Cats are notorious for their ability to catch and dismantle birds. Many of us would have seen dead birds with their feathers torn and their bodies ripped apart. But how many of us have actually witnessed a cat kill?

On December 4th 2005 Meng & Melinda Chan actually witnessed a kingfisher being eaten by a cat. Through a pair of binoculars they spotted a kingfisher flying downwards towards the ground. Suddenly a cat jumped up and pounced on the bird. At first they thought that the bird escaped as they saw it flying away. But when they reached the scene, there was a dead kingfisher on the grass. And perching nearby was another kingfisher making alarming calls. Only then did they realize that a pair of birds was involved and one of them fell victim to the cat.

The Chans alerted Ashley Ng as they thought that birders on his Pigeon-holes e-loop might be upset by the incident and the gruesome images they managed to capture on their camera. But birders are tougher than that and so I persuaded Melinda to share the experience and images, and this is how this posting comes about.

Other reports of cat-kill:
Keith Hiller’s cat regularly caught mynas, doves and once even a sunbird. Apparently they just do it for fun, not for food. On the other hand Jeffrey Low’s cat caught an unknown species of bird, ate and regurgitated it. Lim Jun Ying’s pet Spotted Dove (Streptopelia chinensis) was mauled by a cat while still in the cage. On the other hand Jeremy Lee’s experience is a little mysterious. He relates how, when he was a kid he regularly collected headless Javan Munias (Lonchura leucogastroides) decapitated during the night while still in their cage. Was it a cat? An owl perhaps?

Contributed by Meng & Melinda Chan
Additional input by Keith Hiller, Jeffrey Low, Lim Jun Ying and Jeremy Lee

Further comment by R. Subaraj: When I lived in Siglap and had cats as pets, they would bring in a variety of birds. The usual targets would be the Eurasian Tree Sparrows (Passer montanus) (which I observed one of my cats eating twice) and Olive-backed Sunbirds (Nectarinia jugularis). They would also kill the Changeable Lizards and geckoes, also eating the latter. The most surprising bird one of my cats brought in one day was a dead female Pink-necked Green Pigeon (Treron vernans). As this is normally a bird that stays high up in the trees, I can only guess that this individual was ill and vulnerable for it to be caught by a cat.

Mistletoes are commonly seen growing on our wayside trees. Their fruits are small, oval, one-seeded and berry-like. The seeds are enclosed by a viscid layer of mucilage that pass out intact after being swallowed by sunbirds and flowerpeckers. Usually these sticky seeds need to be scraped off the bottoms of these birds when they defecate.

Angie Ng describes in detail how a male Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker (Dicaeum cruentatum) deposited a string of sticky seeds on her sui mei (Wrightia religiosa) plant thus:

“After comfortably positioning itself transversely across the branch, it turned its head… then it awkwardly stretched apart its legs, lowered its little body for a second or two and with a swagger, it moved a few steps to the left. With that quick swaggering action it wiped off a string of six gluey mistletoe seeds onto the branch of my sui mei.”

Other reports state that these birds deposit the seeds by wiping them off their beaks after pecking on the fruits.

In Australia the main dispersal agent of mistletoes is the Mistletoe Bird (Dicaeum hirundinaceum). This bird has a modified gut that allows the seeds to be excreted within 25 minutes of ingesting without any damage. The birds are said to perch along branches, rather than across them like most other birds, so that when the seed is excreted, it falls onto the branch upon which the bird is perched. The seeds are excreted in a stringy mass of three to five seeds.

Lim Kim Chuah has sourced a Tropical American reference that claims “A sticky layer of viscin surrounds each seed, and it is impregnated with toxic chemicals that offer some protection to the seed and at the same time help to speed passage through the gut… As long as the viscin layer is undamaged, the seeds remain viable and the bird is not poisoned.” I have not been able to locate any work of this nature on our tropical species of mistletoes nor any reference on their poisonous nature. However, there is reference to the toxicity of the American species, especially the leaves, stems and fruits.

Once stuck to the surface of a developing branch, the mistletoe seed will send out a small shoot with a bulbous tip. This tip expands to form a ‘holdfast’ that eventually enters the host’s internal tissues to reach the sapwood, from where moisture and minerals are extracted. As the mistletoe grows, the primary holdfast enlarges in size to send out runners that develop secondary holdfasts at intervals.

Image of sticky seed by Angie Ng, others by YC

There have been a number of postings on nesting crows recently - by Angie, Tang and Eu Heng. And we have published images of their large nests. Below is a detailed account of the nests and readers can always give feedback of other nesting materials.

