39 



large proportion of the cases that the cat is the cause of the dis- 

 turbance. No cat can kill so many birds in a season as can a 

 bird-hawk, but probably there are two hundred cats in Massa- 

 chusetts to every such hawk. 



Mr. T. W. Burgess, editor for some years of " Good Housekeep- 

 ing," states that although the dearest pet that he ever owned was 

 a cat, he is beginning to see that the cherished pet is an agent 

 more destructive than all others combined. He says that, one 

 summer, weeks of watching and planning for photographs of 

 birds at home came to naught through cats, as the nests of three 

 pairs of robins, one of bluebirds, one 

 of kingbirds and one of chipping spar- 

 rows in the orchard were emptied of 

 their young by cats. Miss M. Purdon 

 of Milton writes that she had her cat 

 killed as the sight of countless birds 

 and squirrels, half eaten or in process 

 of being eaten, became too sickening 

 to contemplate. The tragedies were 

 so frequent that even the cook pro- 

 tested that they " made her feel sick." 

 Mr. J. M. Van Huyck of Lee writes 

 that he heard some robins screaming 

 in the orchard, and when he rushed 

 out four full-grown cats came out of 

 the tree. They seemed to be strays, 

 all after one robin's nest. Mr. Daniel 

 Webster Spofford of Georgetown, 

 writes as follows: "They watch the 

 nests that they cannot climb up to, 

 and when the young birds get so 

 they can tumble out of their nests, two or three cats stand ready 

 to grab them, and run off with them, screaming, through the garden 

 or street, and it is almost impossible to raise chickens or any 

 kind of a bird without confining them in a close pen." Dr. 

 C. H. Townsend, director of the New York Aquarium, writes 

 from Greens Farms, Conn. : " Six nests of fledgling birds of various 

 species were destroyed on our place last year by neighbors' cats, 

 and they may have taken all there were."^ 



No one who has not witnessed the remarkable birdcatching 

 feats of which a cat is capable has any idea of the imminence of 

 this danger. My son, Lewis E. Forbush, last summer (1914) 

 saw a large black cat approaching a young robin on the ground. 



All after one bird's nest. 



> Bird-Lore, July-August, 1913, p. 278. 



