forbush] THE DOMESTIC CAT 395 



able nests being robbed, those of robins, catbirds, song sparrows 

 and wood thrushes especially, and she believes that the harm 

 that cats do can hardly be oversetimated. The young in the nests 

 or just out most often fall a prey, but the cats caught many adult 

 barn swallows, and caught snipe, grouse, hummingbirds, meadow- 

 larks, and many unidentified small birds. Many a time at 4 a. m. 

 she has gone to the rescue of birds attacked by night-prowling 

 cats. 



"Mrs. Elizabeth B. Davenport of Brattleboro, Vt., well known 

 as an accurate observer, who has taken great pains to teach cats 

 not to kill birds, writes that her experience covers many years 

 while feeding birds about her grounds, and seasons spent on farms 

 in Connecticut and in Vermont. In her grounds every small 

 bird was attacked if cats had access to feeding places, and she had 

 to surround these places with wire netting in summer and to 

 protect them with high snow walls in winter. On the farm in 

 summer cats brought in all kinds of ground-nesting or low-nesting 

 birds. One cat in particular frequently brought in three or four 

 birds a day. 



"Careful observers who have watched and protected birds for 

 many years have had the best opportunities for observing the 

 destructiveness of cats. The editor of Bird-Lore published the 

 statement from a correspondent that in one summer a neighbor's 

 cat killed all the warblers on the place but one, eighteen in all, 

 also two wrens, two woodpeckers and several other birds which 

 were not identified. Mrs. Oscar Oldburg of Chicago gives a 

 partial list of birds killed by cats on her place, with dates. It 

 contains fourteen individuals of six species and two nests full of 

 eggs. She says also that many juncos are destroyed yearly. 



Correspondents report Many Birds Killed. — "The number of 

 birds killed by cats cannot be approximated except by those who 

 have paid particular attention to this subject. Among my 

 correspondents are many such. Rev. Manley B. Townsend of 

 Nashua, N. H., says that vagrant cats are common, and that nearly 

 every day in the nesting season he has found birds killed and torn 

 by cats. He has seen many fledglings in the possession of cats, 

 and many reports of birds destroyed have come to him. Mr. 

 Charles Crawford Gorst of Boston says that a friend told him 

 that his cat had 14 birds laid out for its young one morning before 

 breakfast. Mr. Samuel Hoar of Concord has known a cat to 



