Photo Story: Cat Bird-glar

Tree of Life for the Birds

Baby birds in their nest waiting for mom and dad

parent bird looking down on us monitoring our moves

parent bird making sure I'm not up the tree to harm their kids

Tommy the Fat Cat looking at the nest

Wifey called me from work yesterday before noon and told me that two of our cats apparently caught baby birds from our tree. She was able to save one but the other bird was taken and dragged by one of our cats. When I got home I chased Tommy the fat cat and took the baby bird out of his mouth and placed them both to a container wifey provided. I then got a ladder and checked the tree in our backyard and lo and behold there was a nest there. Now I wish the bird didn't make a nest on our trees as we have cats roaming freely on our yard and the tree they used is like a small palm tree which our cats can easily climb. They were actually lucky that it's only now our cats were able to find their nest otherwise it would have been over a long time ago. So I got the two baby birds, put them back in the nest, bent some dead twigs around the nest so the only way to access it is on top of the nest so the baby birds won't fall off but their mom and dad will be able to get to them. After that I got some plastic sheet which I use to cover the chairs outside and rolled it up around the trunk of the tree. I'm hoping this will discourage the cats from climbing the tree. Then I got the cats in the house so the birds can have some peace and quiet for the evening.

This morning I let my dog out to do his business and the cats were able to rush out too but I didn't worry too much though coz I only need to get Tigger the hyper cat in since it's him that takes the lead in trying to attack the birds. After I got my dog in I notice Tigger setting up under the tree where the nest is again and jumped to climb the tree, he was able to hang on to the plastic for a bit but didn't get enough traction and fell off, so now I know my silly contraption works. Then I got him from under the tree and put him in the house. I just hope when the baby birds are practicing their flying I'll be home to make sure our cats are in the house because I'm sure they will probably fall a couple of times before getting the hang of flying.

We seem to have been able to broker a peace in our backyard for now.

Unfortunately before lunch time my wife told me that Tommy the fat cat went to the fence and jumped on the tree to avoid the plastic thing I placed there. I went straight home and got the baby bird, good thing he wasn't mangled Tommy just had him there chirping in front of him, took it back to the nest then got Tommy and Tigger and placed them in the garage first. I read online that another preventive obstacle is to hang CD's to distrupt the cats when they jump so I'll try and do that later.

Peace is very uneasy in my little mideast.