As a general rule, birds don’t explode. Given that, when I find what looks like an explosion of feathers, I assume another sort of bad end has occurred.
Posted today is a photograph of
a splay of feathers I discovered near the lake.
The scene of a kill for certain. A
close inspection led me to guess an American robin met its demise.
Robins are a fine bird. Not strikingly colored, but they are plenty friendly
and good at eating bugs.
No telling what got the
bird. Might have been Kevin’s cat, but
something about the clean kill suggested fox or bobcat to me. My game camera picked up a fox within a few
feet of the kill spot not so long ago.
If a fox or bobcat harvested
the robin, that is a natural thing. If
Kevin’s domestic cat snatched the bird that is another matter.
Our pet kitties have devastated
bird populations. A Google search will
result is a variety of estimations of loss.
But even the lowest estimates are astounding.
At https://abcbirds.org, I read this: “In
the United States alone, outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds
every year. Although this number may seem unbelievable, it represents the
combined impact of tens of millions of outdoor cats. Each outdoor cat plays a
part.”
I have always discouraged my
cats from killing birds and located bird feeders where I did not provide points
of ambush for my cats. My 20 pounds of housecat,
Splash, has never been one for killing birds.
Billions of birds matter to me.
—Mitchell Hegman
We had a cat named Amos when I was a kid that was a bird killing machine. He was absolutely ruthless. I thwarted a meadlowlark hit compliments of Amos when I was 8. As in, I intervened and shooed the bird away before Amos could really get going on killing. I hope it lived and I wasn't sorry that Amos was mad about it.
ReplyDeleteCats are amazingly efficient hunters. I also hope the bird lived!
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