birding-aus

cats

To: "Shirley Cook" <>, <>, "Bill Stent" <>
Subject: cats
From: "Mike" <>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 11:53:44 +1000
Dear All

 Bill commented
> Well, as a bird and a cat lover, my response is: my cats PROBABLY NEVER
> kill birds or other things, as they're penned up in a wacking great cat
> run 100% of the time.  They can come inside, or go into the run.
> Occasionally they escape through an open door but are captured seconds
> later.
>
Good on you Bill - a very sensible approach.

Our campus (Just out of Port Moresby PNG) is a Bird Sanctuary and its 
inhabitants (Staff and students) are not supposed to keep cats but Admin had 
been lax and there has developed a large cat population - some tame, some wild. 
 Between a previous resident birder (Len Tolhurst) and myself we have a 
documented account of the effect of the increase in cats.  The ground nesting 
birds were the first to decline - Brown Quail, Buff-banded Rails, and 
White-browed Crakes in particular.  The cats climb trees and even the 
Fawn-breasted Bowerbirds flee at their approach.  They take young from nests in 
trees - verified by staff and student families who have been watching specific 
nests with their children.  The families concerned found it very disturbing to 
see the cats in the birds nest cleaning their paws and whiskers and the 
nestlings gone.

Well admin is telling people they are not to keep cats and two Ecotraps from 
Melbourne have been purchased and are in use.  Three cats have been caught in 
our garden and this morning we were rewarded by watching an Emerald Ground-Dove 
feeding in our driveway!

While banding birds in New Zealand (mostly introduced European species that 
some say are adapted to living with cats) I found that more than 50% of my band 
returns through the NZ national scheme were attributed to Cat kills.  Our 
neighbour the Principal of the College we worked at was denying to my face that 
his cat ever caught any birds while I was watching it creep up behind him to 
the doorway of his house that they rarely used, with a goldfinch in its mouth.  
I knew his very tame cat caught lots of birds because on my way to my office 
each day I would go past his rarely used door to identify the species of birds 
that his cat had caught in the last 24 hours.

Incidentally NZ did a long-term study on predation of rabbits in an exclosure.  
After about 12 years a drought reduced the rabbit numbers and the bird 
predators (Marsh Harriers) and the stoats died off or moved away.  Two cats 
from a farm house 3km away however, were being refuelled each day by their 
owners, allowing them to come to the exclosure and prey on the last few 
rabbits.  Not even the electric fence on top of the 2m high fence kept them out.

Lets not heap all our anger on cats the human species has to take the blame 
flor many senseless introductions in many parts of the world.  The Brown Tree 
Snake (found in Aust, & NG) was taken from the small PNG islands to Guam and 
caused the extinction of three species and made another three or four rare.  
The residents of Guam do not like our tree snakes.

There are many other examples and as Tim Low is trying to tell us it is time we 
learnt from our past mistakes.

Cheers & happy birding over the main holiday season

Mike


Dr Mike Tarburton
Dean: School of Science and Technology
Pacific Adventist University
PMB, Boroko
Papua New Guinea







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