cats at way less than 5%. Lizards probably make up about half, closely followed by rats/mice/gophers grouped together with fat little field mice as the largest sub-group.
People seem to worry about birds more than these other vertebrates but in my observation, birds are prolific reproducers and daddy birds have killed more of their offspring than our cats have. God only knows what havoc the omnivores (raccoons, skunks and opossums) and higher order predators (foxes, coyotes and hawks) are causing all around us.
(I’m hoping this isn’t a duplicate.)
Brings to mind the gun debates
First responders by civil and human right and duty. Also, Capitol (sic) punishment in Whitmer... Pelosi conspiracies.
I have a real pack rat and mouse problem where I live - the high desert in central NM. I'd be delighted to have a feral cat around the house. In fact, a few years ago I had a feral cat hanging around my RV port. (I have camera's to monitor rat and mouse activity.) I encouraged him to hang around - gave him a little food and water. He did a good job and then disappeared. Turns out a bob cat came along and ate him. Circle of life...
I live on the edge of the woods, and have a cat that spends 8-12 hours outdoors, depending on the season. My cat is very athletic, and yet only kills about eight animals per year - not just birds, also rabbits and moles. Not sure where the three dozen came from, unless he is referring exclusively to feral cats who kill for food.
Also, this suggests that there are far less birds than there should/would be without cats' predations, but is the environmental niche for these birds really capable of handling an additional 24 billion of would less cat killings result in more bird starvation due to the increased competition for food? Does my putting out bird feeders absolve the sins of my cat, like paying someone else to plant a tree somehow absolves my flying to the Caribbean for vacation?
"My God! if you take a bunch of numbers that I made up and multiply them together, you get another number! The implications of this are incredible!"
It’s likely that the wind turbines that do little to address our energy needs will lead to the collapse of the golden eagle population, but shut up. Prairie chickens too, since the only thing protecting them is lack of perches for raptors to hunt them from, perches plentifully supplied by power lines to remote areas where nobody lives.
But I was once given an explanation by a due paying member of the Sierra Club: “Shut up.”
I don’t have sympathy for people who lose their pets to coyotes and find it funny when the same guy who points out that the deer population needs to be controlled by hunting (endorsed) gives me sob stories about how coyotes need to be eliminated, around here it coyote-wolf crosses, when I have noticed that years when I hear them around, deer are far less of a pest.
I permitted my cat outdoor times. Sometimes he went onto the garage roof overhung with a willow tree full of sparrows, but he usually went into the apartment basement, and sometimes favored me with a fresh mouse carcass. No resulting shortage of sparrows or mice was observed.
Thanks to Fred. Bobcats were accidentally left off my list. They are definitely represented here.
When my cat wanted to go outdoors, he had a choice of the roof of the garage, overhung by a willow tree full of sparrows, and the apartment basement. He almost always chose the basement, and brought me several mouse carcasses per year. No decrease in sparrow or mouse population was observed.
Cats are amazing predators...cute little cold-blooded killers.
I've thought about getting a cat but don't know how to manage the indoor/outdoor problem.
Not for birds's sake, but for the fact that I live around open space and we have a lot of hawks and owls, and kittens tend to disappear.
And it seems somewhat cruel to me to have a cat who never experiences outdoor life.
mtp at 11:02 made me laugh. Then I am surprised how many of us live on the edge of civilization, woods desert and general wilderness. Interesting.
I think in both Australia and New Zealand they hunt feral cats because of the damage they do to local wildlife.
Google says there are 58 million pet cats in the US. Figure maybe half of those are indoor cats. That means they're suggesting that there are 70 million feral cats out there, which seems really high. 36 birds a year also seems way high; pet cats bring their kills home for the owner to admire, and I'd be shocked if your typical cat owner is getting a dead bird on her doorstep every ten days.
Junk science and emotional animal-rights thinking. Let nature be nature, red in tooth and claw. Imported housecats fill a niche that would otherwise be taken by native animals, and if no bird predators were present, humans would (likely) aggressively kill/protect crops from birds and otherwise limit bird birth rates. See the history of the extinct Passenger Pigeon.
Animal populations naturally rise in the spring and fall in the winter (unless the birds migrate). A given piece of land in a temperate or cold zone will not sustain the same number of animals 365 days per year. This is the rationale behind fall deer hunts. A certain percentage of wild animals that don't hibernate must die -- be it from humans, wild animals, or starvation. Furthermore, mice, rats, and rabbits (plus wild pigs) are also invasive species, and anything that keeps their numbers down is a good thing for the ecosystem.
Also see this chart on feedback linkage with ups and downs of predators and prey over time:
https://www2.nau.edu/~gaud/bio301/content/fdbck.htm
Our cats never went for birds it was always rodents. It was always cute when a cat got its first kill. It would come up on the porch and proudly lay the mouse on the floor for us to observe and praise the cat.
