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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