Cats and Birds

The debate in New Zealand goes on about cats, and wild bird predation.  It's a rather uninformed debate, not helped at all by the poor standards of journalism these days.  Gareth Morgan, has been the leading activist on the 'no cat' side. His only tactic is to take a controversial position, and stick to it no matter what.

This was particularly evident when he was interviewed recently, and kept banging on about how some Kaka chicks were in imminent danger as soon as they left the nest. No mention, that indeed one of these precious chicks has been killed - by humans feeding the mother the wrong thing, and that locals have plenty of cats, that have not taken on such large prey.

Not at all constructive. It just makes people take sides, and refuse to discuss the issues and work together toward some practical solutions.  Fortunately, people have started talking about the issues, and solutions.

Gareth, of course, seems to think this means his tactic works, but we could be a lot further along without his divisive tangents. 

One of the solutions that has been proposed recently is a brightly coloured collar.  When I first heard of this I assumed, fluoro, or some particular colour that birds see well.  Perhaps even one that looks different to their eyesight, than to ours, in the UV spectrum.

Apparently, they were talking about the BirdsbeSafe collar covers.

I have no idea how these will work.  For a start, keeping any collar on my cats is hard enough, now they have some ridiculous clown collar on.  Being material it will get caught in every bush in the place, and therefore ripped off as the cat struggles free.  Maybe it's not that the birds can see the cat better in these, but that the cat is so ashamed it simply doesn't try.

Anyway, there is a new research project to see if they work here as they are supposedly doing in the U.S.  It's being performed by the researchers who have looked at cat movements (err how far they roam, not cat poo) in Wellington.

So far, no one is really talking about cat fencing, or how it resolves both animal welfare issues for the cats themselves, and can resolve the issue of roaming cats that predate in bush areas.  I, on the other hand, have a whole new project in the planning.  A new round of fencing to give my cats the whole yard to roam in safely.  My front yard is looking decidely unkempt, as I spend most of the time inside the fenced off area with the cats.  But I've had some ideas about how to enclose my front verandah;  a huge bonus to airflow in the summer months (something I noticed last year).  I've also got a plan to put in walkways along the fence to allow for front yard access, without worrying about how to deal with car access. I'll post all the details - I've already had one phone call from someone who did want to fence in their cat to stop predation, but wasn't sure how.