Come for dinner, little birdies...but not that way.

October 18, 2016 9:28 AM

I would like to hang some bird feeders in my yard but our next door neighbors have 2 semi feral outdoor cats. Is there a way to feed the birdies without presenting the cats with a moveable feast?

The cats (a mother-son pair) were feral and our neighbors TNRed them. The neighbors take good care of them and the cats are sufficiently domesticated to eat out of an outside bowl and to sleep in a warm shelter on their porch when it's cold, but they have never been persuaded to enter my neighbors' house or allow anyone to pet them. So they are what you might call a fixed hazard. They roam our street pretty freely.

We have a number of trees with reasonably high branches in our yard and I'm not concerned about the birds being able to evade the cats when they are actually on the feeders, but seed tends to spill on the ground and I don't want to lure a bunch of birds to our yard that are going to be at high risk. The cats do spend much more time in our back yard than our front yard (too public I think) so any feeders would go there.

Suggestions for doing this as safely for the birds as possible would be appreciated!

posted by The Elusive Architeuthis to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

Here are some thoughts:

• Place the feeder on a pole in a large area with open ground, away from any underbrush or bushes that the cats could use as cover when stalking birds. Your birds will prefer a situation where they can fly to nearby branches, so hanging it from a tree limb might work as well; the important thing is that the ground under it be clear.
• Clean up the spilled seed on the ground frequently, so that birds aren't hanging around there a lot.
• If the feeder is in a lawn area, be sure to mow regularly, so the grass doesn't get high enough to conceal a cat. (Note that if birds are hanging around a particular area, the grass there will grow noticeably faster due to bird poop.) In the long run, you might consider putting mulch, gravel, or wood chips in the area under the feeder rather than grass.
• A low garden fence (something like this) placed in a 3–4' radius around the base of the feeder would be easily jumped by a cat, but it might be enough of an obstacle to give a bird an extra second to get away.

posted by Johnny Assay at 9:46 AM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have a friend who feeds birds in a yard that shelters feral cats. She keeps the feeders high, and hanging clear. She has also put wire cages around some feeders so the small birds can get in to feed, but not the starlings. She calls her bird feeders Kitty TV. Some birds are ground feeders, and they have some defenses, or senses. You can't really worry about them. Just make sure the feeders are unobstructed so cats can't get at them while the birds feed.
posted by Oyéah at 10:03 AM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

My dad loves to feed wild birds, even though my parents have multiple indoor/outdoor cats. Dad hangs his feeders very high off the ground, using rope attached to a hook with a pulley so the feeder can be pulled down to refill. The feeder is so high off the ground that the cats don't stand a chance. In fact, he has installed his main feeders at the back of their walkout ranch house, so it's the equivalent of a second-story window. The cats can't catch anything there, but it's right outside their kitchen window and so cool to watch. They have a lot of birds, and often there's a bird waiting for its turn at the feeder while hanging onto the window screen.
posted by aabbbiee at 10:08 AM on October 18, 2016

Is it possible to put collars with bells on them, onto the cats? This could be helpful for all birds.
posted by hydra77 at 10:29 AM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

I hang feeders on tall posts and they are in the middle of an open yard so the birds can see the numerous outdoor neighborhood cats, but the cats can't get to the birds. The cats sit and watch the birds from the bottom of the pole, but no birds have been killed so far. The seed that falls on the ground, most of the birds ignore and the squirrels (and mice) eat. It's really fun to watch them all!
posted by ilovewinter at 10:51 AM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Cats usually need to pounce or charge from cover to catch healthy birds; if there's no cover where the biris are feeding they should be ok, or you can make a wire mesh fence or cage structure around where the seed spills; holes in mesh large enough to allow easy bird access but no cat access.
posted by The otter lady at 6:52 PM on October 18, 2016