Cats, Birds, and Bird Feeding

Recently, we had two customers in the store who are cat lovers.  Seeing the cat bib we sell, designed to passively interfere with cats’ hunting, one of them seemed offended that someone would put that on a cat and she remarked, “ Cats kill birds, it’s nature!”

Egyptian Cat Mummy

That’s wrong, at least in all the world except North Africa and the Near East.  Cats are indigenous there but nowhere else. In North Africa and the Near East birds have been evolving defenses against cat predation since the Pleistocene. Elsewhere though, cats are newcomers, brought by humans; instead of having hundreds of centuries to evolve defenses, birds have had only a few hundred years. Birds in places like North America have not had time to develop defenses against cats’ deadly effective hunting skills.

So, it is not “nature” nor is it “natural” for cats to be killing birds in North America, South America or Europe. Humans interfered with nature when we brought the cats.

And have we brought cats.  In the United States alone more than   150 million cats are alive as you read this, their ancestors brought here by humans. More than 82 million are kept as pets and the number of feral cats probably exceeds 70 million. And all of them are killing birds whenever they get the chance.

Here is the grim fact:  Cats kill millions of birds every year.  Pet cats don’t kill them for food, they kill them because cats are hunters.  Their hunting instinct is independent of their urge to eat and they hunt whether they are hungry or not. Feral cats kill many more.

Kitten Eating a Rabbit

We’ve written in this space before about the well-intentioned efforts of cat lovers to trap, neuter, and return feral cats.  (TNR) Now comes yet another piece of scientific evidence that it doesn’t work.  Biologists recently studied a feral cat colony in Tucson, Arizona, and discovered that local coyotes were eating them. And, another anecdotal piece of evidence arrived in our in-box:  At one feral cat colony in Southern California, coyotes discovered the cats and killed most of them.  Then, the coyotes kept coming back to eat the cat food set out by the people maintaining the colony.

We doubt that our customer who thinks that cats are just being true to nature when they kill birds would be as blase if a coyote kills one of their pet cats.  But, just as cats hunt birds, coyotes hunt small mammals. And the coyotes are indigenous.

Bird-Saving Cat Bib

Because this slaughter of birds by cats is human-caused, we ought to do as much as we can to lessen the impact on wild bird populations.  Here are some suggestions:

1.  Keep your cats indoors.  This is the most humane solution, indoor cats lead longer and healthier lives.

2. Hang birdfeeders out in the open and far enough away from trees so that cats can’t hunt them from underneath or inside  a tree.

3. If you live where cactus grows, surround the birdfeeding station with cactus.

2.    The best recent invention we’ve seen for preventing cats from killing birds is a catbib.  Invented by a backyard, bird-feeding, cat lover, the CatBib (a thin neoprene bib) disrupts the cat’s hunting skills, without interfering with any other kitty activities. It acts as a barrier between cat and prey by getting in the way just as the cat strikes out for the bird. Because birds see in color, it also functions as a colorful visual warning to the birds. Birds can see the cat coming. The best part about the catbib is that it doesn’t interfere with the cat’s ability to eat, drink, run, etc. and enjoy being outdoors. Cat owners who have used it report great success. (By the way, bells on cat collars don’t work. Cats can creep along stealthily and hunt without the bell ever ringing. Like we said, they are great hunters.)

And everybody should neuter their pet cats. Over time, that would even help reduce the number of feral cats.

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Full Disclosure: Until a few weeks ago, when his time to die finally came, we had shared fifteen years of our life with a cat.  Waldo wasn’t much of a hunter in his final years because his eyesight faded and he was content, as an old cat should be, to sleep in warm places. And we had him pretty well trained to stay in the front yard and out of the back yard where the bird feeders are.  But he no doubt killed many birds in his younger days and we didn’t always follow our own advice of keeping him indoors.  We miss him, but we’ve decided to forego further cats. Responsibility for ameliorating this human-caused slaughter of birds starts at home. Besides, our next door neighbor has upwards of ten cats so, anytime we want to hold a purring cat, we can go to her house.