My entire life I have had to suffer lectures from deer hunters that there are too many deer…
There are. If my cats could take down a deer, I might reconsider and allow them outside. As it is now, they are indoor only because it's better for their health. I like birds, but I love my cats, and my decisions about them are based on their health and needs.
My cat is indoor/outdoor as he pleases. I've got three bird feeders that feed dozens of birds.
The fed birds some of which breed twice a year produce dozens of offspring. My cat's license only 3 birds per annum and as many voles, mice, rats, and lizards as he can catch. Quit whining.
Feral cats? Get a scalpel. That will neuter their viability.
Feral cats who live in cold climates do not live long. 1-2 years.
Life is hard for these cats.
Feral cats who live in warmer climates fare better - but only by a few years.
I know a local woman who catches feral cats, takes them to the local humane society to be fixed (neutered/spayed) (the most important thing done to stop the cycle of cruelty)
given a round of shots, a nick off the top of the ear for identification as feral-but-fixed, and then re-released. Again- their life is short but at least they are allowed to live it, and not pro-create.
anyone can learn how to do this - and help with the population of feral cats.
I have one feral cat living with me. she does not hunt. But she does like to go outside to do her business.
I've never picked her up, but she will let me pet her. she is very sweet and talkative and she is in love with one of my domesticated male cats.
thank you Lars.
Just to throw in a thumbs up for my dog, a Samoyed, who also catches, and eats, rabbits, voles, mice, chipmunks, and occasionally a bird. It's quite a sight seeing a fluffy white 50 lb bitch launch herself into the air after a low flying bird.
I'm sure she couldn't bring down a deer all by herself, and her shepherd BFF can't be trusted outside on her own. But the deer seem to steer well clear of my crops.
Downside is she needs to be wormed twice a year.
"36 birds a year also seems way high; "
Activists always grossly exaggerate. Always.
Our cats are pretty lazy, but they love the outdoors. When I walk the dogs through the woods behind our home, one of the cats usually follows us. It slows us down, because I want her to keep up, out of fear of other predators lurking - owls and bobcats, primarily, both of which take cats and are bold enough to make attempts even if I'm fairly close.
The cats get to go outdoors each day, once I've taken the dogs around the property to get their scent freshly out around the yard. Maybe 2 or 3 times a year, one of the cats will catch a songbird and leave their uneaten carcass for me on the back porch by the door. Lizards, a little more frequently.
We feed the birds in winter and have hundreds around our yard, costing me a freeloading fortune.
I've lived on farms with dozens of barncats, many of them gregarious and some of them not - but there ain't a farmer that wouldn't snort at this nonsense. City folk, projecting their urgencies on people with chores to do.
Cats are a known and present danger to bird-life. Many bird species are greatly reduced because of these feral cats. A do-them-in program is needed more than ever.
Australia shows how to do it,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-killing.html
Based on the unscientific sample of us Althousian cat owners the article’s estimates are bullshit. And like zero multiplying by bullshit always equals bullshit. Math doesn’t lie. The birds are fairing well compared to the rodents we live amongst.
I'm not a cat person, but my wife was. After she died, I kept the cats but did not replace them after their natural deaths.
Now I have mice, and glue traps. Am reconsidering my cat antipathy.
It's a cruel world out there.
The mice have it bad. they are at the bottom. Don't hear anyone whining about the poor mice.
Eat more cats!
John Henry
Birds fly, cats don't.
Did see neighbor's Siamese jump from tree and catch a bird in flight once, though.
Survival of the fittest. Sorry.
Most only eat voles and rats. Cats aren't all that motivated. And the bluejays they kill are the assholes of the bird world. Seriously: other birds are clapping.
I never had pets as a child, but lodged in homes of pet owners when I moved to the UK.
I learned that a narrow majority over there consider confining cats to always-indoors to be animal cruelty.
The position of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is that there's no scientific evidence of pet-cat predation having any impact on bird populations.
In the article we're discussing, the 'take' is a large number, but what's the denominator?
From the RSPB Position paper (UK context):
"Despite the large numbers of birds killed, there is no
scientific proof that predation by cats in gardens is
having any impact on bird populations UK wide. This
may be surprising, but many millions of birds die
naturally each year, mainly through starvation, disease,
or other forms of predation. There is some evidence
that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds. We also
know that of the millions of baby birds hatched each
year, most will die before they reach breeding age.
This is also quite natural, and each pair needs only to
rear two young that survive to breeding age to
replace themselves and maintain the population."
Obviously, places like Australia and New Zealand -- and even island ecosystems in some parts of North America -- are ecologically sensitive with bird species that evolved without cats or similar predators and will be wiped out if cats are allowed to roam after being introduced. But nearly all of the US has always had other similar predators.
For those concerned about reducing predation by domestic cats, the suggestions by the RSPB are to keep the cats indoors during the times of day when birds are most vulnerable: at least an hour before sunset and an hour after sunrise. And to bell the cats, and use large noticeable collars of bright colors that are visible to birds.
