Neighbours, cats and birds.

[Birdmurderer]

NC for this but regular.

We've lived in out house for a year, on a "hello" basis with next door. She's got a voice you can hear 3 streets away and her eldest daughter seems to have inherited it. A few issues but generally ok neighbours.

We have 3 cats - one who is old and never leaves the decking area of our garden, one who seems to have another family a few doors down (other side to neighbour in question), and one who likes to peep through their chain link fence at them but is too much of a mamas boy to leave our garden. (we've had a lot of time during lockdown to confirm our theories about where they go during the day). They made it clear from day one they don't like cats and will talk loudly about how awful our cats are when they know we're within earshot .

DP just went outside to get his bike and the woman is sobbing in the garden. Spots DP and starts shouting at him because apparently one of ours cats has eaten a bird that she was looking after (she has a feeding table in her garden).

DP apologised - for what I'm not sure - and sort of left it there and went off about his day. I was still in bed when all this happened.

He's gone out now and I can hear her sobbing and shouting in the garden about this bird.

There are 2 big cats the other side of her, one of which is horrible and has put my little cat in the vets twice. I think that's the culprit over my fat old one who sleeps 23 hours a day, the deserter, and the little one who can't catch his own tail.

AIBU to think she's massively overreacted? I have quite bad social anxiety and I am not good with confrontation so I'm hiding indoors now.

The circle of life things is bollocks. Pet cats are not killing birds to eat them, they are doing it for fun. How would you feel if your neighbour attacked your cat for fun?

On the other hand,running away, invasive species are one of the biggest issues for endangered species across the world. Japanese knotweed would be an example here that costs millions to control. Plants or animals in the wrong place, with no predators to control them, or diseases, do a hell of a lot of damage. Rhododendrons can swamp a woodland and yes, can definitely be invasive.
Grey squirrels - well, people spend a lot of time working out how to keep them at bay in certain areas of the country to help reds to flourish.
Lots of conservation all over the world is about killing stuff that doesn’t belong there, both animal and plant, to give the native stuff a fighting chance. Look at New Zealand for some examples.

One of the other issues that we have is that we, as a nation, are getting progressively more used to seeing less and less nature around us. There’s a name for it which I now can’t remember. But essentially, 100 years ago there was far, far more nature around us. Less intensive farming, fewer people, you just would have seen and heard far more, even on a rural walk, than you do now.
But it hasn’t all happened over night. So, someone born in 1930 would have heard slightly less birdsong while outside as a child than someone born in 1900. That slightly less is the new normal for someone born in 1930. Someone born in 1960 would have heard slightly less again, because bird numbers, for example, were declining.
But for the 1960 child, what they are hearing and seeing is the new normal. They aren’t comparing it to normal from 1900. Each generation is surrounded by less wildlife, and each generation takes their own starting point as the new normal.
So in this country we are now experiencing a massive loss of nature as normal. The latest State of The Wild report, in 2019, shows a 13% decline in British wildlife over the last 40 years with no signs that this is slowing down.
So when you say things like cats are now accepted as normal, well, maybe we need to look at that and think that our normal is actually pretty impoverished, from a nature point of view, and we ought to be thinking seriously about how to reverse it.

Especially if we also want to lecture people from their countries about saving their wildlife. I’ve worked with conservationists all over the world and it comes up a lot. Why should British people have the right to shout about saving the lions or tigers when we are massively failing to look after the wildlife in our own back gardens?

If your cats go out they should have a bell

So when you say things like cats are now accepted as normal, well, maybe we need to look at that and think that our normal is actually pretty impoverished, from a nature point of view, and we ought to be thinking seriously about how to reverse it.
So what are you proposing? A cat cull? Seriously?

@babybythesea just going back to the grey squirrel (sorry to divert the topic slightly, OP) could I ask your opinion on the article I’ve linked. I had read that rather than the grey squirrel affecting red squirrel numbers it was in fact more to do with habitat, the destruction of woods where red squirrels thrive and the re-planting of trees favouring the grey?

I had heard about it so looked the article up again so I could link onto here. Interesting point and maybe the grey squirrel isn’t the villain it’s portrayed to be (unlike cats )

No, roses. Not once have I said that. Although in some countries it is accepted that cats die to protect native wildlife (New Zealand, Australia).
But we’ve had posters on here saying it is cruel to put bells on cats, or to keep them in at night. Those sorts of measure might need to be rationally considered though, if we are serious about protecting our wildlife.

Sweetmarmalade.
Yes, we’ve made the countryside an easier place for greys to survive than reds. There is no evidence at all for direct killing of reds by greys, everything is about greys being better at surviving in the environment we put them in. There are two possible other factors.
One is squirrel pox. Reds seem to die from it, greys don’t. They seem to have higher levels of immunity. I don’t know if anyone has really come up with anything to manage that.
The other is pine martens. We have basically exterminated pine man terms from large parts of the U.K. Over the last decade or se there have been reintroduction projects underway and pine martens are starting to make a comeback. Interestingly, where the population is increasing, so is the red squirrel population, while the greys decline. It is possible that greys are less good at evading predation by pine martens, which are traditional squirrel predators, than reds, so by supporting pine martens we could very possibly have an indirect positive effect on red squirrels.
Will have a look at the article now!

@babybythesea thanks for your detailed reply, it’s interesting as the current guidelines for local wildlife rescues is that greys can’t be released back into the wild, presuming because they are being blamed for the decline of the red? meaning that they face the possibility of keeping greys until the rest of their natural life, or euthanise, as not many rescues can keep on taking in a wild animal and then be forced to keep it, their aim is also to treat and where possible release. Leaves them with a predicament doesn’t it

Think it applies to any ‘alien’ species.

Interesting about the pine martins too, good be a better way to redress the balance?

Landowners don't like Pine Martins though as they eat the pheasant eggs. There's an interesting George Monbiot article about this.

On the red/grey squirrel issue, the fact that the grey has replaced the red in every kind of woodland (including woodland that has been managed in much the same way for centuries) indicates that it's not just habitat change that's the villain.

For most of our wildlife, it's a combo of landuse change (a field near me, once full of skylarks, is not a building site), agricultural intensification (a crowded planet gets more crowded every day), invasive species and changes in predator control. To pick on any one seems to me to miss the point.

*is NOW a building site.

Grumpy. Absolutely. There is rarely one problem affecting endangered species. Conservationists often talk of a conservation tool box.
A species is thought to be endangered, or funding is available to work with it, or whatever, a new project starts.
You figure out what the problems are. Land use, persecution, introduced species.
Then you pick the tools out of your tool box, and modify those tools to suit the local circumstances.

”Oh yeh, it also fucked up our Xmas after I cooked and put the goose on the side to rest before opening the back door to let the steam out. I heard a bang, went into the kitchen to find the cat dragging the goose through the garden.“

This is hilarious 🤣
You’re that lacking in self awareness you don’t even see the irony or contradiction do you @Herpesfreesince03 ?!