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

Bells on collars are dangerous as they can alert a dog to the cat's presence. Be careful also with collars which should be quick release.
Cats chase birds and sometimes eat them - ditto mice (which is why we allowed cats into our homes in the first place). Cats are obligate carnivores. Why is anyone surprised they eat birds?

And I know, everyone blames cats for the falling bird population. Apropos of not much a while back I watched an episode of The Avengers, which featured a scientist bent on removing the bird population as birds ate the crops etc. Fanciful. Late DH and I discussed it and came to the conclusion that in a world with a growing population removal of birds by some means (possibly without the knowledge of most people) would be an objective - especially if a more vegetarian diet was promoted (as is now the case). So maybe not blame the cats, but governments and industry that wants us (not them) to give up eating meat and become vegetarian. Birds eat crops. To have an entirely or mostly vegetarian population birds are apparently a hazard.
Governments should beware, however, for Maoist China took the 'no bird' route and ended up with plagues of locusts and widespread and devastating famine.
Leave nature alone is a good rule.
If you want to stop a cat chasing birds (or mice) feed very well. It will then not be bothered to hunt.

Cats are native to this Island - see felis sylvestris. I think we all know the main culprit species in the decimation of wildlife in this country - including the now endangered hedgehog - and its not Tiddles. Let’s concentrate on that, shall we? BTW when I have had cats they have been indoor ones.

I bet he told you to eff right off. Bells
dont work on cats have you ever seen them stalk something ? Their heads are dead still

Do you understand basic English?

The wording was 'at minimum', you're arguing as if I'm wrong and you are correcting me with you superior wisdom but you are literally repeating the exact same thing my post said which shows you must be struggling to understand it.

Cats are either hunters or incompetent hunters.
I’ve had 7 cats in my life. Actually only 2 were avid killers. The rest attempted occasionally but gave up completely after they were about two years old.

I always take preventative precautions with hunters. Never have a bird feeder & shut the offender in for longer periods if any fledglings are about.
Mainly the birds are in charge. We do have magpies in the garden & they often gang up & chase our cats, who then slink off feeling stupid.
YABU re hunter cats. However whilst I’m the original cat woman, bird killing certainly isn’t one of their pleasant traits.

You can't stop them. Cats aren't trainable like dogs are. Bells don't work.

The best thing to do is keep them in at night and in the early mornings, espcially during the seaon fledglings will be on the ground. I do this with my (elderly) rescue cats, and in the four years I've had them, they have only caught two birds (two too many, I know).

If my sons cat didn't kill wildlife he would have starved to death when he was lost for 7 weeks (and no, he wasn't being fed by another household as he was a skeleton when he was found, but luckily alive)

My cat has probably killed about 2 birds in her entire life, although I have had previous cats who were prolific hunters even with multiple bells on.
You can't 'tell' a cat anything, that's why they're cats.

Two threats can co-exist, but cats really are a drop in the ocean compared to habitat loss.

There won't be any birds for cats to kill if humans don't sort out the more pressing issue.

That being said, I do have a bell on my cat's collar even though he's mostly a homebod nowadays.

I guess you did? These links might not be quite to the standard of scientific expertise you demanded, but it’s probably more significant than this -

“My cat catching perfectly healthy birds by stealth, speed … not catching crippled weak birds.”

What is your expertise on the relative health and likelihood of survival re: wildlife? Are you qualified to assert that whatever your own cat has caught is perfectly healthy?

As I said before, look it up 🤷‍♀️
https://pangovet.com/statistics/how-many-birds-do-cats-kill-statistics-uk

https://www.birdspot.co.uk/garden-birds-and-cats/cats-and-the-decline-of-garden-birds#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Mammal%20Society,which%2055%20million%20are%20birds.

We are cat lovers but also members of RSPB so find it really distressing when our two young cats catch birds.
(Our previous puss couldn't have cared less about them).
Collars fall off so we now restrict the mogs to only a couple of short spells outside per day. Luckily they don't wander far and they bring themselves home on a regular basis so it's possible to do that.
They spend the rest of the day running around the house, playing with toys and each other, eating and kipping.
They are never let out once it starts to get dark.
But we couldn't take this measure if they were roamers, which a lot of cats are

Well they can fuck off out my house then as I am not growing any food indoors. Bastard things. Rodents and reptiles are cute but spiders are evil fuckers

The problem op is that pet owners claim to be animal lovers. But the truth is they only love their own animal(s) and don’t give a stuff about wildlife if biodiversity. They just continue to introduce more and more non-indigenous animals and justify it to themselves as being “animal lovers”.

The people who bought our last house decimated our lovely garden! Philistines!

My old cat was so big the birds used to hear him a mile off, especially when he jumped down. Hours of entertainment watching him try. He bought a few mice back when he was younger, lost interest thought.

My neighbour lost some koi carp from their pond and tried to blame the local cats. However it’s not that unusual to see a bird of prey in our gardens and there was a crane once. There are always predators.

Have you ever trained a cat??!

Your large hunting dog could cause a lot more damage than Fluffy down the street!

In that case, nobody would ever feed birds, because cats get everywhere! It is though perfectly possible to have both. I think the benefits to the birds of being fed outweighs the risk of a casualty!

My cat kills nothing.
She scares the vet quite a lot though

It's really not. My cats don't have any interest in going out. They're all rescues so I guess they've been there and got the T shirt! If a drip of water gets accidentally dropped on them, they flee like they've been scalded!

I keep mine shut indoors at night which is when they're most likely to hunt and bring you back a present to wake up to, and also when they'd be more likely to get hit by a car and killed themselves. But I believe having a completely indoor cat and even a catio is cruel.

At least they're not shitting all over public areas, beaches, parks, not in every cafe, shop, pub etc, or savaging and killing people.

See @lasagnelle we need them to hunt to keep the eco system in balance

I'm not sure why you're blaming cats!

Use of insecticides and building over the countryside is killing birds. Even if cats didn't kill any, bird numbers would be limited by loss of habitat and food sources.