By the way, defending birds doesen't make Franzen a novelist, just a bigger bloated pain in the ass.
Just like his prose. Great novelist, my ass.
Since nature does not valorize life, any human philosophy that attempts to will fail.
We keep our cats indoors. Always have. However, we've been considering getting some, as they're known around here, barn cats. We don't have an actual barn so before adopting some from the local animal shelter we would have to build outdoor housing for them next to the house. Most all farms have barn cats. For rodent control. Which would be our purpose in getting them.
The local shelters recognize the difference between feral cats and barn cats. Feral cats, for the most part, are not human friendly. Barn cats are. They get fed. They have a place to go to- if they want. And interact with their keepers. They also tend towards being a bit larger then the average house cat. Right now I have 3 house cats, all about 10 lbs. The barn cats at the shelter available for adoption are all twice their size.
While I'm sure barn cats out here will eat songbirds, so do the raptors that eat cats. Thus turning the tables. And small dogs, and anything else that moves they can catch.
Indoor/outdoor cats have more health problems then indoor cats. The outdoors is not a healthy environment for them. But that's an owner's choice.
I assume there are feral cats in Boston. If so, they are doing a terrible job keeping down the rats.
i Always LOVE reading your poster's comments.. They are Usually All The Same:
"There's this THING, that people "say" is Bad*.. BUT! since *i* do it.. IT'S FINE!!
Bad* pot, booze, cats, jew hatred, etc
"The five continents alone probably contain more than 100 billion birds.". Or so sayeth the ornithologist used to help Hitchcock make The Birds back in 1963.
The cats help keep a needed balance. And so...coyotes, dogs, wolves, cougars, snakes, cars, and predatory birds take their fair share of cats to try to keep the needed balance. Except for this cat, who saved a dog from coyotes. Lucky Dog.
Birds also kill each other. Ever have a bluebird pull a chunk of hair out of your scalp?
Vultures eat vultures.
This is sympathetic nonsense. Go adopt a cat from the shelter that is promulgating it. They won't ask questions. If you look needy aging cat lady enough. And that cat is going to suck.
Years ago, a web comic titled The Oatmeal addressed the question of how much do cats actually kill. It's pretty good.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
"Love them or hate them, these cats are here to stay."
As was prophesied.
I'm allergic to kitties, but if I had one I'd name it Schrodinger, and it could be in and out at the same time.
If you have a taste for urban ecology, use the Amazon portal (or your local library) to acquire the book "Darwin Comes To Town" by Menno Schilthuizen.
My wife has managed a shelter with a trap/neuter/release practice. Mostly used by farmers for rodent control.
May not "solve" the problem, although it might help. But I didn't see the "troubling consequences" noted.
The growth in local coyote population may help a bit. But THAT solution does have "troubling consequences".
I'm allergic to kitties, but if I had one I'd name it Schrodinger, and it could be in and out at the same time.
If you have a taste for urban ecology, use the Amazon portal (or your local library) to acquire the book "Darwin Comes To Town" by Menno Schilthuizen.
I would love to read the article but I have run out of free chances.
My main problem with the allegation that cats are decimating the bird population is that it doesn't seem logical. First, it's my understanding that, in the US anyway, it used to be commonplace for people to leave their cats outside on a daily basis, if not permanently. Now we have perhaps more people who own cats, but most folks keep them inside. Secondly, why are there still so many birds? Shouldn't we all have clear evidence by now, after a hundred-plus years of crowded American cities full of cat-owners, that the bird population has severely declined?
I've had cats my whole life but only had two that went outdoors regularly. One was a smallish black cat who as far as I know never killed any wildlife (I live in a close suburb to Philadelphia, next to a large forest so there's plenty of animal life around. Also, lots of birds). The other cat was a Maine Coon who absolutely refused to be indoors except for most nights, and he did bring home lots of mice; two or three times he brought a bird. So yeah, he was a bit of a menace. I would have kept him indoors if I could have but he was a rescue and never really lost his wild nature.
I have two community cat colonies at my house which started out as less than five and grew to 20 in less than three years with constant impregnations. So I called the local animal control folks who trapped the cats, neutered them, clipped an ear for ID purposes inserted a chip for tracking. Then our friendly animal control folks returned 16 fixed cats onto my front lawn. Two moms took their cats to the front porch and two took their offspring onto the back porch. Now - five years later - I have five cats on the back porch and four out front. There are no ripe females, no crazed Toms, and feline strangers are run off. The two communities hiss at each other.
I don't have bird or animal carcasses around that were killed and eaten by cats and only big 'possums and raccoons hang out for some of the cat food I distribute. BTW, cat houses are made from foam boxes stuffed with straw.
I think that properly implemented Community Cat programs work because some folks like kitty cats - even those outside of human families in the outdoors.
A couple people have mentioned bird cuisanarts and how nodody cares about them because they are green.
