File:Useful birds and their protection. Containing brief descriptions of the more common and useful species of Massachusetts, with accounts of their food habits, and a chapter on the means of attracting (14563892688).jpg

Identifier: usefulbirdstheir00forbu (find matches)
Title: Useful birds and their protection. Containing brief descriptions of the more common and useful species of Massachusetts, with accounts of their food habits, and a chapter on the means of attracting and protecting birds
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Forbush, Edward Howe, 1858-1929 Massachusetts. State Board of Agriculture
Subjects: Birds Birds
Publisher: (Boston, Mass.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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g groundskills, on the average, fifty birds a year, is certainly Avithinbounds. Kittens and half-grown cats do not catch manybirds, but the old cat that wanders off into the fields andwoods is terribly destructive. Of course where there aremany cats each one cannot kill so many birds, for there arenot enough birds to furnish each cat its full quota. Mr.William Brewster tells of an acquaintance in Maine who saidthat his cat killed about fifty birds a year. AVhen askedwhy he did not get another cat, he said that it would be ofno use, for they were all alike. )\Ir. A. C. Dike writes thathis family owned a cat which was well cared for and a par-ticular pet. They watched it through one season, and foundthat it killed fifty-eight birds, including the young in fivenests. Nearly a hundred correspondents scattered throughall the counties of the State report the cat as one of thegreatest enemies of l)irds. The reports that have come inof the torturing and killing of birds by cats are absolutely
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PLATE XXXV. — Cat with Young Robin. This pet cat killed tifty-eisiht birdsin one year. (Photograph, from life, by A. C. Diice.) CHECKS UPON INCREASE OF USEFUL BIRDS. 363 sickening. The number of birds killed by them in this Stateis appalling. It is quite true, however, that some cats do not kill manybirds, and that some intelligent or high-bred cats may betaught not to kill any. Some cat lovers l)elieve that eachcat kills on the average not more than ten birds a year;but I have learned of two instances where more than thatnumber were killed in a single day, and another where sevenwere killed. If we assume, however, that the average caton the farm kills but ten birds a year, and that there is onecat to each farm in Massachusetts, we have, in round num-bers, seventy thousand cats killing seven hundred thousandbirds annually. 1 If we add to the cats kept on farms the enormous numberof village and city cats, many of which have good oppor-tunities for catching birds, we shall see the chi

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