Keep Cats Out of Nests

Do you know where your cat is right now?
Little do people realize how their feline friends are impacting listed birds. Little kitty is more likely raiding a nest right now because many birds nest in lower-lying trees and shrubs. Each spring and fall the changes in our seasons are marked by massive movements of birds – migration.

In the fall, more than 350 species of birds leave for Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, traveling thousands of miles to their winter homes.

Then as early as February and March, the miraculous happens again – the migrants begin their return. It’s hard to imagine spring, summer or fall without the color, sounds and drama of our migratory birds.

Few of us think about what we can do to help these songbirds survive their grueling trip, and the stresses that await them – breeding and rearing their young.

Perhaps it’s because only a few of the migrants are common in our suburban backyards. Some have names many of us recognize – the ruby-throated hummingbird, chimney swift, purple martin, gray catbird, wood thrush and northern oriole. Others may be familiar to the more serious birdwatchers – the ruddy turnstone, yellow-bellied cuckoo, common nighthawk, yellow bellied flycatcher, scarlet tanager, bobolink, red-eyed vireo and Cape May warbler. Collectively, these birds are known as neotropical migrants because they nest in Canada and the United States, and winter in Mexico and points south.

During the 1980′s, scientists observed a decline in numbers of migratory birds. What happened to the wood thrushes and cerulean warblers that breed in the large northeastern forests? Where are the hermit and Townsend’s warblers of old growth forests; the dickcissels and bobolinks of our grasslands; the prairie warblers and yellow-breasted chats of our shrublands; and the yellow-billed cuckoos and willow flycatchers that nest in trees bordering our western streams?

Ornithologists and backyard bird watchers noticed a similar decline in some populations of common flickers, meadowlarks, field sparrows and belted kingfishers. These “short distance” migrants breed in the United States and Canada, and generally winter north of the Mexican border.

What has happened to these birds? Habitat loss and degradation is part of the problem. Habitat needed for food and shelter during the winter months is disappearing in Latin America. In the United States and Canada there is not enough habitat for some species to nest and raise their young. In some areas where appropriate habitat can be found, it may be too close to human disturbances, or the habitat may be too small. This makes these birds more susceptible to cowbird nest parasitism and predation by crows and jays, problems directly related to changes in land use. (Cowbirds lay their eggs in nests of other birds leaving them to raise cowbird young.)

The hazards we humans create in our backyards, workplaces and public places are also a part of the problem.

What can be done to help migratory birds? The US Fish & Wildlife Service and its counterparts in Canada, Mexico, Central America and South America have joined with environmental organizations, government agencies and concerned citizens on a project whose goal is to ensure the survival of the birds we share – the neotropical migrants. The program is called “Partners in Flight” – “Aves de las Americas.”

We urge you to join us. This publication offers a brief introduction to what you can do to help conserve these avian treasures.

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