Along the same line is Quebec Hydro's James Bay project. I don't know how many birds it has killed but I'll bet a lot. It has also killed a lot of other woodland creatures.
It has drowned an area of wildlife habitat the size of Pennsylvania in northern Canada. And since trees don't grow in reservoirs, destroyed a lot of greenery. Currently has a nominal capacity of about 15GW, may eventually have 27GW or about 27 large nuke plants. About 2/3 of the energy is exported to the US.
It displaced a lot of indigenous people from their reservations and traditional lands.
And the major cause of acid rain. Who remembers that from the 70s and 80s?
But the people in NY, Boston and so on get to bask in the virtuous glow of their hydro generated electricity and brag about how green they are. So there is that.
John Henry
Depending on the season I will have 3 to 5 bird feeders out, plus i put out peanuts for the blue jays. Our across the street neighbors have 6 dogs and a very tough cat. The cat does catch birds to bring home to show off to her humans, and sometimes the birds are still alive. Some day the cat will tangle with a flock of blue jays, and I imagine that will fix things.
Our property borders a wooded area and we live not far from a national forest, so hawks are a bigger risk to the birds at our feeders than cats.
You can't swing a dead cat in my neighborhood without hitting a live one. Or a half dozen sparrows- there's got to be 40 or 50 in the backyard bushes right now. I don't know if that means anything or not.
So they hunt cats in Australia and New Zealand? Since the populaces there are not allowed to own guns, how is that accomplished? Bow and arrow? Boomerangs? We have a few feral cats in my neighborhood; I don't notice any shortage of birds.
My old neighbourhood had a lot of feral cats and a local lady used to put out food for them. Periodically, the food would be inside a cage and she’d take the cats she caught to the vet to have them spayed or neutered before releasing them.
I thought it was nuts—it would take forever to make a dent in the feral cat problem that way. But I was wrong. Within a couple years, there were hardly any cats left. Turns out cats that spend a lot of time outdoors don’t live very long so, if you can keep them from breeding, you’ll be rid of them in a surprisingly short period of time.
100 million outdoor cats? I'd be curious about how that was determined. Nonetheless, this is a Venn Diagram problem- if you believe it's a problem.
Re James Bay:
I've been interested in alternative energy of all kinds since the 60s including nuke, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and more. I first read about the James Bay project in a spread in National Geographic in the 70s and have been loosely following it ever since.
I hope I did not come across too negatively in my comment, I generally support hydro power, including James Bay and think it is generally a good idea.
The point I was making is that, like any other form of energy, it has a cost. One of the costs is animal lives. Does the benefit outweigh the cost? I think so. Some disagree, others might disagree if they knew anything about it.
Wikipedia has an extensive article on the project.
And quick, how many here can point to James Bay on a map? (Hint, it is a small bay, a bit bigger than Lake Michigan)
And getting waaaayyyy off topic, Netflix has a pretty good period series "Frontier" that takes place in James Bay in the 1790s
John Henry
I have > 12 cats (haha!). They can go outside in an exercise area that has 6 foot high chain link fence and only when a human servant is with them.
Yes, Felis cats is a non-native species in North America. I do favor TNR as long at is consistently applied at colonies. You can't knock off for even a 1/2 year. Eventually, if consistently used, the cat population in that area *will* decrease over time.
But let's say that it becomes okay in all quarters to use lethal population control measures to reduce the outdoor cat count. That will also take years to see results, along with the problems attendant with such control measure (e.g. "You shot my cat!", "You came onto my property and shot my cat!", etc.)
As an ornithologist, I can count on one hand the number of birds recovered that were predated by a cat, or signs of a predation. It takes many hands to count the number of birds predated by House Sparrow (which as a non-native species we trap and destroy), House Wrens (carry newly hatched young of Tree Swallows / Eastern Bluebirds out of a nestbox and drop them while in flight), Eastern Screech Owls (easy to tell, as the taken birds can be found in an American Kestrel box or Wood Duck box with the head missing, especially during the Winter when such boxes are used by the owls as food caches).
I also rarely see cats on the nestbox trails where we work. Of course, we are out during the day and cats like the night life a lot.
Re James Bay:
I've been interested in alternative energy of all kinds since the 60s including nuke, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and more. I first read about the James Bay project in a spread in National Geographic in the 70s and have been loosely following it ever since.
I hope I did not come across too negatively in my comment, I generally support hydro power, including James Bay and think it is generally a good idea.
The point I was making is that, like any other form of energy, it has a cost. One of the costs is animal lives. Does the benefit outweigh the cost? I think so. Some disagree, others might disagree if they knew anything about it.
Wikipedia has an extensive article on the project.
And quick, how many here can point to James Bay on a map? (Hint, it is a small bay, a bit bigger than Lake Michigan)
And getting waaaayyyy off topic, Netflix has a pretty good period series "Frontier" that takes place in James Bay in the 1790s
John Henry
How much superior morality virtue signaling can the NYT type media generate? 2.5 billion shames per year?
