March 21, 2014
If you haven't checked out our Shop page lately, be sure to look at our three new color patterns for Spring 2014. One is a red-orange-yellow stripe, another is bright red dots, and yet another is a reprise of our popular Yellow Flowers pattern. Plus, after April 9th, find four of our best patterns all for sale on Amazon; just enter "birdsbesafe" in Amazon's search bar!
These patterns are confirmed to be effective at warning away birds and our customers are already enjoying having a few more fashion options for their cats. Look for two more new patterns before June, too. We know your cats are unique, so we want to give you plenty of choice--all fabrics that are effective and high-quality as well.
If you are a Birdsbesafe customer, you let your cat outdoors and yet, you are helping to protect a very significant proportion of songbirds from your cats' hunting ways. We at Birdsbesafe have seen, over 6 years, that our bright colors really do work to protect songbirds, and soon we are expecting further validation from a scientific study, to go along with all the customer "thank you notes" and reports that we receive on a weekly (or greater) basis. Thanks to our customers trying our product and then telling their friends when it really works, we have been able to help save more and more birds, literally around the world.
But should you be letting your cats outdoors to begin with? Increasingly, attention is given to the toll that housecats (and feral housecats) take on wildlife, including birds. A current New York Times opinion essay takes cat owners to task for letting cats outdoors at all. I'm sure feathers will be ruffled on all sides, as usual, when this topic is commented upon in subsequent days. Sometimes, Birdsbesafe LLC receives direct criticism for promoting letting cats outdoors at all. So, let me try to be very upfront: here is our bottom line:
It would be a great day if no housecats in the world were allowed outdoors to hunt. That would be Just Fine with me, the owner and originator of Birdsbesafe patent-pending wildlife-saving devices. I'm a bird-lover, a birder, a lifelong conservationist and former biologist/land use planner. The reason I work so hard to promote Birdsbesafe is to protect birds from cats that go outdoors and hunt.
We are in business because, pragmatically, while cats are still going outdoors and hunting, we can help save birds. More than half of all pet cats do go outdoors. You, the customers, have shown us that you trust and endorse and use our bright-colored collar covers--despite their garishness--to protect the birds that you love.
If you can keep your cats indoors: Please do.
If you want to walk your cat outdoors on a harness, to let it eat some grass and be in the sunshine, that works too. It's a great wildlife-conservation choice, and soon we plan to be selling harnesses on our website for just that reason.
Someone asked me recently if I was a "cat person" or a "bird person". "Yes," I said. "Both." It doesn't have to be either-or. You can have a conservation ethic, care about wild birds, and other animals, and have a cat. You have options. We offer one great partial solution to protect songbirds from outdoor-going cats. But on an individual basis, you have to make your own decisions about your own cat and whether it should go outdoors at all.
I believe that if you are letting your cat loose outdoors, it will hunt, and the least you can do is to try to limit its bird-hunting prowess so that it catches very very few birds by being decked out in our bright colors. In our next blog post, I'll discuss again why Birdsbesafe works so well and how it is making an increasing impact on wild bird protection around the world.
Happy spring!
April 28, 2021
Does this make our pet products officially famous?
We made the list of 10 best eco-friendly pet products for Earth Day! We're lucky #7. See the story by People Pets' editor here.
We're on a mission to protect birds from cats that hunt. Thank you, cat owners!
April 16, 2021
We are grateful for the loyalty and dedication of our sewing partners, who have sewn our products ever since 2015. Our products are made in the United States, and they always have been. It is a decision of ours to support American manufacturing, and to support the fair compensation of the sewing professionals whose hands guide our products through the sewing process. We rely on their superb professional sewing capabilities in order to bring you a beautiful collar cover to help protect birds -- and to dress up your cat in an attractive way.
Fabric is the main "ingredient" of our product. Over the years, fabric prices have increased. Today, we raised the price of our product. It was our first price increase since 2013. We needed our prices to better reflect our actual costs. We hope you will understand and appreciate that it was an overdue adjustment.
February 12, 2021
Results of a scientific field study, led by Univ. of Exeter's Dr. Robbie MacDonald, were published in the journal Current Biology this week."Fitting Birdsbesafe collar covers reduced the numbers of birds captured and brought home by 42% but had no discernible effect on mammals."
And, the research paper characterized it: "Birdsbesafe is a colorful collar cover that works as a visual warning, increasing the visibility of cats to potential prey animals with color vision. It exhibited pronounced effectiveness in reducing killing of birds, and more generally, prey with good color vision, including herpetofauna."
