Page 97 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE 75
thatwerebigandbad. Weeliminatedthatpest,andwearekeeping iteliminated. Andwithwhatresult?
In 1911 a covey of eleven quail came and settled in our grounds, and haveremainedthere. Twentytimesatleastduringthepasteightmonths (winter and spring) I have seen the flock on the granite ledge not more than forty feet from the rear window of my office. Last spring when I left the Administration Building at six o'clock, after the visitors had gone, I found two half-grown rabbits calmly roosting on the door-mat. The rabbits are slowly coming back, and the chipmunks are visibly in- creasinginnumber. Thegraysquirrelsnowchaseoverthewalkswithout fear of any living thing, and our ducklings and young guineas and pea- cocks are safe once more.
That cats destroy annually in the United States several millions of very valuable birds, seems fairly beyond question. I believe that in settled regions they are worse than weasels, foxes, skunks and mink combined; because there are about one hundred times as many of them, andthosethathuntarenotafraidtohuntinthedaytime. OfcourseI am not saying that all cats hunt wild game; but in the country I believe that fully one-half of them do.
I am personally acquainted with a cat in Indiana, on the farm of relatives, which is notorious for its hunting propensities, and its remark- ableabilityincapturinggame. Eventheladywhoisjointownerofthe cat feels very badly about its destructiveness, and has said, over and over again, that it ought to be killed; but the cat is such a family pet that no one in the family has the heart to destroy it, and as yet no stranger has come forward to play the part of executioner. The lady in question assured me that to her certain knowledge that particular cat would watch a nestful of young robins week after week until they had grown up to such a size that they were almost ready to fly; then he would kill them and devour them. Old "Tommy" was too wise to kill the robins when they were unduly small.
In a great book entitled Useful Birds and Their Protection, by E. H. Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, and published by the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture in 1905, there appears, on page362,manyinterestingfactsonthissubject. Forexample:
Mr. William Brewster tells of an acquaintance in Maine, who said that his cat killedaboutfiftybirdsayear. Mr.A.C.Dikewrote[toMr.Forbush]ofacatowned by a family, and well cared for. They watched it through one season, and found that it killed fifty-eight birds, including the young in five nests.
Nearly a hundred correspondents, scattered through all the counties of the state, report the cat as one of the greatest enemies of -birds. The reports that have come in ofthetorturingandkillingofbirdsbycatsareabsolutelysickening. Thenumberof birds killed by them in this state is appalling.
Some cat lovers believe that each cat kills on the average not more than ten birds a year; but I have learned of two instances where more than that number were killed in a single day, and another where seven were killed. If we assume, however, that the average cat on the farm kills but ten birds per year, and that there is one cat to each farm in Massachusetts, we have, in round numbers, seventy thousand cats, killing seven hundred thousand birds annually.