The cats are protectors of grain crops that are the basis of all civilizations. Every farmer keeps outdoor cats for a reason…RATS. And bubonic plague was stopped by feral cats hunting RATS.
The pretending bird lovers also demand wind power windmills that exterminates the large birds for no benefit. ( don’t tell anyone).
North America has three native cats, the Canadian Lynx (Lynx canadensis), the Bobcat (Lynx rufus), and the Cougar (Puma concolor).
[Stop snickering, Narr. Put your dirty mind back on its leash, I'm making a serious point here.]
All so-called feral cats are invasive Old World predators. As such they should be exterminated. Skin a cat. Save a bird.
Bird species have highly variable survival rates. Just crunching the numbers doesn't really tell you much about whether feline predation is problematic for any particular species. It's not uncommon in some species to have 60% of juvenile birds fail to make it to adulthood.
I live in a Los Angeles neighborhood in which several people, perhaps a third of the cat owners, allow their well nourished cats to wander not just during the day, but also at night, despite the intermittent presence of hungry coyotes. In our socioeconomic stratum, just about all of the cats are neutered. Birds are plentiful, and we could do with cats that could figure out how to catch a few of the feral parrots, which are beautiful but noisy and messy.
Franzen is a great novelist, but his piece falsely suggests an urgency that is unlikely, given the natural pressures and cycles of population biology.
Temple Grandin says that what we owe all animals - pets, animals we kill for food, wildlife - is to cause them as little fear and pain as we humanly can.
With that in mind, I have no issues with culling large (or small) populations of feral cats.
I live in an area known as Kitty City because of the number of feral cats. Over the years there’s been a significant reduction of crows. Crows nest close to the ground and they are now nonexistent in our area. We have a large student population and they usually abandon their cats when they leave. Which is terrible - on the other hand surrendering an animal at our pound gets you a lecture and costs $90. There’s no way people in my neighborhood would approve of destroying ferals. So I trap/spay/neuter/release in my area and have had zero kittens in the past couple of years.
There’s a much worse problem in Hawaii.
When I visited, there was a large group of ferals (approx 300 cats) in an area we visited. People had brought 20 pound sacks of cat food, splitting them open and leaving them on the ground. It was awful.
Here’s a video discussing the issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnBlC8_6sFY&t=2s
These cats should be culled but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
I love cats, have lived with cats (all indoor) all my life. But I understand the need for animal management as well.
n.n said...
"Feral cats? Get a scalpel. That will neuter their viability."
Coyotes. Best cat killers there is.
“The trouble with tame cats outside is that they don't obey the Lotka-Volterra equation (wolf and rabbit population evolution). When rabbits are plentiful the wolf population grows. When the growing wolf population kills off most of the rabbits the wolf population decreases again.”
“With owned cats, the owned cats don't starve with they reduce the number of birds around. Somebody feeds them. So they can quite possibly reduce the bird population to zero.”
Growing up, we had a mostly outdoors cat (the window to the garage was open for his benefit). We Ed him, and te bird predation was minimal. But then the (obese) poodle would figure out how to get te cat’s food and bird carcuses would start showing up in the ack yard. My mother would freak out we would move the cat’s food, and things would be fine, for awhile, until the dog figured out again how to get his food. How does an obese poodle et to te act’s food on top of an upright freezer? Never figured it out, but she had done so.
That cat died of old age about 20. Parents replaced him with two sisters. Same mother but obviously two fathers. One was pure, fluffy white. They moved up into the mountains, and mostly kept them indoors. “Mostly” is the key word. The white one got out one time, and disappeared. Found some fluffy white hair, and that was it. Combined with neighbors having recently seen coyotes in te neighborhood, and they were te likely culprits.
Partner grew up with indoor/outdoor cats. Tiki was purebred Siamese. Her son, Tiki 2 wasn’t. He was very big, and was big of tme neighborhood. He would beat up the other males, leaving them scarred up, and the females pregnant. When the neighbors complained, her mother would tell them to keep their cats inside if they didn’t like it. So, my partner had indoor/outdoor cats when she had a family. Until one Siamese cat got himself “Owled” at their ranch in MT. It had grown up with a German Shepherd, and in the Sumer often slept on the dog on the front porch. Until one night, and owl attempted to poach him from the dog. They heard barking late at night, and the next morning found the dog wrapped around the shredded cat, to keep him warm. They wrapped the cat tightly with towels, and took him to the vet, who sewed him back together. Then, back in PHX for the winter, the first time the cat got out, he disappeared. Later her daughter saw him in a eighbor’s front window. No more MT for that cat. We now have another part Siamese, named Tiki 3 (T3). He is strictly an indoor cat, neutered and declawed. In the summer, he spends his days window surfing, following the deer around the house. We let him out in PHX ito the backyard (which Ewing declawed means that e can’t get over it). Feral cats can and do. But the nighttime curfew is because the neighborhood coyote pack have been known to go over the 6’ walls too - mostly for small dogs (our dog has the same curfew).
