Feeding birds when you have a cat?

[Frangipani]

Hi

Im just wondering if its possible (and safe) to feed wild birds when you have a cat and a very small garden?

I have a 20 by 15ft patioed back yard and would love to be able to feed wild birds but im not sure I could without my cat scaring them off. I put a feeding station up in the corner of the garden (next to a small tree so they had cover and the cat couldnt reach them, but no birds used it).

Should I just give up?

[Aberdeenplotter]

The birds will find your feeder when winter really hits us and food becomes scarce. The birds are best left to their own devices until then. Even if the cat scares them off, if they are hungry enough they will come back anyway.

[mothhawk]

They will come, as AP says, when the weather worsens, and once they have found the feeders, they will keep coming. My garden is no bigger than yours, and back in the days when I still had my cat the birds would come and sit on the fence, and look around very carefully before coming into the garden.

Once they had spotted the cat, it would depend what she was doing as to how they reacted. If she was sitting or standing, and looking around, they would chitter warning calls, but if she was curled up, or with her eyes closed in the sun, they would come to the feeders and not bother about her at all.

And if the cat knew she had been spotted, she totally ignored the birds.

[pauco]

Hi Frangipani, welcome to the Vine.

As the above 2 poster have said the birds will make up their own minds when it's safe to feed, so give em
time and when the colder weather turns bad that will increase your chances of them feeding.
Good luck.


Also, dont forget to put some water out for them this is more important as the weather worsens.

paul.

[Pies]

Put a collar with a bell on it on your cat 

[Two_Sheds]

You can get "safety" collars for the cat ~ safe for the birds & the cat

It used to break my heart watching my aunt's two cats systematically stalk & kill every single little baby chick in her garden

[Hans Mum]

i use a free standing hanging pole feeder with arms its made of resin so cats cant climb it and i place it far enough away from fence to cats cant jump onto it (I have 2 cats and 1 is a hunter that means he has to go find mice and rats instead ) i anchor it down with big tent pegs so it doesnt blow over

[dogsbody]

I have 3 cats and 15 different bird feeding spots in my garden - I think I had 3 casualties this year. The birds feed en masse and watch each others; backs - the cats are more interested in the mice that the bird food and chicken food (3 of them) bring into the gardens.

The birds in general will benefit far more than the risk the cat should pose, so stick with it.

[greenjelly]

I agree with all the posts so far. I've always lived in a multi cat household, current head count 3 but we've had as many as 5, and I've always fed the birds. The most casualties I've experienced is 4 and they would probably have caught this number whether I fed the birds or not.

Birds aren't stupid and neither are cats. Birds know how to watch for predators and those predators know when they've been spotted and the game is up.

All our cats have much bigger kills in terms of numbers from all the mice that are attracted by the bird food.

A lot of rubbish is talked about cats decimating bird numbers, humans are responsible for this!

Feed the birds and they will benefit your garden by gobbling all those greenfly and slugs and probably your cats will sleep through it!!

Greenjelly

[Thelma Sanders]

I tie the feeders to the washing line, so the cat can't get to 'em.

[Piggle]

It depends on the cat I guess - mine can't be bothered with them ( he's an oldish tom cat ) - I've seen birds hopping wround him whilst he's alseep. Whereas my sisters cat is a little killling machine and has destroyed many a bird despite various bells and collars.

As many have said birds aren't daft and to be honest my local sparrow hawk takes out roughly a bird a day in our garden but it it doesn't seem to put them off.

[donnakebab]

I have 3 cats and they can all climb trees well, especially the one with 3 legs, so I'd make sure the branches near the feeder aren't strong enough to take a cats weight. However, maybe your cat doesn't climb much. I don't think it makes much difference whether you feed the birds or not because I'm sure my cats make kills in neighbouring gardens then bring them home to me...because they love me so much.

[WildIan]

See study by Mammal Society - includes suggestions for how to reduce the slaughter

The Mammal Society: Mammal Fact Sheets

Cats probably leave more kills out than they bring home - if you really care for wildlife I suggest you don't replace them when they 'shuffle off' - or restrict yourself to just one.

[alldigging]

Wouldn't matter if I had cats or not - there tons in the neighbour hood.
One of my doesn't go outside any more and the other won't catch anything bigger than a fly.

I feed the birds. The crows come down first thing as soon as I put stuff out though and the robins and blackbirds visit a lot. We used to have a huge flock of sparrows but they don't come down here anymore, they're at the other end of the street where someone feeds them better seeds!

[Yorkshire.Dave]

This is no joke but our cat used to share her food bowl with a wild blackbird,
The blackbird used to come through the back door into the kitchen to eat when the cat got fed
The cat was not bothered one bit...

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Just get a tall metal pole with the bird feeders attached to the top so the cat cant get upto the feeders....