5 ms·
If you want birds, grow plants that support caterpillars. It takes thousands of caterpillars to raise a nest of baby birds to fledglings. (This is true even fo
by phyzome 2y ago
If you want birds, grow plants that support caterpillars.
It takes thousands of caterpillars to raise a nest of baby birds to fledglings. (This is true even for seed-eating birds.) Those caterpillars don't come from thin air.
- Spooky23 2y agoIt takes 3-5 “outdoor” cats to slaughter those birds in a few weeks.
- throw__away7391 2y agoAmazing how little attention this gets, people just shrug it off. If it were something man-made having the same impact as cats on bird populations there would be protests demanding that it be banned.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bitxbitxbitcoin 2y agoOne could argue that feral domesticated cats are a man-made issue.
- throw__away7391 2y agoOh yeah totally. I meant if it was something like chemical that only impacted birds or was caused by driving SUVs or anything like that.
- nicolaslem 2y agoYou mean windows? Estimates show they kill roughly the same number of birds as cats.
- Spooky23 2y agoCat people love their cats. Unlike dogs, there isn’t a direct human impact to negative behaviors of cats or humans poor management of them. Nobody really cares about birds, and “herding cats” carries the meaning that it does for a reason.
- pvaldes 2y ago> it were something man-made having the same impact as cats on bird populations there would be protests demanding that it be banned. First we would need to study the real impact of cats on bird populations, specially out of islands. Is a fact that cats roam the old world near people since thousands of years. Is also an easily verifiable fact that there are species of wild cats ranging from tiny to huge and living basically everywhere from deserts to the taiga. If we assume the dogmatic claims that are repeated all the time, not a single bird should be alive... but this is not what we observe. Most European passerines somehow didn't went extinct and those that don't migrate and are more exposed to cats for more time, those... are more numerous than ever. But the migrant birds are vanishing. How do we explain that?, maybe there is more than the cats?
- stubish 2y agoAustralia has a feral cat problem and lots of studies on how they decimate animal populations, including birds. https://www.publish.csiro.au/WR/fulltext/WR19174 https://www.publish.csiro.au/WR/fulltext/WR19174 for example, which cites lots of previous studies as well. "Introduced cats have had profound impacts on native faunas in many places, contributing to 26% of the total extinctions of mammals, birds and reptiles globally since 1600 (Doherty et al. 2016). The impacts of cats on native faunas have been greatest on islands, including large island nations such as Australia and New Zealand whose fauna evolved without exposure to felids"
- pvaldes 2y agoManaging every ecosystem in the planet as if it everything would be an Australian ecosystem is not a wise idea.
- euroderf 2y agoWe find that mice and moles are killed in much greater quantity than birds are.
- mythrwy 2y agoA reflective collar with a bell on the cat helps reduce (not completely eliminate but substantially reduce) bird (and lizard) deaths while still allowing the cat to catch mice and gophers pretty well in my experience.
- npteljes 2y agoWhat I hear is that if I want cats, I should grow plants that support caterpillars.
- pvaldes 2y agoThis claim is probably overblown. Cats can't fly.