Getting back to birds. We had a pair of gorgeous auburn long haired cats living a couple doors away. And we noticed a lot fewer birds singing in the morning. Their owner sold out (tripling is money in 5 years) and moved to 20 ares down south (NC, or maybe TN). Cats ended up coming back, and neighbors fed them. One disappeared last year. We do have bobcats, but coyotes aren’t that common that close in. It outdoor be an over abundance of black bears (pushed down y the increasing population of brown bears and wolves).
Tina Trent writes, "Birds also kill each other."
One of these is the tiny terror known as the Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) that evolution has shaped into a near-perfect control on those songbirds that shit on your freshly-washed car. Unfortunately, the millions of dicky birds killed by feral cats are an unnatural control on the Sharpies, thus more bird shit on cars and more Toxoplasma gondii wiggling around in female brains. (Could this account for the Karen crisis?) Fewer cats, more entertaining action at your birdfeeder!
Indoor/outdoor cats have more health problems then indoor cats
I’ve heard this for a long time including multiple veterinarians over the years. But most of our cats live to 20 years. The couple that had kidney problems it was attributed to food contaminated by Chinese ingredients (we switched brands then). The only danger outside was when we lived near a roaming Tom that repeatedly attacked two of our cats. Usually our dogs kept him away. Now we only have one neighbor cat and she’s cool.
Gadfly keeps cats.
Who knew??
I've been around barn cats since birth. They very seldom ever had any luck catching a bird. Mice, shrews, etc., yes. However...I have seen many a squirrel go after a bird's nest and eat the eggs! I read nothing about THAT problem!
Tina Trent - I agree on the bluejays.
>>"My God! if you take a bunch of numbers that I made up and multiply them together, you get another number! The implications of this are incredible!"
Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather see that done on paper,' he said.
n.n said:
"Brings to mind the gun debates
First responders by civil and human right and duty. Also, Capitol (sic) punishment in Whitmer... Pelosi conspiracies."
The meaning of this is ... obscure. Let's leave it at that.
…and birds consume how many million tons of insects per annum? And insects kill how many of other forms of life (Including humans, the biggest vermin of them all)?
Lighten up, Franzen!
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/can-cats-increase-the-odds-of-developing-schizophrenia#
Birds and dogs captured outdoors need to be put down or assigned healthy and escalating fines. It is disgusting that we keep as “pets” something that just kills for the fun of it.
Wow! Cats kill birds! This is the most commented on thread since Claudine Gay Resigns as Harvard President After Plagiarism Charges. Priorities, people!
One of the bigger ongoing fights my ex and I had on the farm was over two of her habits; feeders and cats. She had four or five bird feeders on our long porch and two cats. Maloney was a lazy slug and almost never left the house. The other killed dozens of birds - that the ex lured to the porch in a feel good frenzy of feeding the birds.
As arguments didn't work and the cat bringing the corpses inside didn't convince her... coyotes got her cat.
As Maloney was left, I was successful arguing against another cat.
Growing up our cats had a hybrid indoor/outdoor life. Vermont winters are too cold for pets to be outside at night, so they slept indoors. But in summertime the cats were outside almost 24x7 and I don't recall a mass songbird extinction. They concentrated on moles, mice, and other rodents.
I do recall a vicious little hummingbird who constantly harassed one of our cats until he'd had enough. Like Icarus it got a little too close to the sun and with one swipe of a paw it was put paid to that bird. One year my mother lost her beloved kitty to a fisher (we think). The other cat returned alone, and you could tell it had PSTD from the event. He was never the same after.
As for farm pests, cats will take down mice but the don't affect the rats. For that, get The Mink Man
Our cats live exclusively indoors. Other people's cats used to roam the yard all the time. Then a family of skunks took up residence under the deck. Now the cats steer clear.
Quaestor at 209--
Huh? Whad I say?
I told this story already, but I had a nesting pair of merlins in the back yard, and by the end of the summer, all of the noisy birds had disappeared, the house wrens, the white throated sparrows, the song sparrows, the red-winged blackbirds, the peewees, and when there were normally three or four robins hunting worms on my lawn at any given time, by the end of the summer, there were none to be seen. The numbers of robins singing in the trees at dusk dropped from too many to count, to one or two. In September I saw the whole family of merlins flying together, the two adults and three offspring flew overhead in a line formation, like a group of fighter jets. If I could have gotten a picture of that, nobody would have believed it, but those merlins killed enough birds around my yard to successfully raise three chicks. I have never seen a cat do that, and I have had outdoor cats for many years. I think it's cruel to deny cats their nature, even if it means that their lives are possibly shorter. I would rather live to thirty free than live to ninety in prison.
Habitat is what limits bird populations in aggregate, not predation, though I learned this summer that a pair of efficient predators can make a pretty big short term dent.
