"Essjay001" wrote in message
...
Just so all the cat lovers know, cats a responsible for 55 MILLION wild
bird
deaths per year according to the TV last night.

To put this in context, from the RSPB web site:

'Estimates of how many creatures are killed by cats each year vary
significantly. The most recent figures are from the Mammal Society, which
estimates that the UK's cats catch up to 275 million prey items a year, of
which 55 million are birds'

'Despite the large numbers of birds killed, there is no scientific evidence
that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations
UK wide. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally
every year, mainly through starvation, disease, or other forms of predation.
There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds. We also know
that of the millions of baby birds hatched each year, most will die before
they reach breeding age. This is also quite natural, and each pair needs
only to rear two young that survive to breeding age to replace themselves
and maintain the population. It is likely that most of the birds killed by
cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding
season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations.'

My own cats prefer to hunt cat food and it is the sparrowhawk that takes
birds in my garden.

Colin Bignell