Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ations early l edged chicks may experience tough times, unless they, too, head
to the feeder. In subirdia this is really the least of their concerns. Cats are
much more troubling to mother birds and their of spring.
In cities, birds collide with buildings, crash into windows, become dis-
oriented by night lighting, and succumb to pesticides. But adding up all the
estimated loss of birds from these sources does not even come close to the
estimated 1.4 to 3.7
billion
birds that cats kill
each year
in the contiguous
United States alone. Cats in Canada kill another 196 million birds. Consid-
ering that Americans own 84 million cats and tolerate another 30 to 80 mil-
lion feral cats that range freely across our lands, these numbers aren't that
surprising. To a bird, however, they are simply horrifying. In Bristol, England,
cats eat nearly half of all house sparrows, dunnocks, and robins each year.
One in every ten birds in the United States will see the same thing just before
death: a cat.
We now know that the ef ect of cats goes well beyond killing. English
researchers demonstrated that a parent bird reduces the rate at which it feeds
nestlings when it glimpses a cat. Reduced feeding may result in undersized
young, but more important, the unattended nest becomes easy prey for jays
and crows.
Some well-meaning residents of subirdia spay and neuter feral cats but
allow them to live outside. Others declaw or defang their pet cats. Many hang
bells around their cats' necks or try bibs that foil a cat's predatory pounce. All
such attempts to limit the ef ects of cats on native birds are inef ective. Stew-
arding our urban birds requires that we keep cats indoors. Period. (It's safer
for the cats as well.)
I could see right away that the spotted towhee entangled in the net was banded.
He was also a few inches away from freedom and gaining on it quickly. I dashed
