>I've been having a dearth of birds in my hard since my wife noted a brown
>blur last Friday. I went out to put seed today and found bits and parts
>of a junco, but all the bits and parts I found were feathers, primarily
>wing and breast. No carcass bits were found at all. I'm suspecting a
>predator of avian origin as the birds would seek shelter in these bushes
>when cats appear, and the distribution of the feathers closely resembles
>those I found when my December gyrfalcon was eating its mallard. Has
>anyone observed enough cat or small raptor kills to help me confirm or
>deny my hypothesis? Will enjoy any comments as the rains falls here and
>the stack of papers to grade grows.
>
>Ray Korpi

I've never watched a Sharp-shin eating at length, but I've watched several
Merlins from beginning to end. They swallow the entire bird except for
wing and tail and most body feathers, plucking them out as they go. When
they're on a high perch, the feathers get spread around, but I imagine a
hawk eating a bird much closer to the ground would drop most of the
feathers in a smaller area.

When cats have killed birds in our yard, the evidence often consists of
nothing more than scattered wing and tail and body feathers, too. I
suspect the feathers were lost during the kill, and the cat carried the
bird away somewhere. How do I know they were cat kills? (1) in summer,
when no hawks around; and (2) at bird bath, which attracted cats unendingly
until we placed it in a situation in which cats couldn't sneak up on birds
using it.

As a museum biologist, I would modify that to "parts of dead juncos aren't
much fun." Entire dead juncos are quite interesting.

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416