The vagrant Harris’s Sparrow that had been delighting birders near Syracuse, New York, during its reliable visits to a set of feeders has been killed and eaten by a cat.
the late New York Harris’s Sparrow by Anthony Collerton
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
Brutal
From Alley Cat Allies website: Cats have lived outdoors for more than 10,000 years—they are a natural part of the landscape. Today, they live healthy lives outdoors and play important roles in the ecosystem—as they did thousands of years ago and as all domestic cats are biologically adapted to do. What has changed in that time is how people have re-shaped the environment to suit our needs, at a great cost to the other species that share our ecosystem.
Whoa! What a load of B.S.
If birders killed the cat that killed the vagrant, maybe cat owners would keep ’em indoors?
I might be joking.
I’ve been on the butts of people who keep cats outdoors for a long time now. There is no way to reason with them. I’m with Jochen, though I’m much less joking. The domestic cat is not a native animal and more should be done to remove it.
This is just awful news
It appears that the Allies of the Alley Cats have no idea what encompasses of natural ecosystem.
Did anyone get photos? Anyone know if the cat is owned or feral? Info like this needs to go to every bird watcher listserv and website!
Free-roaming cats should be collected and humanely euthanized, period. They will continue to devastate native and migrant wildlife until the problem is taken care of. Humans created the problem, and humans need to fix it.
This is sad news, but Humans also create problems with feeders, they are not a part of our natural ecosystem eother. Many are on lawn areas where there are no stick piles or shelter for birds to hid from any preditors ( raptors, foxes etc.). Many farmers need outside cats to limit the rodent population ( which is of course of our doings also) or else they would be using rodenticides, which would just kill everything. I guess there are many sides to the story and humans are the problems most of the time.
Cats shouldn’t be out there. These cats aren’t “wild”. They’re domestic cats that humans abandoned. They kill many more animals than one Harris’s Sparrow. Any animal’s life is worth saving, whether it’s a rare bird’s or a common lizard’s. We made this mess by throwing away the cats into the “wild” and we have to clean it up.