"One of these is the tiny terror known as the Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) that evolution has shaped into a near-perfect control on those songbirds that shit on your freshly-washed car."
I was on my back porch this fall and I heard a huge flutter as a whole flock of starlings took off in unison in different directions, but one of these still managed to knock one of the starlings over in its swoop, and circled back, and picked it up off the ground and carried it off. For all of the killings by the merlins, I never witnessed one, though I did see a couple of chases. It seemed to me that maybe they chased the songbirds until they got tired, but I am not sure.
My local no-kill shelter keeps the animals inside an old warehouse. It's kind of a nursing home for cats. Rather sad, really.
Ideally you'd let them out at night when songbirds are asleep and rodents are creeping upon the earth.
We have an indoor cat. My neighbor has two outdoor cats who control mice, moles and shrews.
The windows on our house kill more birds than those two cats do.
Cats on farms are completely different from cats in suburbs.
If we could train the cats to hunt in packs we might have fewer deer eating our trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables. Or maybe we could trade up to a few bobcats.
The pretending bird lovers also demand wind power windmills that exterminates the large birds for no benefit. ( don’t tell anyone).
A Green blight. Unreliable, expensive energy. Environmentalists love nature and industry kickbacks. They invariably subscribe to the progressive liberals' Pro-Choice ethical religion of moderate delight.
lonejustice sez :"This is the most commented on thread since Claudine Gay Resigns as Harvard President After Plagiarism Charges. Priorities, people!"
I think that lying, plagiarizing, data-fabricating, grievance-mongering waste-of-space has been afforded the appropriate priority. My cats might kill birds a little more frequently than this over-paid fraud publishes, but at least my cats do their own killing.
Well, if 2 billion birds a year are being killed by cats, then it is perhaps a good thing some people allow their cats to fill that ecological niche, to avoid a runaway bird population. With the dearth of natural predators, especially in suburban areas, I suspect that niche needs filling.
A fed cat is a very efficient hunter. So house cats to hunt.
I think? Cats are the only creature that hunts for the fun of it. All others kill to eat.
On a side note, the morning news did a story about a little house dog out to do thei business, when it was attacked by one Coyote, and a second joined in. But out of no where the family cat attacked and chased the Coyotes off. The dog was tore up good, but will recover.
"This is the most commented on thread since Claudine Gay Resigns as Harvard President After Plagiarism Charges. Priorities, people!"
Apparently, the revelation that Gay is a plagiarist is not surprising enough to people here to generate much interest.
Are indoor cats imprisoned as suggested by tim in vermont?
Some may be- but the reason they're called domestic cats is- they've been domesticated. Most of my cats growing up would try to slip outside. The purebred Siamese my wife and got at a shelter- our first cat, never tried to go outside. Our second cat did try, and succeeded, once. In Great Mistakes IL. When the outside temp was -40°F. Not wind chill, temperature. Found her the next day under a neighbor's shed. For the rest of her life she would walk up to an outside door threshold, and even if the door was wide open- stopped there. Made no attempts at all to get to the outside. She had been there, done that, and that was enough for her. I think it was Mark Twain who said something about that- "A cat that jumps onto a hot stowe will never do that again. It also won't jump onto a cold stove."
We have 3 cats now. Oldest one was picked up as a kitten by youngest son and female friend, not girlfriend, while walking near a cemetery. A B+W domestic shorthair. Walked up to them and meowed for affection. No human habitation nearby. She was obviously dumped there. Son bought her home, literally skin and bones. Took her to the vet next day for a checkup. Been with us since. She won't go outside. At all. It's dangerous out there. My other two I adopted from the county shelter, another B+W domestic shorthair, as a kitten, and a 4 year old calico. I was looking for two kittens, but the calico was really friendly. Don't know anything about their previous lives, but when I let the dog out to do her business- neither of them will cross the threshold to go out. With no children left in the house, we have a number of doors we keep closed. They will go through those. But they won't venture outside. They get food, love, and affection inside, and an occasional mouse to play with before killing it. Actually, since I've adopted the extra two- I've seen no evidence of mouse activity in the house... which is why I got them.
When my neighbor across the street first moved in she came over one day and asked if I had seen a cat around. Well, several, actually. At the time had some feral cats living in a small copse of pine trees in front of the house. She had let the cat out and hadn't seen it for two days now. I let her know her yard had coyotes, mine had fox (their territories generally don't overlap- they fill the same ecological niche.), and we had owls, hawks, and bald eagles in the area- and they all eat cats. And she wasn't likely going to see her cat again. Feral cats and barn cats have learned about them. I don't know how animals do it- but they do pass on such knowledge to each other and offspring. Her domestic cat didn't have that knowledge.
If I had a Maine Coon cat, or one similarly sized, I would consider letting it be an inside/outside cat. But most domestic cat breeds are perfectly healthy kept as indoor cats and don't suffer if they're kept indoors.
2.4 billion birds killed in the U.S., works out to about one per acre. I don't think I would notice the missing bird.
