They are also calling for owners to give their cats garishly coloured collars and to install sonic devices in their gardens to scare their pets indoors. The advice is contained in a new guide produced by the British Trust for Ornithologists (BTO) which aims to reduce the impact of cats on garden birds.
Cats are believed to be responsible for the deaths of 55 million birds in Britain every year and have been blamed for contributing to the long term declines of garden birds like the house sparrow. Populations of other garden birds, such as the robin and dunnock, are also said to suffer from predation by cats.
Dr Tim Harrison, from the BTO, said cats were able to reduce the effectiveness of bells through careful movements. By keeping their heads still as they stalk, the sound of the bell is reduced. "It is fascinating that you have this animal that can try to compensate for this bell put round its neck. It also couldn't harm to try a colourful collar on the cat. Birds are predominantly visual foragers with keen eyesight so anything like that wouldn't do any harm."
6 comments:
how ridiculous is this? a cat should be allowed to hunt and go outside, they are natural hunters and never were meant to be apartment pets confined to your sofa. yes the few ones that can manage to kill a few sparrows every now and then.. so what? it doesnt seem such an endangered species. same for mice. or lizards or anything else they prey. how about the ornithologists start worrying about serious problems we cause to birds instead of cats hunting on my backgarden..
Because it is far easier to put the blame on this kind of easy to pick on targets then to take on the real issues, i.e. us humans...
I think part of being a responsible cat owner is preventing them from hunting, particularly in Australia where cats are responsible for lowering the populations of many endemic native species. I use a thing called a cat bib which prevents my cat from taking birds, though he occasionally gets rats which does not bother me as they are equally introduced. The bib may look a bit ridiculous but i only put it on him when he goes out at night. I guess the cat hunting situation isn't socially acknowledged as a big problem in the UK and judging by the comments above, it actually seems to be blown out of proportion? But Australians can't afford to take that attitude
55 million birds is hardly "a few sparrows".
And people have the nerve to complain about wind turbines. Sounds like cats are far more of a threat!
Foreigner1, isn't that exactly what they are talking about in the article? The blame is not on the cats but rather on the cat owners. The cat's are a bane to birds, a predator introduced and maintained by humans. It is our fault so many birds die unnecessarily in the claws of an animal that shouldn't be there and cat owners should do what they can to minimize this.
By all means bell your cat and feed a coyote. They get hungry too!
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