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The latest TNR study, Observation of Coyote-Cat Interactions” by Grubbs and Krausman is in the July 2009 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Mangement.

The number of pet cats in the U.S. comes from  “Market research statistics – U.S. pet ownership“. American Veterinary Medical Association. http://www.avma.org/reference/marketstats/ownership.asp. Last visited November 10, 2009.

For more on feral cats see,  Mott, Maryann (2004-09-07). “U.S. Faces Growing Feral Cat Problem“. National Geographic News, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0907_040907_feralcats.html. Last visited November 10, 2009.

The photo of a feral kitten eating a rabbit is by Jake Berzon and the Egyptian cat mummy photo was taken by E. Michael Smith.

Interspecies Symphony

We haven’t forgotten you and will be back later this week.  In the meantime, the birds of our yard all seem to have fledglings and they are eating us out of house and home.

And, as you can see, no interspecies rivalries are allowed to interfere with feeding time.  This particular symphony began with a grosbeak playing the melody, the House Finches doing harmony, and the goldfinches on the flutes.

Not for nothing are they called grosbeaks.

The grosbeak was soon replaced by the Ladderback Woodpecker and the White-wing Dove.

The Ladderback came back for a curtain call.  (The Hummingbirds were supposed to be playing the trumpets in the background but they were on strike at the time.)

What Happens if You Forget to Feed the Birds

We are often asked if forgetting to fill your bird feeders matters to the birds who frequent the feeders at your residence.

This cannot happen at our house; the Border Collies won’t allow it. Feeding the birds at our house requires coordinated teamwork.  A minimum of one human and three Border Collies is necessary,

Border Collies Feeding the Birds

As far as we are able to tell, it is the job of the first Border Collie to see to it that the human who actually fills the feeders goes to the appropriate places in the correct order with the right seed for each feeder.  The second Border Collie herds the first to insure that he makes no mistakes herding the human.  The third is a general purpose back-up in case of mistake.  Mostly though, her job is to herd the second Border Collie; Border Collies seldom make mistakes.  All three remind us daily to feed the birds, so we never forget.

Apparently, the job of bird feeding is more complicated than letting the chickens out of their coop each morning.  Only one Border Collie is required to oversee that job.  And, at the same time, he checks the property to insure that no cats have snuck onto the property during the night.  In this way the dogs minimize the risk to the birds of domestic cat attacks, one of the leading causes of song-bird death.

The breeder who sends us our Border Collies is either a Border Collie in disguise or the world’s greatest expert about dogs. As she teaches, “Border Collies know 150 separate commands and they make you perform each perfectly.”  She also interprets their behavior and empathizes with them.  It must not be easy, she says, to have to live with such dimwitted beings as humans who have to think before they do anything.  Always thinking; seldom acting: That’s how dogs see us.

So, for us, it is a hypothetical question of what happens to the local birds if we fail to fill the feeders; as we said, the dogs won’t allow it. But not everyone has a team of dogs to remind them.  What happens if you forget?

No one knows for sure, but the answer is probably not much — at least during times of good weather.  The birds who frequent your feeders are opportunistic feeders and feed on a wide variety of plants, seeds, and bugs and will survive without your feeders, especially if there are other feeders in the neighborhood.  If you forget one day or are gone for awhile, they’ll be fine and will return to your feeders as soon as they notice they are filled again.

That is not always true during times of harsh weather.  Mounting evidence indicates that some bird species are not migrating because of the availability of human supplied food during winter and the shoulder seasons of early spring and late autumn.  Significant numbers of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, for instance, no longer migrate to Central America, but remain in the Gulf Coast region of the United States during winter.  There is no doubt that supplemental food helps non-migratory birds survive winters.  And, as we always remind people, providing fresh water is at least as important as the food you put out.

But how you are going to feed your birds without a team of Border Collies is simply beyond our power to imagine.

Bliss

Reading around in The New Yorker this week, we discovered a recent article about the late novelist David Foster Wallace who is quoted in the article as believing that true freedom, “means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to.”

