Dead birds

[WhattheFishappening]

Our garden has quite a few large shrubs, bushes and densely planted areas, different areas on different levels so not just flat grass and borders if you see what I mean.

It seems to be a garden where birds go to die or be killed and I can’t cope with it.

AIBU to think this is not normal or does everyone have this problem?

Every time I go out I find another dead bird.

We don’t have cats but neighbours do.

I have a bit of a phobia when it comes to birds. Actually, more than I bit. I hate them & can’t go near them.
It’s a problem I’ve had for as long as I can remember so I’m wondering if the fact that we have dead birds in our garden regularly bothers me more because of this.

What I want to know is:
Is it normal to have weekly bird deaths in your garden? Does this happen to everyone?

I'd bet you have an admiring cat who likes to leave you presents. It's happened at my home many times.

God* is helping to cure you with aversion therapy

*that, or the local cat

It's definitely the cats. My neighbours cats leave presents for me under my trampoline most weeks. I use a shovel and throw them under the hedge.

I have 2 cats and I have never found a dead bird in our garden
I have found both live and dead birds and mice in the kitchen though

Never had a dead bird in my garden.

God is helping to cure you with aversion therapy

I’m starting to think this! It’s not F’ing working though 😅
I am now sitting here trying to control the sick, hyper, stressed feeling yet again. DH has gone to bed and I’ll be worrying & thinking about it all night.

Do cats kill birds so often? It’s every week here. I can’t stand it.

Will it help if I clear the main area it happens? Get rid of the shrubs?

I’ve just read my last post back and I sound like an idiot.
I can’t tell you how much I hate birds though and how they make me feel.

I'm sorry for being flippant when you're so afraid of birds, op, but when I read your thread title I thought, omg, is this finally the answer to a question I've been puzzling over for years - where do all the dead birds go to? I mean there are thousands of birds flying around all the time, yet I hardly ever see a dead one, cats surely can't dispose of all of them, so where are they all? I've been pondering this for so long - now I know, they're all in your back garden!

Hopping
I couldn’t cope with that.

joolish
They really are.
I don’t know what some ‘higher being’ is trying to do to me.

It's Cats - much as I love cats - just stick a bell on it please as I love birds too.

We sometimes get sparrow hawks in our garden, they just swoop on poor unsuspecting bird leaving a massacre in their wake. We did have a few dead birds a few weeks ago, DH said it was sparrow hawks

I also get warning before I find one.
Other birds go crazy. Not just one type of birdsong but several very loud.
It’s like a bloody mourning ritual.
Low and behold... I go outside and there it is. Another fucking dead bird.

Or it could be that there is a bind spot in your garden and they fly into a window or similar. This happens sometimes outside my kitchen window

I don’t like it but it doesn’t bother me too much. Most of the time we manage to rescue the mice, the cat makes a very specific noise when she brings one in.
The kingfisher was a bit interesting though

It's Cats - much as I love cats - just stick a bell on it please as I love birds too.

People really should.

And my cats do both have bells on

We do get them from birds of prey. Loads of them round here. Our cat couldn't catch & kill a bird if his life depended on it, & sees other cats off, so it's not cats for us. Not as often as every week, though!

Or it could be that there is a bind spot in your garden and they fly into a window or similar. This happens sometimes outside my kitchen window

The main graveyard is a densely planted Area at the bottom of the garden. It has little ‘pathways’ and I’m guessing cats creep up on birds on the ground.

If you’re noticing it more lately it might also be to do with the fact it’s breeding season - we are finding about two a week at the moment, at varying stages of maturity. Lots of small garden birds are breeding in and around our garden, and feeding in ours, so there are large numbers around, and therefore a larger number, in actual terms, likely to be dying in and around the garden. If you have lots of cats around, though, that will be a significant cause.

The RSPB website gives an estimate of 27 million wild birds killed by cats annually in the UK.

Year before last we had loads of dead birds in the garden....think the cat is too fat and old to bother himself with chasing them now thankfully

You’re all calming me down actually.
It’s an irrational fear. Living birds scare me more than anything. Dead ones make me feel sick to my stomach.

Just talking about it is taking that feeling away!

No it’s not normal. We live in the country and have a large garden and we get about one dead bird a year, maybe fewer.

Usually killed by the sparrow hawk or babies that fly into windows.

We have no cats anywhere near us.

I think I need to go to bed...I read that heading as "Deaf Birds"

I agree that it’s cat. How about trying something similar to a scarecrow to see if that helps to keep them away and out of reach or the cats? Otherwise put a sprinkler in the area to go on intermittently and you might find that will keep the cats away longer term.