Last updated on April 29th, 2022 at 02:07 am
Fledglings are especially vulnerable to cats because they are weaker and slower than other birds. For that reason, it’s essential to do what you can to protect fledglings from cat predation.
Here’s how to protect fledglings from cats:
How To Keep Fledglings Safe From Your Cat
Keeping birds safe from your own cat is simple if you are okay keeping your cat indoors.
Otherwise, you’ll have a difficult time ensuring the safety of nearby birds, as even bell collars may not work.
Here’s what you can do to keep fledgling birds safe from your cat.
1. Keep Your Cat Indoors
If you own a cat, the best thing you can do for local bird communities is to keep your cat indoors.
Cats are a greater threat to birds than any other human-caused danger, which means that cats are a real threat to the survival of many bird populations.
If you need to let your cat outdoors, do so outside the breeding season so that fledglings are not so much at risk.
Grown birds have a better chance of flying away from cats than fledglings do.
2. Put a Bell On Your Cat’s Collar
Different sources give conflicting advice when it comes to bells on cat collars.
The Guardian claims that attaching a bell to your cat’s collar will cut predation by a third.
However, the National Wildlife Federation says that bells on cat collars are not effective.
According to the NWF, the sound of a bell is not similar enough to the sound of a predator to be frightening or even startling to birds.
How To Protect Fledglings From Feral Cats
Protecting birds from feral cats is about giving birds as many environmental advantages as you can while keeping cats out of your yard as much as possible.
Let’s look at how you can protect fledglings from any feral cats that might wander into your yard.
3. Provide Shelter
Perhaps the best and most important way to keep birds safe from roaming cats is to provide natural vegetation where they can hide.
Stick piles, trees, and shrubs are safer for birds than open yards or gardens.
Note that feeders and birdbaths should be positioned close to sheltered areas, just not right next to them.
The ideal distance is 10-12 feet away from vegetation so that birds can see pouncing cats coming but still have an easy escape route if needed.
4. Put Up a Fence
Cats are excellent climbers, but you have a chance at keeping them out of your yard if you put up a smooth wood or vinyl six-foot fence.
Cats have a more difficult time climbing these and won’t jump over them.
Make sure that you don’t plant trees or other vegetation right along with the height of the fence, or else cats will use the vegetation as a ladder to climb over the fence.
5. Put Up a Motion Detector Light
You can use a motion detector light to scare away cats.
They aren’t effective 100% of the time, but they do make enough of a difference that it’s worth installing one to see if it solves your predation problem.
The Ring Smart Lighting Floodlight from Amazon is a great example of a motion detector light that works to scare cats away.
When this device detects movement, it turns on a 2,000-lumen floodlight, startling any cats that might be nearby.
Motion detection sprinklers can also be a good choice if you don’t want to install motion detector lights.
6. Don’t Feed Stray Cats
Feeding stray cats will encourage them to come to your yard and go after nearby birds.
That they would still feed on birds after being fed might seem counterintuitive.
But cats eat a lot, and they’re happy to supplement a steady diet of cat food with an occasional, or not so occasional, bird.
7. Don’t Use Mothballs To Deter Cats
Mothballs are toxic to cats and other animals, so you should never use them to deter cats.
Many methods are preferable to using mothballs, like using a motion detector light to scare off the cats or simply avoiding feeding strays in the first place.
Feeding strays will encourage them to come to your yard and hunt your birds.
8. Build a Nest Box
Fledglings raised in a nesting box are more likely than others to survive because cats can’t typically reach inside these boxes.
Still, consider adding a baffle to your bird box post to protect them from predators.
Even if a cat cannot get inside, a snake might be able to climb the pole and get at the fledglings.
Why It’s Bad for Cats To Eat Birds
The main reason why it’s destructive for cats to eat birds is that they do it on such a grand scale.
Cats are essentially an invasive species, attacking bird populations beyond what they can bear.
In the United States alone, cats kill 2.4 billion birds a year.
The Danger Of Letting Your Cat Outdoors
Whether or not to let your cat outdoors is a personal decision, and you’ll need to weigh all manner of factors, including the health and safety of your cat.
Cats get a lot of stimulation from their time outdoors, but they also are exposed to numerous environmental hazards that they wouldn’t face indoors.
And from a conservation perspective, letting your cat outdoors is more destructive than not.
Outdoor cats not only decrease bird population sizes but also spread diseases and disrupt ecosystems.
The Effectiveness Of Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) Programs
The American Bird Conservancy opposes Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) for feral cats, citing the threats that cats pose to their ecosystems.
They prefer solutions that result in pet ownership rather than more cats being left to live in the wild.
Still, these programs have been known to decrease the size of cat populations.