43 



a member of the Bird Commission of Rhode Island, writes from 

 Greene, R. L, that it is the commonest of sights to see cats 

 hunting birds, and that the young in eight different nests about 

 his house were destroyed by neighbors' cats last summer. 



Mr. Frank Bruen of Bristol, Conn., writes that from the time 

 robins come in the spring until they go in the fall there is an 

 almost constant commotion, due to cats. He believes that half 

 the young robins in the vicinity fall a prey to cats. Mr. R. L. 

 Warner of Concord says that in his horseback riding about 

 the country he constantly sees cats stalking birds, and frequently 

 sees them eating birds. He often has seen cats climbing into 

 trees to get at nests containing young robins. Mr. William 

 Blanchard of Tyngsborough tells of seven robins' nests carefully 

 watched and not one bird grew to maturity, all being devoured 

 by cats. Mrs. Ella M. Beals of Marblehead tells of a farm cat 

 with kittens which she watched, and which brought home several 

 useful insect-eating birds every day and sometimes a few mice. 

 Rev. Albert E. Hylan of Medfield says that he has known cats 

 to bring in two or three birds a day for their kittens for some 

 weeks at least. Mr. C. Emerson Brown, a Boston taxidermist, 

 found the lair of two homeless cats. Near by was a heap of 

 pieces of flying squirrels and red squirrels, and feathers of ruffed 

 grouse and of many other kinds of birds. Dr. Loring W. Puffer 

 of Brockton, now eighty-seven years old, and always an observer 

 of nature, says that his experience shows that cats invariably 

 will kill all the birds they can get. Mr. Nathan W. Pratt of 

 Middleborough, frequently sees cats with birds. Mr. Samuel 

 Buffington of Swansea has a cat that kills possibly one bird a 

 day, and so many in the year that he has lost all account of the 

 number. Mr. Sewall A. Faunce of Dorchester has known a cat 

 to kill a bird "every morning" in summer. 



Number of Birds killed per Day, Week, Month and Year. — 

 Numerous correspondents have known individual cats to kill 

 from 2 to 8 birds in a day, but the average is much smaller than 

 this. Two hundred and twenty-six correspondents report the maxi- 

 mum number of birds they have known to be killed by 1 cat in 

 a day, and the day's work for these 226 cats is 624 birds, or 2.7 

 birds per cat per day. Only 33 of my correspondents have 

 kept any record of the number of birds killed by a cat in a week, 

 but these 33 cats killed 239 birds in a week, or 7.9 birds per cat. 

 Only 15 have kept any record of the number of birds killed in a 

 month, and these 15 cats have killed 307 birds, or 20.4 birds 

 per cat per month; but when we come to the record of the 

 number of birds killed by a cat in a year, we find a different 



