2B birds a year killed by cats in the US and other info from the WDS mtg

[h2ofwlr]

I attended the Wood Duck Society Mtg yesterday, and here are some highlights of Tom Cooper presentation who is one of the head guys in this region for the USFWS gave a report on the 100th anniversary of the Migratory treaty Act, on Sandhill cranes, Wood cocks telemetry and on Wood ducks.

Yes you read that right 2 BILLION birds (from song birds to game birds) a year in the US are killed by cats in the USA according to a USFWS study released last year.

2.6 million hunters generate $1.8B in economic activity.

Woodcocks
Now that the transmitters are small enough, they have found in the last couple of year that the Wood cocks take all sorts of routes and are finding how long it takes to migrate. 2 months in the fall and 3 months in the spring on average.

Sand Hill Cranes
On the Sand Hill Cranes in MN via recent telemetry studies findings, yes indeed in north central Mn the 2 flyway population groups are intermixing. Basically the NW Mn is set up to hunt the cranes that migrate via the Central flyway and number 1/2M. The Eastern population is a lot less in population, and they are the ones that we are now seeing in the N and W metro area and N central MN. But some the Central Population is now nesting in N central Mn too. Also found is that some of the Eastern SHC population sometimes head to the TX/OK to winter which is where the central population migrates to VIA the Dakotas and NE.
The SHC do not breed until year 4 or 5, and often can live 10+ years. The young are called "colts" - (don't ask me why as I have no idea how they came up with that name for the juvis.)

Avian Flu in Mn last year.
As you may remember the Avian flu crisis with the turkey industry in MN a year ago and the assertion by some in the poultry biz that it was caused by waterfowl. Not 1 single waterfowl tested for the high path Avian Flu which killed millions of turkeys. The Ag dept found it was unsafe sanitation and lack of cleanliness of people that transmitted the disease from farm to farm. Meaning they did not sterilize their boots, clothes, equipment, etc,

Wood ducks in MN.
from 1958-2014, 38K were banded and 2300 bands were recovered.
MN has really stepped up banding in the last 4 years, banded thousands a year now VS hundreds a year years ago.
The 1st 2 weeks of the Mn hunting season accounts for the majority of the band recoveries of Woodies banded here.
On if the 2 a day limit VS 3 day has lead to a marked increase in harvest. No it has not. When it was 2 a day it was 9% of the Wood ducks were harvested by hunters, when 3 a day it was 10% [the 1st 3 years (data went through 2014 season)]. So only a 1% increase.

[h2ofwlr]

This morning I did some quick searching on cat population estimates.
Pet cats is about 100M and feral cats estimate is 60M. Some say both #s could be a bit lower, which then would push up the cat per bird dead ratio..

So 2B divided by 160M cats = 12.5 birds dead per year per cat.

[Hansen]

That can't be right. No way.

[h2ofwlr]

Not sure if you are being facetious or not.
If not, I even questioned him to repeat it to verify that 2B birds a year killed by cats in the US. is indeed the estimate.

[gimpfinger]

Isn't there one of the Hawaiian Islands where feral cat's are making some birds nearly extinct?

Sent from my SM-S902L using Tapatalk

[h2ofwlr]

You could be very well correct. Maybe someone will post up an article on it.

1/3 of the 800 bird species in the US considered "endangered, threatened or in significant decline", according to this article.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... y/1873871/
From 3 years ago it also says 1.4B to up to 3.7B birds are killed a year.

[h2ofwlr]

Here is the report that Tom Cooper (see original post) was referring to 10 days ago. the report itself is 22 pages long.

It is published here:
Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 2015.46:99-120. Downloaded from http://www.annualreviews.org
Access provided by 164.159.61.2 on 12/07/15. For personal use only.
Mortality estimate (log-transformed)

Anthropogenic Bird Mortality page 103 of annual Review .org

Cats
USA 2.4billion
Canada 240 million

Building windows
US 599M
CAN 25M

Vehicles
US 200M
CAN 14M

Power line collision
US 23M
CAN 26M

Communication towers
US 66M
CAN 220K

Power line electrocution
US 5.6M
CAN 281K

AG chemicals
US no info
CAN 2.7M

Wind turbines
US 234k
CAN 17K



The VERY interesting thing is the chemical deaths for the US is not listed.

One analysis suggested that between 17 and 91 million birds were killed by a single chemical—carbofuran, one of the most toxic chemicals to birds—during its peak period of use in the Midwestern US Corn Belt
(Mineau 2005a). Page 110

So how many hundreds of millions of birds are killed every year via the current 113 (page 109) pesticides out there known to adversely effect birds?

[h2ofwlr]

This was taken by a trail cam April 19th near Tulsa OK, I saw it on FB.
I didn't know an owl would take out a cat.

[gimpfinger]

This was taken by a trail cam April 19th near Tulsa OK, I saw it on FB.
I didn't know an owl would take out a cat.

Between them and the coyotes, the orchard I was working at was cleaned out of it's cats.

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[h2ofwlr]

I found out that the above photo was photo shopped, and dates back to 2012, and allegedly was taken in MN of all things. But a small cat I could indeed see a Hoot owl or eagle take out.