Predation events
Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2022 3:38 pm
I have a trail cam at my neighbor's water trough for wildlife, which is a good place to see some of the migratory and more secretive birds in the neighborhood. I have seen a few stray cats there in the past, but I got 30 clips of a tabby this time hunting birds. It was ambushing them from a culvert right next to the trough. The camera (a Browning RF Extreme) captured two images of it catching birds, a junco and a goldfinch. In both cases the cat nailed the bird (pinned it or already had it in its mouth) in less than 0.4 sec, the camera's daylight reaction time. This goaded me into immediate action (an uncommon event). I covered the culvert opening with wire mesh. Here are a few screen shots from the videos. (I was not able to submit this where it should be, in the camera trap images and videos section.)