Narr writes, "Huh? Whad I say?"
You were about to make a rude comment about cougars and middle-aged divorcees. I know how your mind works.
We've got a couple of feral cats that we catch on camera every once in a while. We live in the rural suburbs, and we still have plenty of songbirds. We have several feeders, and never see any dead birds. I think we have other predators that keep everything under control (coyotes).
Oh, and, we need more educated crows.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt-pB1R64mI
A trap, neuter, release policy might work on the urban populations of our major cities.
In San Diego, while seven I walked out one morning and found pieces of one of our cats on the patio—Coyotes. A few weeks later, a very sweet, very young cat climbed into our neighbor’s daughter car at the mall. We ended up with one of the best animals we’ve ever had (never went looking for a cat).
Birds are usually everywhere, if we care to observe.
Franzen reminds me of Michael Crichton’s example of bungled and costly wolf management in Yellowstone (). Nature is vastly complex, often beyond our understanding in incalculable ways. Even with more accurate numbers, it’s incredibly difficult to be right. Choices are made.
Often, such people teach me more about human nature and ‘modernity’, which is a part of Nature I suppose (a lot of it instructive). Animals are interesting, fascinating even, especially for a period in our youth. Lots to teach the kids.
Personally, for what it’s worth, I feel fondness, but they aren’t other people. If I reflect, I’m sometimes in awe, sometimes in admiration, some times in fear, mostly ignorant, and I feel urges to hunt as well.
Here we are for awhile, then not. Lots to learn.
What a pussy Franzen is.
Apparently, the revelation that Gay is a plagiarist is not surprising enough to people here to generate much interest.
Progressive corruption, extraordinary corruption is a symptom of liberal democracy (i.e. regime of divergent evolution). Diversity: sexism, racism, etc, is an innate trait of the Democrat party since its inception. Gay is a product, expression of left-wing ideological conception.
What a pussy Franzen is.
He is felinophobic. He thinks that cats should purr and wear "hats". He is probably an environmentalist of the Green blight order of progressive sects and liberal license.
Wait until Franzen learns about the Brown-Headed Cowbird, which lays its eggs in the nests of other species (like very cute and threatened warblers); the baby cowbirds are bigger and more aggressive and the parent warblers raise the "adopted" cowbirds while the baby warblers die. Then the cowbirds leave and join huge flocks of cowbirds until the next breeding season.
Also snakes are pretty good bird control, but there aren't as many in suburban neighborhoods as there need to be, so cats get the job.
We have chipmunk issues in our yard; I wish I had some big snakes, but in their absence I encourage the local cats to have at it.
You want to keep an animal that enjoys its freedom trapped inside to look at birds through the window because you know what it is thinking, that’s fine. Just don’t imagine that I believe that you actually understand a cat’s thinking. For a domesticated animal, cats look pretty much identical to the wild stock from which they are drawn. I don’t think that domestication has made much of a dent. Any healthy cat can fend for itself in the wild, where most domestic dogs would quickly starve.
Oh for the love of Pete. I'm a dairy farmer and if it wouldn't be for feral cats my farm would be over run with vermin, I don't know how a city could survive with out cats. Think of the ancient Egyptians, why did they worship cats, they protected the grain in storage! The look at New York, with it's sea of rats videoed at night, totally creepy.I guess they miss Michal Jackson. I've noticed at least on my farm they kill mainly English sparrows, a filthy import not native to the Americas and they absolutely terrorize starlings another invasive species imported from England,GOOD!
If you want to do good put up bird feeders and bird houses where cats can't get to them. I have Purple Martin houses, love them and they are almost totally dependent on humans for housing anymore and they really do keep down mosquitoes and also bluebird houses, they are so beautiful gleaning my pastures for bugs. All of nature has a plan and the more we mess with it and disturb things the worse it gets
And remember we will always have some mice,but rats are mainly a sign of human filth and decay not being taken care of, TRASH!
Backing away now, slowly . . .
Is there a problem of there being some critical shortage of birds that we are all unaware of? Seems to me, at the age of almost 44, that birds are as ubiquitous now as they were when I first became aware that birds existed (however little I was then).
From what I know of friends who own cats, and let them roam outdoors (and kill birds)-- "love me, love my cat" seems to apply, just as it does with dog owners. The difference being that dogs don't devastate wildlife, as far as I know.
From what I know of friends who own cats, and let them roam outdoors (and kill birds)-- "love me, love my cat" seems to apply, just as it does with dog owners. The difference being that dogs don't devastate wildlife, as far as I know.
Cats don't "devastate wildlife" either. Ever see what a weasel does to a chicken coop? That's devastation. Blood all over the walls like a scene from psycho. Basically the land supports the number of predators it supports, and if there are going to be a lot of mice and birds, there are going to be a certain number of predators and a balance will be reached. Most of the animals that kept control of these populations were trapped out a long time ago, or driven out by human habitation.
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