At 02:00 PM 10/2/97 +1000, you wrote:
>Dear Birders
>
>Being fairly new to the 'debate' about cats and birds, I'm not sure if the
>following matters have been raised, so ignore me if they have.
>
>As a birdlover who has a cat in the household I have kept a tally of its
>predations. This is possible because as someone said, cats are very
>territorial. This one never leaves the immediate surrounds and brings all
>its kills home to the back doorstep as far as I can tell. (And unless it
>selects unevenly among native and non-native species to bring home the
>species distribution to be unaffected even if the numbers are an
>underestimate).
I am a birdlover, I was once an aviculturist but now I own a cat.....
(that should be enough to get me banned from the list). Bells do not work
on all cats. Our cat prefers to stay indoors and is never allowed outside
at dawn or dusk. In the last three years it has brought home one swallow
and two Senegal doves, all three birds were fledglings.
Cats do fine in outside enclosed runs (a euphemism for "cage") because they
sleep most of the day. However most cat owners don't like doing this....
Another trick I have learnt is to get some tapes or CDs of bird noises and
play these over and over again LOUD. This way the cat soon gets sick of
bird noises. It worked for mine.
Feral cats are another matter and should be considered a different issue.
Unfortunately they are here for the long term.
Lets have some threads on birds for crying out loud.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shane Raidal BVSc PhD MACVSc Avian Health
Lecturer in Veterinary Pathology
Department of Veterinary Biology and Biomedical Sciences
Murdoch University phone: +61 8 9360 2418
Perth,WA, 6150 fax: +61 8 9310 4144
Australia
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