Quick Takes
BY PAUL J. BAICICH
More Reasons to Keep
Kitty Indoors
Earlier this year, the
Journal of Ornithology published a
study by Anne Balogh, Thomas
Ryder, and Peter Marra tracking the nest success and juvenile
post-fledging survival for gray
catbirds in suburban settings.
Gray catbirds nest in shrubs
and are drawn to the “habitat”
of the suburban landscape
during the breeding season,
unaware of the dangers posed
by the domestic, and often
free-ranging, cats of the same
neighborhoods.
The study, focusing on three
sites in suburban Washington,
D.C., found that predation
accounted for 79 percent of all
catbird mortalities, with 47 percent of known predation events
caused by domestic cats.
Dr. Peter Marra sums up his
attitude: “Although people on
both sides of this debate feel
passionately, there is an urgent
need to come together to find
common ground. Allowing cats
to roam outdoors is no good for
people, cats, or native wildlife.”
The article can be found at
nationalzoo.si.edu.
QUESTION BOX
12th USFWS Survey Launched
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is conducting its 12th National
Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and
Wildlife-Associated Recreation.
Outdoor enthusiasts across the
country are being asked to participate. The survey, conducted by the
U.S. Census Bureau mostly through
telephone interviews, began in April
and will conclude next March.
Conducted every five years
since 1955, the survey will involve
53,000 households. Bird-watching
questions have been a regular part
of the survey, and specific birding
questions have been teased out for
the last few reports and reproduced
as an addendum.
In the last report (2006) we saw
that even given the USFWS’s conservative definition of “birder or
bird watcher,” there were 48 million
of us in the United States. Eighty-eight percent ( 42 million) are backyard bird watchers, and 42 percent
( 20 million) participate in trips away
from home to watch birds.
One wonders what numbers
and demographic figures—age,
income, location, education,
expenditures, and so on—will
result from the survey being conducted now.
