I’ll keep this fairly short because I am not too sure how relevant it is to the cat/bird debate. There are two facts that relate to it which might interest some people. It concerns America because it concerns the coyote.
The coyote is an effective predator of outside cats. It is a reason why cats are kept inside. Consequently outside cats stay away from coyotes. No surprise there.
Cats stick to areas near their homes. Most cats don’t wander far. In America the domestic cat avoids the areas where coyotes live. A study employed camera traps (camera on trees etc. which fire automatically on detecting movement) to track the movements of wild animals and domestic cats in backyards, urban ‘woodlots’ and protected natural areas.
More than 50,000 photos were taken of coyotes and other wildlife such as deer, in natural protected areas. There were only 55 photos of domestic cats amongst them all.
In residential, urban areas where coyotes are also found, domestic cats confined themselves to residential yards. The cats are steering clear of coyotes. Domestic cats were 300 times more likely to be in a residential yard than in protected areas.
One of the protected area had no coyotes. In that area there were cats.
All this means that cats kill usually birds in urban areas and back yards. Does that have any impact on the statistics of cat predation on birds? Do certain species of birds favour the urban environment and are, therefore, more prone to being preyed upon by cats? I am not sure but it may be a significant.
The second little known fact about cats preying on birds is that city or urban birds have developed different behaviors to adapt to this environment. I guess this happened over centuries of being preyed upon by cats and other animals in urban areas.
Birds produce alarm calls more frequently. When captured birds are less aggressive and ‘remain more paralyzed’. They also lose more feathers.
I have not seen and can’t find the original study material for more detail but it would appear that urban birds have developed strategies to improve survival from predation by roaming domestic cats in the urban environment.
As birds are already towards the bottom of the list of favoured prey of the cat (see below), these strategies may well alter the cat-killing-bird statistics. I hope ornithologists take note.
Sources: LA Times referring to a study by Roland Kays, a zoologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and Science Daily referring to a study by Juan Diego Ibáñez-Álamo, researcher at the University of Granada (UGR) and Anders Pape Møller from Paris-Sud University (France).
P.S. My cat Gabriel is a good hunter and it worries me because I don’t like to see animals killed but I like to see natural cat behavior. I have to accept it. He has killed 3 birds.
Ha, ha, the dead, flat frog toy. That is hilarious. Monty had half a dead bird for awhile because he killed one and ate half of it before winter and then before I had a chance to bury it the ground froze and it snowed and I forgot about it. Not him. Come spring he found it and every time I’d let him out there he’d go crazy playing with his half a dead bird. My husband finally did bury what was left of it.
I feel just as you do, Michael. I love to see Monty being who he is outside in the yard. He’s a predator. There is no doubt that the desire to hunt and kill prey is hard wired into him. When he is sitting outside next to the garage, partially hidden by some plants that grow there, he isn’t seeking a shady spot, he isn’t enjoying the summer breezes, he isn’t there for the scenery. He is there waiting for some hapless creature to come around the corner, unaware of Monty’s presence. Our yard will be full of wildlife– squirrels, birds, chipmunks, rabbits– but the second I open the door to let Monty out into our fenced yard every other living thing scatters. I hope that it limits his predation somewhat that he is confined to our yard, and perhaps the animals do know to avoid him somewhat, as he is always in hiding in the same places. Once in awhile there must be a new comer to our yard, and he is able to catch a small creature.
He has caught several birds and recently has started eating them. He’ll eat about half the bird before he gets tired of it. Jeff recently insisted that Monty be put on a diet and right after that I found Monty outside in the rain eating half a dead bird. He looked at me as if to say, “See what you made me have to do? Now could you defeather this and cut it up and put it in my bowl, please?”