Birds facing 'death by 1,000 cuts'

Mr. Steven Price, crows and magpies are taking over Saskatoon. Have you considered how many songbirds these scavengers torture. 'Death by 1,000 cuts', someone needs to sober up.

[photo]                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       By Margaret Munro, Postmedia News:

Canada's birds got a new champion Monday when Steven Price was named president of Bird Studies Canada. The non-profit group dedicated to conserving the country's birds has its work cut out. Recent studies say cats kill at least 100 million birds a year in Canada and another 25 million birds a year die after colliding with windows. Perhaps more alarming is the unexplained decline in birds that devour insects - Canadian populations of swifts and swallows are down more than 75 per cent since the 1970s.
Postmedia spoke with Price, formerly of World Wildlife Fund, in Toronto. Q. Do you have a cat? A I do, in fact I have three cats. And I am pleased to say I keep them indoors. The conservation challenge is with both domestic cats and feral cats. They are taking only one or two birds out of everybody's backyard, but when you add that up all across the nation that's an awful lot of birds being directly killed by cats. Keep your cats inside. They'll be happier, the birds will be safer. It works all around. Q. What do you consider the biggest threat to birds?
A The fact habitat is being lost, degraded, divided up is probably the current greatest threat. It doesn't mean direct sources of mortality - like cats - aren't really important things we can control, but habitat loss is the biggest concern. And what's building is climate change. We are still uncertain how that is affecting birds...Continue reading...