If you have a cat you have to stop it scaring and eating birds

I had a word with mine and he said "He's not arsed with catching birds as they are hard work!"
Frogs on the other hand he loves bringing them in for me 😒

Oh and he has a ruddy big bell that clangs on his food bowel, so much so that when I'm on the phone friends will say "can I hear Thomas eating" 😂

Maybe lions should have collars put on them with extra large bells??? Are you volunteering?!

We keep ours in during nesting season with a built catio. They have collars with bells but after that it’s fair game im afraid. We do feed the birds while the cats are locked in though. Hopefully some karma balance.

I don't know what you can and can't train a cat to do, I don't have one!

I think we had figured that out ourselves.

And the babies. We lost almost an entire brood of baby robins to the neighbours cat this year.

Anyone who gives a single fuck about wildlife doesn't have a free ranging predator they call fluffy. But this isn't news.

@lasagnelle Of course you wouldn't.. I'm not saying you do.

The title of your thread says I have to.

Won't work. Gardens devoid of life is the modern way. We've lived in the same street for 30 years, when we moved here everyone had beautiful gardens filled with trees and shrubs. We had woodpeckers, treecreepers, nuthatches, redwings, all the finches and tits.... just an amazing variety of birds. Now there's nothing like. I haven't seen a woodpecker or nuthatch here in years.
In the last 10-15 years flippers have been buying up every house that comes onto the market in our village, paving the front gardens for parking, ripping out back gardens for decking, plastic sofas and hot tubs.
The mature garden next door to ours was gutted, they took every single plant, oak trees, massive holly tree, fruit bushes, apple trees and a beautiful maple. Ripped it all out and flattened it with a mini excavator.
A few doors up has also just had a beautiful mature garden ripped out by flippers and is back up for sale. Their neighbour watched them cut down a gorgeous magnolia tree. They too brought in a mini excavator.
There's now only 4 out of 14 houses on our close that still have a garden of any sort. The rest are utterly sterile. It's the same all over our village. We've watched it become urbanised over the last 10 or so years. It's happening everywhere.
A lot of the people doing this vandalism are families with kids and they don't seem to give a damn that their kids will never see a woodpecker.
Humans are far more guilty of decimating the wild bird population than cats will ever be.

It's when cats are most at risk too. Even when I had cats who went out, they were always kept in overnight.

Our neighbour’s cat strangled herself in a tree when the quick release collar she was wearing failed to release.

My cats are too young to go out yet, but when they do, I’m happy to keep them in at dawn and dusk, feed them a high quality grain feee diet (which keeps them full for longer) and play hunting games with them to reduce their urge to hunt, all of which are recommended as make a big difference to the level of killing. But I could never forgive myself if I put a belled collar on and it caused their deaths.

Your parents need to control their dogs then. I get loads of hedgehogs in my garden and the dog is trained to leave them the hell alone.

I think that's bullshit. Our own cats are indoors, but our garden is frequently visited by neighbours' cats. We feed a wide variety of birds, thrushes, blackbirds, robins, wrens, blue tits, great tits, bullfinches, gold finches, doves, pigeons etc. Now and again next door's bird killer helps himself to one. I think the principle of the 'greater good' applies.

Not every cat is interested in chasing birds either. The last three we had who had outdoor access couldn't be bothered. In fact, the birds used to totally ignore our last old man, and they seemed to know he was no threat to them. They'd fly away if another cat came into the garden, but they didn't bother if it was just him.

I do put bell collars on him. He comes back in without any on. We can’t use buckle collars, they’re dangerous for cats.

I haven't got a cat atm but if I did I wouldn't HAVE to do what you say with it.

I suspect habitat destruction caused by humans through urbanisation, industrialisation, industrial farming practices and pollution has caused a much greater decline in bird numbers than predation from domestic animals has.

Can you speak to the birds and tell them to stay out of my garden please?

So keep cats in and let's see what happened.

I think Australia has an inkling after what happened on MacQuarrie Island.

No you can't don't be so bloody stupid. Also if my cat wears a collar he will either get it off or get tangled up in something

Only when it suits

We don't have cats, but I had them growing up. All but one were fairly peaceful sorts. That one was an assassin, saw her take a leap from the ground to the top of a fence then up to catch a bird mid air once. Mum used to have words but I don't think she understood... Saw her have a go at a seagull once which was a bit too ambitious. I also had to cut her collar twice to free her after she got her whole leg through up to the armpit and was half choking herself, so that was the end of collars. It's in their DNA op.

Magpies emptied out a nest box we had of blue tits by removing the long pin that 'locked' the nest box door.

They are clever birds.

I should add that I did it for my cat and not for any love of wildlife or the neighbours. We had a spate of kids with catapults and there was no way I was letting the little shits anywhere near him. He'd also lost most of his teeth so while he wasn't a fighter he'd lost one line of defence. If he had caught anything he'd have had to gum it to death!