One in the eye doesn’t sound like a good idea at all. And if nobody’s taking proper care of the cat, even what seems like a minor wound may kill it if it gets infected.
Agreeing with a heavier-duty water pistol or better yet a sprinkler hooked up to some sort of motion sensor so the cat doesn’t associate the water with your presence and think it’ll be OK whenever you’re not in sight. – but not if the weather’s really cold. You don’t want to soak an outdoor cat in freezing weather.
A Vortex Cannon.
Why assume a cat was responsible? We feed birds, squirrels, etc. We go through 50 pounds of sunflower seed a week.
Occasionally I see evidence of a dead songbird. We have no cats. What we do have are cooper hawks, sharp shinned hawks, red tail hawks, etc.
This is the right answer. Or at least, a right answer.
The wrong answer is attacking your neighbor’s cat, which genuinely will not work unless your in the back yard 100% of the day. The cat will only learn to avoid you, not your property.
I imagine a hawk could be deterred with a Super Soaker too.
Hawk gotta eat. I love watching the songbirds at our feeders. But I do not begrudge the hawks that need to eat also.
Good point. Several years ago, my wife was trying to tame a feral kitten that would come around our porch. She’d show up every day, and gradually learned to eat the food my wife put out, even when Mrs. SMV was on the porch.
One day, my wife scared away a red-tailed hawk that was stalking Porch Kitty. A few days later, Porch Kitty stopped coming around for her daily meal; we never saw her again, but we did see the hawk several times. We made the obvious inference.
And I’ll say it more explicitly. When my cat brought me the third gold finch, i decided i had created a hazardous situation. I moved the feeders, and she never brought me another bird. Some baby bunnies, a snake, some voles and mice, but no more birds, even though she loved watching the bird feeder, and i made sure to keep it well stocked when she was dying, that being one of the few things i could do at that point that made her happy.
I doubt she gave me every one of her kills, and i wouldn’t swear she never killed another bird. And i get some ground feeders eating spilled seed, too, as well as birds feeding on naturally occurring stuff within a cat’s reach. But moving the feeders made an enormous difference in her hunting success.
And this is something you can do. It doesn’t hurt your neighbor’s cat. You don’t get a reputation as that crazy person who is stalking cats. It works 24/7, you don’t have to be there. The only cost is that now i use a small stool when i refill the feeder. It’s worth it.
You got a full spectrum bird feeder.
And I’m cool with that.
That’s kinda my feeling too. I love me some raptors, and I love me some songbirds, and I love me some fried chicken, and the only way I can reconcile all that is to be okay with raptors having their dinner.
Cats of course are different.
Yup. I’ve used these in the past to protect fruit trees from deer. This is the best one. Pricey, but they work great.
Whatever you shoot it with you’d better be prepared to sit out there constantly and shoot it over and over again.
With my bird feeder I am battling squirrels. I’ve moved it far enough away from the fence that he used to leap from, and put a catch basin (to collect dropped seeds) under the feeder. There is also an alleged squirrel-repellant cone in place that the little shit just jumps over.
I have ordered a new, much larger cone that should arrive today.
There is also a rat that hangs around there. I laid down some rat repellent and I saw him scurrying right over it.
mmm
In the US cats yearly kill 1.5-4 billion birds. Cats are great, but belong indoors.
Ours has a lever mount for the perching area; if a squirrel gets on the perch, it lowers a cover and the squirrel cannot get to the seed inside. They can still eat the spillage, which I don’t mind as much - as that reduces the number of ground-feeding cat snacks, as well as sprouting seed.
We used to have a suet feeder, which brought different birds entirely. The first time we put a suet cake out, the holder had been torn open and emptied within 48 hours. We took to getting suet laced with hot peppers (birds cannot detect the capsaicin; squirrels do not like it).
We’ve been slack about the bird feeder, the past few years; this is inspiring me to get back into it. Our indoor birds are free-flighted and have access to windows where they could see the feeders; might be entertaining for them. Rio (Indian Ringneck) already likes to hang out on the window and yell at the outside birds.
Here I was going to suggest a low-power BB gun..
Just don’t aim at their heads, and they’ll be fine, and learn their lesson quickly.
I’ve had excellent luck with this feeder
Which, WOW had gotten expensive. I bought it twice, replacing the first one when it broke. It’s sized perfectly for cardinals, and the larger birds find it uncomfortable. So while the blue jays will eat some, they don’t hang out on at and harass the smaller birds. And it’s completely squirrel proof except when crusty snow sticks to the top, giving them purchase. When they are really hungry they sometimes jump at it, and then eat the seeds that spill to the ground, but that’s not common.
Everybody has perfect aim, and cats never move at the last moment?
Don’t shoot at the cat; at least, not anything other than plain water.
My squirrels shimmy up the poll, they don’t drop from above (at least, not since I’ve moved it).
Anyway, I have this set-up:
mmm
My feeder hangs from a chain (included) far enough out from the trunk that they can’t successfully make the jump.
It’s important to use a chain, and not a rope. They gnaw on that chain all the time. It rusted a bit, but held up for many years. The plastic lid cracked at some points when a chunk of ice fell off the limb onto it, iirc.