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Cats Kill up to 4 Billion Birds in the US Every Year
I had to witness a cat murdering a blackbird and a great tit chick and I had a look at the numbers after that
A few days ago a great tit chick was sitting directly in front of my window and I was able to observe and film him being fed by his parents. On the same evening, I saw a cat go into a bush and appear seconds later with a blackbird chick in its fangs. A few days after that, we found the great tit chick again under a neighbors car and while we were looking at it, the same cat appeared out of nowhere and snatched the little guy only meters in front of us. After this, I had a look at the numbers and possible solutions.
A 2013 study estimates that 1.3–4.0 billion birds are killed by domestic cats each year alongside 6.3–22.3 billion smaller mammals. The majority of these cases are committed by free-roaming cats, rather than owned house cats. Considering there are an estimated 10 billion breeding birds, 4 billion falling prey to cats is a huge proportion.
There doesn’t seem to be a similar study for Germany, but I found estimations that 200 million birds are killed by cats here, with around 400 million breeding birds.
Fact is, the number of birds is shrinking everywhere, and cats are a reason for it, although certainly not the only one.
