Monday, May 16, 2011
A LARGE and evil-looking tom cat, probably of no fixed abode, has had the house under constant observation.
He waits with feline patience until everybody, in particular the dog, is safely indoors and then he steals on to the patio and takes up his position on a rock beside the pond.
A fish has been disappearing every couple of days. All the shubunkins are gone, and I was rather fond of them. The only survivor is a goldfish that I think is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have given the dog pep talks, reminding him of his duty to patrol the property and of the dangers posed by stray tom cats. To replace the fish while the danger remains seems like a wasteful, even cruel.
Recently tracking devices were fitted to a number of cats and a television documentary was made about their activities. This showed what fearsome predators they can be. One cat killed over 70 birds in a couple of days.
I like cats. I don’t own one at present but that’s only because I think it’s very unlikely that one could co-habit with my current dog. And if you live in the country a house cat is a very useful animal because its presence deters the annual autumn invasion of mice. And not all cats cause devastation to wildlife.
But some cats get the hunting habit and turn into ruthless and skilful predators. After all, to remove a lively little fish out of a pond using only a paw must be quite difficult.
I know people, and many of them are cat lovers, who hate magpies. They accuse them of robbing baby song birds and eggs out of nests. Now this does happen, I know because I’ve seen it. And magpies are not the only culprits. Jackdaws, grey crows, jays and even rats, mice and squirrels will do the same thing. But these magpie haters go to extreme lengths.
They own a Larsen trap and share it around to kill magpies. These devices were invented by a Danish gamekeeper in the 1950s and are very efficient. They operate on the principle that they are baited with a live magpie which then lures in other magpies which are captured alive in another compartment of the trap. There is, of course, a problem to be overcome involving catching your first magpie. But after that they are simple and effective.
The magpies that are lured to the trap are not trying to rescue the bird that is being used as bait. They are responding to a territorial impulse — they actually want to beat it up because it’s an intruder.
In any given territory there is one boss magpie, and it’s normally the bird with the longest tail. If it’s caught and killed the bird with the next longest tail takes over. And there is a practically endless supply of birds waiting to take over territories. This means that this sort of trapping is never very effective because it’s unable to remove all the magpies from a given area — it merely reduces the average tail length of the birds present in it.
This is why most efforts by human beings to eradicate bird or animal species that are regarded as vermin don’t work. During the 1970s and early 80s when there was a vogue for wild fox fur up to 30,000 fox pelts a year were exported from Ireland. But there was no discernible reduction in the national fox population.
And anyway if these people I know who are indulging in the magpie pogrom were really logical they would be targeting cats, because they do infinitely more damage.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
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