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Bird Safety around Bird Feeders

November 01, 2018

Greetings from Vermont! My home's bird feeder went up for the winter season yesterday, after a spell of cold weather, sleet, rain and snow.

This year, it seemed like we went from a day in the 80s, to snow, almost overnight. I thought it was time to put the bird feeder up, and I was right! The birds have been swarming it and I have refilled it twice already. They are so hungry that the Black-capped Chicadees are sharing with the Blue Jays, and the White-breasted Nuthatch will zoom in over the head of the departing Red-breasted Nuthatch.

It's so good to see the birds up close, again, as I can looking out my second story window. We place the feeder just above the porch roof, so that the birds never groundfeed beneath the feeder. If food falls, it falls to the porch roof. That makes the feeder more safe for birds, as quite a few predatory animals (coyotes, fisher cats, and domestic cats) can't get to the roof. This is good. Owls and hawks are still a threat to the birds, but what can you do?

Of course, if you are reading here on our Birdsbesafe website, you know that we make and sell a product to protect birds from pet cats. It uses bright colors around the cat's neck to help birds see the cat from a great enough distance, in time to fly away to safety.

Our Birdsbesafe cat collars work great and protect almost all birds, however, you should still do all you can, in other ways to protect birds. If you put out a bird feeder, have you considered its location for bird safety from, say, your neighbor's cat? Is there a better, more protected place for your feeder? Can you put a fence around it? Think it through, and your visiting beautiful bird friends will thank you!

As always, if you can keep your cat indoors year-round, please do so. If you let your cat outdoors, for whatever reason, please protect the birds with our device or by using a catio or harness system. Cheers from here in Birdsbesafe land!

Also in News

UK Independent Scientific Field Study: Verifies Birdsbesafe is Effective

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."

Holiday Season: 2020

November 28, 2020

As we enter the holiday season, in 2020, it is remarkable how very unique 2020 has been around the globe. What remained the same, for us at Birdsbesafe company, was our devotion to helping cat owners save birds!

Emmy outdoors with Birdsbesafe cat collar cover

Testimonials from 2020

October 17, 2020

We really enjoy hearing from you about your successes with Birdsbesafe® collar covers on your cats protecting birds in your yards. Here's just a sampling of some recent emails that we have received! We appreciate every one of them.

Thanks for caring about cats and birds.

"We love your product, it’s amazingly effective…not a single caught bird since we’ve started using the collar covers. Wish all cat owners who let their cats outside knew about these."