Garden

[cindyNC]

It's not only the wild prey animals.  I used to follow the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center on FB.  They got so many injured animals in from outdoor and feral cats, loose dogs etc..... They posted so frequently about keeping pet cats indoors or contained when outdoors. 

[drizzellla]

Ladies, After thinking about "the hunt" yesterday. I got to thinking, lately we have had crows occasionally stopping by. They haven't been around for years. Many of the neighbors used to use trash bags. So on trash days the crows would rip apart trash bags on a regular basis. Now most people are using trash cans. So now we rarely saw crows.

BUT the neighbor behind our house now has chickens. And we see the chickens strolling around their yard on occasion. Guess the larger birds have noticed that too.

We have always had hawks flying around but they seemed to be at higher attitudes. We now have eagles flying around on occasion too. Maybe now they are starting to go closer to the ground to check out the chickens, if they hear them. And our birdfeeders generally have constant activity during the daylight. That doesn't go unnoticed by the bigger birds.

[drizzellla]

@cindyNC You got that right.

We used to have an occasional cat park themselves in our backyard to watch the activity. And we would find feathers scattered about sometimes. Our yard is fenced in because we had dogs but cats would have no trouble visiting.

We would chase the cats away because we felt like we weren't fair to the birds. To attract the birds with food and then have a cat prowling around, doing what cats instincts tell them to do.