Bullock's Oriole

That seems like pretty good advice.  So this morning we chose to pay attention to the year’s first oriole arrival.  Orioles get whiplash when they fly over anything containing grape jelly which is why we keep two feeders stocked with grape jelly.  Only grape jelly please, orioles don’t care about other flavors.  They don’t mind if a fresh orange is available to but it is the grape jelly that halts them in their tracks.

The orioles are following Joseph Campbell’s advice which was to “follow your bliss.”  But “bliss” is an awfully abstract noun upon which to base a life or a philosophy.  There is not much meat on that bone. We may know what it means to an oriole eating grape jelly, but it is more difficult to translate into living a meaningful, fulfilled human life.

But Wallace had something to say about that too. He came up with a pretty good definition of bliss; writing, “Bliss — a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious.” For Wallace, that was what lay on the other side of “crushing, crushing boredom.”

You can’t be bored while watching an oriole gobble down your grape jelly; if you are truly paying attention while you watch, you’ll know a moment of bliss.

Besides, you can follow up with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for yourself.

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Today marks the 39th Earth Day.  Here’s a reminder from an unknown Native American, “Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children.”

Pigeons at Your Bird Feeders – 4 Things to Do

If you build it, they will come.

By “it” we mean a bird feeding station.  By “they” we mean pigeons.  Rock Pigeons to be precise. “Rats with wings” according to Woody Allen and the prosecutors.

Feral pigeons are synanthropic, a big word meaning that pigeons follow humans around like thunder follows lightning.  If you live in a town or city, you can’t get rid of them, but you can learn to live with them.

Here are a few suggestions:

1.  Buy bird feeders designed to defeat squirrels.  Like squirrels, pigeons are heavier than the song birds that visit your feeders.  Some bird feeders have spring-loaded perches that tilt downward if anything heavier than a song bird lands on one. The pigeon or the squirrel slides off the perch.  Sometimes.  We have seen pigeons and White-wing Doves hang on by flapping their wings but they soon tire of that.

2. Another kind of feeder shuts the feeding ports when a heavier bird or a squirrel lands on the feeder. Here is a photo.  It too operates with springs.

3.  Here is a handy little feeder that defeats pigeons every time.  Called “The Clinger,” the ledge is too close to the body of the feeder for a pigeon to get a grip.

4.  Pigeons are ground feeders, designed by Mother Nature to hunt and peck.  As you can see from the photo at the top, taken in our backyard, pigeons prefer to clean up the seed dropped from the feeders by the song birds. Pigeons don’t like eating directly from your feeders anymore than you like them doing it.  They would prefer to be on the ground.

And, as you can tell from the photo, allowing the pigeons to do janitorial work enables the song birds to eat even while the pigeons are feeding, thus eliminating the common problem of pigeons scaring away desirable backyard birds.

We’ll be back soon to mount a defense on behalf of these much maligned birds. In the meantime, we hope these suggestions will keep them off your feeders and on the ground where they belong.

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Unsurprisingly, we sell these feeders at our store.

Winter Bird-Feeding

House Sparrow

The clouds are “low’r’d upon our house” today and not “In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.” Low gray clouds sit over us and bring to mind Shakespeare’s opening lines of Richard III, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.”  Or, as we once saw in a humorous sale advertisement for a tent, “Now is the winter of our discount tent.”

But it is hard to be discontent on a cold, gray winter’s day if you have a flock of House Sparrows entertaining you at the feeders. A few House Finches are out there too but mainly we have sparrows today.  Often we get out the binoculars in the hope of spotting a native sparrow but House Sparrows are usually about all we see in our backyard.  House Sparrows are not native to North America but they compete for food and space quite well.  Too well in some instances. They are known, for example, to boot bluebirds out of their homes.  Many attempts have been and are being made to design a bluebird birdhouse that defeats the ubiquitous House Sparrow and some of those tries will be the subject of a later post.

But House Sparrows need to eat too and today they are hard at it, providing fine entertainment not only to the humans but also to the Border Collies who love to pick up after them, much to the distress of the Rock Pigeons who prefer to do the job.

