![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/cat130203s2.jpg\")
prime bird killer<\/p><\/div>\n
A Varied Thrush just died on impact with a window in my home—not a happy event. It is\u00a0embarrassing\u00a0to realize that a couple of birds are killed by my home in this way each year. Multiplied by many buildings, this adds up to a substantial toll. It is estimated at about 22 million in Canada each year—likely mainly in urban areas.<\/p>\n
Yet, windows are passive killers, they don’t actively roam the countryside searching out birds to kill. For that anthropomorphic source of avian death, one must turn to an invasive species: the domestic cat.<\/p>\n
For a long time it was thought that windows were a greater threat to birds than cats, but a new study by the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute now places the annual number of bird kills by cats in the U.S. in the billions. Indeed, an earlier National Geographic study that attached tiny video cameras to household cats to monitor their activities, found that a substantial part of a cat’s outdoor time was spent hunting, with an average success rate of over two kills a week per cat. Yikes.<\/p>\n
I don’t own a pet cat—a coyote made sure of that. Granted that best estimates now place windows as a far smaller threat to birds than are cats, that realization is thin gruel when one hears that disconcerting THUNK.<\/p>\n
Moments earlier, this Varied Thrush flew free.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/variedthrush130204s.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Varied Thrush just died on impact with a window in my home—not a happy event. It is\u00a0embarrassing\u00a0to realize that a couple of birds are killed by my home in this way each year. Multiplied by many buildings, this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-commentary","category-mammals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7126"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7132,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126\/revisions\/7132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}