House Crows (Corvus splendens) build their nests firmly lodged between the branching forks of tall trees and the frond bases of tall palms. The description of a nest I am giving comes from one dislodged from a ceram palm (Rhopaloblaste ceramica) in my garden. Normally the crows recycle the materials from the old nest to construct a new one. And unless someone climbs up the tree or palm and remove a disused nest, there would be no opportunity to examine one closely.

The large, crude nest is composed of interlocking twigs, in this case coming mainly from the many mempat trees (Cratoxylum formosum) lining the road fronting my house. Together with these twigs are pieces of wires of various lengths and thickness picked up from my garden, no doubt to strengthen the nest structure.

The nest measures 40 cm x 40 cm and 30 cm deep. Sitting in the centre of this massive structure is a neat shallow cup lined with light brown plant fibres, probably palm fibres.

In the nest observed by Hung Bun Tang there were knotted lengths of thick plastic. These are the pieces attached to the infernal smoky petrol-driven machines of our wayside grass cutters, as KF Yap so aptly put it. The sweeping, circular motion of the pieces cuts off the grass blades. These plastic pieces often get detached, sometimes hitting passersby. The crows have obviously found a new use for these discarded plastic pieces.

Straycat in his blog recounts the time when clothes hangers disappeared from his backyard. The mystery was solved when a nearby House Crows’ nest was seen with hangers jutting out from the side.

House Crows do not normally reuse the old nest after one breeding session. But they reuse the nesting materials. In my two palms they would collect the materials from the old nest in one palm to build a new nest in nearby palm. This went on every three months for more than two years before they decided to move on to another area to breed.

Both parent crows help to construct the nest. Sometimes they are assisted by other crows. The breeding female usually takes care of the lining of the nest towards the end of the building session. In this respect they behave just like the American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos).

Mistletoes are parasitic or semi-parasitic plants that grow on the branches of trees. They are unlike the bird’s-nest (Asplenium nidus) and staghorn (Platycerium coronarium) ferns that depend on the trees mainly for support. These epiphytes do not demand anything else from the host, neither water nor nutrients. Mistletoes on the other hand are very different from epiphytes. These are parasitic plants that draw water and nutrients from the host, to eventually stunt or even kill the host plant.

In Singapore there used to be two main genera of mistletoes, Loranthus and Viscum. Then Loranthus was split into six genera, but not Viscum. All these mistletoes (except one species of Viscum) have green leaves, meaning that they are able to photosynthesise and manufacture their own food. Thus they are termed semi-parasitic.

Mistletoes are important bird plants. Their flowers produce copious nectar that attract a host of butterflies. And also birds like sunbirds and flowerpeckers. Their succulent berries similarly attract many species of birds.

Incidentally, the Australian Christmas tree (Nuytsia floribunda) is a member of this family of plants. It is the largest mistletoe in the world, growing independently into a 8 metre tall tree. If you visit Western Australia during December and January, you can marvel at the glorious, honey-scented, orange-gold blossoms covering the entire tree, even hiding the fleshy foliage. This tree manages to grow and flower during the dry Australian summer because its roots tap onto the roots of other neighbouring plants for water. The trunk exudes a sweet, sticky gum and the young roots are peeled and eaten, tasting like sugar-candy.

January 7th 2006 was 15 days since I first saw the three eggs in the nest. When I went out to buy groceries at around noon, I went up to my usual place to take a look at the crows’ nest. The first chick had hatched! I was excited and was wondering when the next two eggs would hatch.

I returned home at 2 pm. Quickly I took out my camera and went straight to the next block. From afar, I saw the two House Crows (Corvus splendens) hopping among the branches of their nesting tree. This looked strange. As I got closer, I was shocked to see that the whole nest had disappeared. Could it be an attack by the Asian Koels (Eudynamys scolopacea)? From the 4th level of the block, I could not see any traces or remnants of the nest. The pair of crows was calling desperately from the top of a nearby lamp-post. I decided to go down to the ground level to inspect the area beneath the tree. Yes, there was the chick, dead, of course, and a cracked egg. I didn’t see any trace of the third egg.

I started to reason. It couldn’t be the work of the koels. They couldn’t possibly remove the whole nest. It must be people. As I looked up to the nest site, a small girl and her maid were looking out of their window on the second level, talking to each other and pointing to where the nest was. They told me it was two workers and their boss who removed the nest with a long stick with a knife attached at its end. The whole nest fell to the ground and the workers took the nest away. The maid and the small girl were also sad about this.

Well, crows are pests. What can I say?

In 1995 when we were staying in Yishun, the Town Council sent a team of workers to our estate to conduct a massive felling of rows of lovely trees, some reaching 20 m in height. The whole operation lasted one week. The Town Council explained that these trees attracted many birds (Barn Swallows, Hirundo rustica) to perch in. I moved house the next year.

Text and images by Hung Bun Tang