House Sparrows are non-migrants around here which brings us to the subject of humans feeding wintertime non-migrants.

Non-migratory birds can use extra help during winter from non-migratory  humans.  Providing food and water contributes to birds’ health and survival during the cold time.  A  recent study in England of the English Blue Tit (no jokes please, this is British science we’re talking about) found that non-migratory birds for which humans supply seed during the cold of winter do better than those which lack supplemental food.  (Stay tuned for more about the long-term ec ological impace of humans feeding birds.)

During winter, the abundance of berries, fruits, and insects upon which birds rely dwindles to the point where their diets depend on seeds to survive.

Black oil sunflower seed or a premium seed blend containing primarily black oil sunflower seed are the best winter-time food to use in your feeders. High in protein and fat content, black oil sunflower has twice the calories per pound of striped sunflower seed.  Its thinner shells  make it easier for smaller birds to open.  A seed blend containing other smaller seeds also helps ground feeding birds which will clean up the seeds dropped from your feeders.

Another favorite wintertime food for birds is suet.  It too is packed with calories and can be bought in small blocks which contain seeds and fruits mixed into the suet.  Nuthatches and woodpeckers are attracted by suet.

Peanuts, shelled and unshelled, are useful, especially if you have jays visiting your yard. Be sure to purchase peanuts specifically processed for birds.  Don’t feed salty peanuts or those from the grocery store.

Finally and most importantly, put out water for your birds.  Birds’ summertime sources of water may be frozen or non-existent.  A daily supply of fresh, unfrozen water will bring birds to your yard faster than anything else you can do.

Which means that you’ll have sprightly House Sparrows for entertainment even if you don’t get more interesting birds to watch.

Gardening is for the Birds

We bird feeders know of a hidden cost in the rising price of oil and gasoline: The cost of bird seed is going through the roof. Nyjer (thistle), imported from India and Africa, has tripled in price this past year. Black oil sunflower seed, home-grown for the most part, has doubled in price.

We’ve made a bargain with wild birds. We agree to supplement their diet with various seeds from constantly stocked feeders. In return, they provide us joy. They would survive without us feeding them. We would survive without the joy. But the world would be a poorer place. The lives of millions of wild birds would be harder and the lives of millions of humans less happy.

So, we’ll keep feeding wild birds and they’ll keep eating. But there are some things we can do to lower our costs while improving their diet.

One way of feeding your visitors less expensively is to plant bird-friendly gardens. They’ll have nectar, pollen, and insects to go with the seed you provide. You’ll benefit because the new mini eco-system you create will lure new bird species to visit. If you have a big yard, get rid of some of that grass and replace it with some bird-friendly plants. Manicured lawns provide little food or habitat for birds. (Lawns also have to be mowed, fertilized and watered and watered and then watered again, ad nauseam.) If, on the other hand, you live in an apartment or condo with only a small balcony or porch, plant a few pots.

Here are some tips for creating a bird-friendly garden.

Buy a few bags of pre-mixed specialty seeds. There are some excellent mixed seed packets, selected especially for the birds. Coincidentally, we sell these seed packets in our web store. Here are the links for the three varieties pictured in this post. Hummingbird Haven,Hummingbird Habitat Garden,Bird-Lovers’ Flower Garden. Click on them and through the magic of the internet, you will be whisked to our store where you can buy them from us.

If you have the space, plant your own sunflowers. Give your birds cut up oranges, grapes or raisins. Save your raw egg shells, then bake them in the oven for 20 minutes when you are preparing a meal, crush them and put them out for the birds. They are almost pure calcium and wild birds need calcium.

After your seeds start to grow, skip the pesticides. They poison the birds and pollute our water. Instead, buy some lady bugs. If you can’t find them at your local garden shop, you can actually order them. What the birds don’t eat, the lady bugs will.

And, as we always tell you, birds are attracted to water. In fact, water may be the best wild bird lure in the world. Birdbaths and water saucers will bring them to your new bird garden faster than greased Peregrines.

A bird garden: If you plant it, they will come.

