Monthly Archives: February 2011

60 million cats can’t be wrong: birds are delicious

My Cat Catches a Bird
My Cat Catches a Bird by EvanLovely, Creative Commons on Flickr

Outdoor cats, whether feral or part of a household, are a big problem for our wild birds. Scientists estimate that cats kill hundreds of millions of birds each year.

La buena o la mala vida
La buena o la mala vida by Akassia, Creative Commons on Flickr

There are an estimated 60 to 100 million feral cats in the United States, according to Stray Pet Advocacy.

thekiller
thekiller by lincoln-log, Creative Commons on Flickr

The average lifespan of a feral cat living on her own is less than two years.

Cat & Bird
Cat & Bird by feverblue, Creative Commons on Flickr

While a cat who is being cared for has a longer life expectancy, pet cats who are allowed to roam outdoors face many of the same dangers as short-lived feral cats: predation by dogs, coyotes, and other animals; traffic collisions; contracting FIV or other diseases; becoming lost; and other dangers.

Presents
Presents by Andrew Currie, Creative Commons on Flickr

Cats have been domesticated for at least 9500 years. They are thought to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt.

Bird Bib Fail
Bird Bib Fail by feverblue, Creative Commons on Flickr

House cats are not native to North America. A cat taking any prey here is not nature in action.

20100924_101_7878
20100924_101_7878 by Uli H., Creative Commons on Flickr

Keep your cats indoors, please.

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Posted in Conservation, Invasive / Non-native, North America | 8 Comments

My visitors came from *where* in January 2011?!?!?

Two years ago I started a fun series of monthly posts sharing strange and funny search terms that I found in my Statcounter log. The series was on hiatus last year but I’m bringing it back for 2011. Here are some of the more interesting search terms that brought visitors to this site during January 2011. You can see previous posts in this series here.

As usual, some typos made me chuckle. Some of these are probably genuine errors in spelling, which kind of makes me sad. Is “squirrel” really so difficult? Apparently so, judging from these search terms: funny squrls; sqiurel pictures; funny squirles; funy squerrl; and funny squrel pictures. Pigeon is also a tough one, but Google was able to direct pigeion; pidgeons; pegions to the right search. Did you mean pigeon? Other goofy typos of note: magnicient frigatebird and stylealised bird.

Following last month’s aflockalypse (mass bird die-offs), about which I did not blog, several visitors arrived via related searches anyway: amsterdam dead birds; 100 penguins dead; birds found dead in argentina; dead birds in argentina; birds dead in netherlands; and dead birds in india.

I know this visitor did not find what s/he was looking for here: what movie saidwhere do birds go when it rains?. I know where the birds go, but I don’t know what movie is being sought. Another (I’m assuming) disappointed visitor came via the search museum in united states with display in january of 2011,of world class stuffed birds,also artist from other countries?where. I’m disappointed too – I couldn’t find anything about this in Google but it sounds like an interesting exhibit. Finally, I hope the person searching for exhibition of pigeons in chicago eventually found what they were looking for, because I know they didn’t find it here.

On the other hand, I was delighted to see a lot of visitors coming after searching for information about the Bald Eagle Watch at Starved Rock State Park, which inspired an updated and modestly popular informational post. These searches also made me smile, because they certainly did come to the right place for what they sought: tufted titmouse and chicago area and crow behavior in snow.

Searches related to Magnificent Frigatebirds were represented as usual: frigate bird testosterone; frigat bird in oil; friends in danger frigate bird; are magnificent frigatebird threatening; food chain of a magnificent frigate; and magnificent frigatbird banding.

Last month had two disturbing, related searches: golden eagle as pet and where can i [buy] a northern cardinal bird. Uhm, please don’t search for that. You can’t have either of these birds as a pet, for a lot of reasons. One being it’s illegal.

And as for my favorite search of the month, that goes to difference between shrike and carolina chickadee pictures. Seriously? Chickadees and shrikes aren’t really that hard to tell apart, are they?

Share the birds, share the love!
Posted in Offbeat, Search Terms | Leave a comment