Would you keep your cat indoors during the bird nesting season.

[Barry Noid]

And maybe ...just maybe.... sodding students would stop taking a liking to cats during term time and then booting them out to fend for themselves when they go back to mummy and daddy..... Apart from that i dont think that nesting birds have a problem with many cats, like someone mentioned earlier Magpies take a bigger toll on newly hatched chicks, but they are not an abomination to the bird world, they are infact a very beautiful and extremely clever member of the corvus family.

[onika]

my kittens arent allowed out yet anyway :mad:

[jeanjeaney]

If I had a cat - yes

[Solomon1]

they are infact a very beautiful and extremely clever member of the corvus family.

 

absolutely barry!

 

love magpies

 

really irks me that people are so superstitious about them....even my own dad!!!

 

he had a run of bad luck last year and tried to blame the poor solitary magpie that lives in his garden....kept threatening to kill it.

 

till i pointed out that he was ranting like a loony about a colourful crow who had absolutely no impact on his life whatsoever.

 

[IanG]

The magpies round here are fearless, saw a cat trying to get one earlier (after killing some other poor little bird:mad:) next thing theres 6 magpies attacking this cat.. i would have loved it if they had grouped together and flew off with the cat.

[AJ sheffield]

Definately not. Unfair to the cat.

 

Keeping cats indoors is cruel, end of.

[olorin]

to be fair ian, i don't think a lot of cat owners realise the scale of the problem.

 

but i agree with you, they should take responsibility for it

 

I dont hink many farmers realise the problems that pesticides and hedgerow destructions have on birds either. If you really wanted to save them you could go and shoot all the farmers, or at least stop buying all their produces to make them go out of business.

[Alastair]

If it worked then I would totally agree with you, unfortunately the bell does not work in most cases as the wildlife does not equate the bell with a predator, also cats learn to stalk whilst keeping the bell silent.

All that the bell tends to do is alert other cat's and dogs to the presence of a cat.

 

Those statements contradict one another.

 

Why would a cat learn to stalk whilst keeping its bell silent if the bell doesn't alert the wildlife?

[jeremyjh1]

whilst all this is true jeremy, there is a real issue wrt the impact that domestic cats have on the local bird, small mammal, amphibian and fish populations.

 

there are 8 million cats in the uk.

 

a far larger predatory populace than would be supported in the wild.

 

they can - and do - wreak havoc.

 

bells might not be the complete answer to remedying the situation, but they might help.

 

I'm not saying that domestic cats do not kill birds etc., and that there should be something done to try to curtail this.

 

I was simply responding to a poster who, whilst defending 'defenceless' animals felt it necessary to act (or, at least, say they would) in a manner more reprehensible.

 

In the animal kingdom there are often only two reasons to kill - food or defence.

 

I'm afraid the domestic cat situation is just another example of how Mankind measing about with nature causes more harm than good.

 

Anyway, putting bells on the collars of cats will do little to save the baby bird in the nest, not able to fly. So, they can hear the cat coming? What can they do about it?

[Solomon1]

I dont hink many farmers realise the problems that pesticides and hedgerow destructions have on birds either. If you really wanted to save them you could go and shoot all the farmers, or at least stop buying all their produces to make them go out of business.

 

cat owner by any chance olorin?