Feeding Birds in the Winter

The New York Times this week reports here that non-migratory birds who have human supplied bird seed during the cold of winter do better than those which do not. Or at least English Blue Tits do. (No jokes please. This is not only science, it’s British science. That is a Blue Tit in the photo. Really.) In a study published recently in Biology Letters, the scientists fed Blue Tits peanuts throughout the winter of 2005-2006. Birds which were fed supplemental peanuts laid eggs about two and a half days earlier than birds which did not receive extra winter-time food. In addition, their chicks were more likely to survive. The study indicates that supplemental winter feeding of birds aids the species fed. Not studied was the impact, if any, on migratory birds passing through the area where the Blue Tits were fed.

Our conclusion: Feeding birds in the wintertime is good for the birds. It’s good for us too. Even if we are housebound for much of the winter, it is good to have a bird feeder and birds to watch. Reminds us that there is a world out there of which we are a part.

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Don’t forget that the Great Backyard Bird Count is this weekend.

Winter Storm Coming

The weather bureau tells us that a winter storm is on the way.  But the birds in the backyard need no computer come to tell them the weather is changing.  They can see the heavy leaden skies, feel the moisture in the air and note, directly in their being, the falling air pressure as the storm approaches.  The House Finches, House Sparrows, Goldfinches are all busy this morning.  The backyard is a riot of bird calls, bird flight, and birds eating.  It is not as calm out there as it was yesterday morning. It is a little frantic.  Something is up; they know it, and they feed against the morrow.  

We wonder if the non-migrant birds, like people, don’t get just a little crazy this time of year.  The clouds,  the cold weather, the long nights; all add up to “Winters of Discontent.”  It would, for instance, be interesting to go back through history, isolating when national leaders made decisions to start wars and see if the majority of such decisions were not made in the four months astride the Winter Solstice.  Science tells us — beyond doubt — that humans are more depressed and more susceptible to really serious depressions in winter.  In mythology those four months are always the time of waiting, of despair.

We should demand a moratorium on all important decisions of state during this time. Send our leaders south for the winter if they must be busy but, better yet, send them home and not allow them to make a single decision. The decline in sunlight contributes to a decline in sanity for most people.  Better to feed against the darkness and the cold and the snow and wait for better days and softer climes to make big decisions.  We could learn from our avian friends who mainly sleep and eat during winter.  Not for them, the life changing decisions; not for them the long trips through the night.  Their wisdom is to hunker down and wait for better days.

Which is our subtle way of reminding everyone in the Northern Hemisphere to be sure there is plenty of high quality seed on hand and in your feeders, that suet cakes are out and that your avian guests have plenty of water.  It’s cold out there.

Birdfeeders

Bird feeding can be as simple as scattering seed on the ground or as involved as providing an entire backyard of feeders or habitat. When setting out feeders, it’s all about location, location, location. Keep in mind that not only do you want to provide feeding stations for the birds, but you’ll also want to enjoy viewing birds as they feed. It’s also good to think about birds’ safety. Setting a feeder near a bush or tree where birds can go for protective cover is important. If cats are lurking about, it’s best to keep feeders out of their reach.

There are five basic types of birdfeeders—feeders for birdseed, nectar, peanuts, fruit and suet. You may want to find out what birds frequent your area, but a great place to start is by hanging out a tube feeder with black oil sunflower seed in it. Black oil sunflower seed is an excellent seed for birds and appeals to a wide variety. This type of feeder and seed can be used year-round.

Spring through Fall is the time to hang out a hummingbird or oriole feeder. These feeders are primarily for nectar, but orioles also love oranges and many oriole feeders include places to add an orange. In fact, our Orioles ignore any nectar and go straight to the grape jelly. See our post about Oriole feeding here. During the winter months many birds will come to suet feeders and there are specially made baskets that will hold blocks of suet.

Tray feeders are used for fruit, seed or peanuts.

Try any or all of the above and you are sure to be rewarded with the company of birds.

This post is the first in a series of “Tips” for which we have added a category on the right side of his page.  We’ll keep them all there as a reference.