Cat or fox?? Carnage in our front garden ??

Domestic cats rarely eat what they kill. They may play with the body for a while but soon get bored with it. I have 4 cats & only one hunts. Her latest trick is to catch frogs out of our pond but they make such a loud scream type noise that she brings them indoors & looks hopefully for me to get rid of them. They are never hurt & I am pretty sure it is the same frog every time! You think he'd move home.

I once found one of my cats in the garden with a pigeon. Feathers everywhere and he was covered in blood (he's mainly white!) and he ate all the breast meat before I removed the body.

I think a fox would probably take it away rather than eat it in the garden.

A fox and kestrel regularly take birds here - but it's nature and they have babies of their own to feed. Pigeons often fly into windows and break their necks too. I get the feathers up with the garage vac and put them in the compost bin.

Foxes usually bite off the head and hide the rest for later. Sparrow hawks leave quite a mess with feathers and bits everywhere.

We’ve had the same problem with a kestrel so have stopped feeding the birds and squirrels. I think the kestrel saw our garden as a take away outlet. There are foxes in our area but they are only occasionally seen near the bins. Even the spoilt fat moggies around here take bird but not to eat. Cats are killers.

My money is on the sparrowhawk - and can I say what a great thread this is - loved every read and learnt a few things.

I regularly have sparrowhawks downing birds. The smaller ones taken from the large shrubs are usually taken away by the birds to be devoured. The larger ones caught in the trees, or on the ground in the garden are also usually taken away but occasionally ripped apart on the ground. Think you may have a fox if happening overnight. Vultures usually hunt in daylight.

We have a lot of magpies around here and a few months ago i looked out of the window to see a magpie stood on a pigeon pecking at it,and about 3 other magpies just stood around watching,
I dashed outside to see if i could scare them off, which i did but it took the poor pigeon with it
Also once saw a kestrel with a pigeon tried to save that too, but it took it with it
I have 2 cats,[Ragdolls] and they just sit around and watch the birds, and a squirrel, never attempt to chase,too lazy i think

Cats don't usually finish off larger birds - too big a meal. Many years ago our cat killed a pigeon while we were away on holiday. He brought it in the house and left it half finished under the sofa. When we returned it was just starting to decompose. I kept noticing a smell whenever I entered the lounge and as my DS was still in nappies kept checking if it was him! Eventually I found the offending carcass, removed it and cleaned up the carpet with deodorising powder. Be grateful whatever is killing birds is leaving them outside!

Pigeons do drop their feathers for the fun of it so a huge amount would have come out before the carnage was created

We often get sparrow hawks in the garden and occasionally see piles of features. Never seen an actual catch. This one is sitting on a hedge with loads of sparrows hiding in the very thorny hedge underneath. Wish they’d take out all the extremely irritating wood pigeons.

Oops! That wasn't the quote I meant to attach!
Someone had mentioned that cats kill for pleasure...
Sorry Redhead 56!

Redhead56

Sounds like a cat a fox would have taken the carcass away.

Cats don't kill for pleasure. It's something that's hard wired into them. Same as dogs.

The neighbourhood cats regularly kill birds in our garden (not for food; they just play with/torture them for a while and leave them in bits). Its usually too late by the time I get there. My cats always wore collars with bells, but this doesn't seem to happen now, I don't know why. None of them ever hanged themselves climbing trees either, which I've heard used for an excuse not to use them! We have foxes living under the shed at the end of our garden, but they always take their 'kills' back to the den to eat apparently. The only thing they leave in our garden are various toys they pinch that my neighbours leave on their swingseats at night!

Yes, a sparrowhawk, I have seen one at work on a pigeon, several times, the garden was awash with feathers.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202107/medium-343373-ae1175ae-2fee-468c-82c6-2bfd77f80989.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202107/medium-20672-4c92017e-10a3-4100-8862-ba2be855506e.jpeg

I would put my money on a sparrowhawk. We had one visit recently. Blood and feathers all over the garden table, prime cuts neatly excised and the head deposited in one of the chairs! I love them but they try me sorely sometimes.

Sounds like a sparrowhawk.
If you leave any carcass about you will encourage rats.
We throw any dead bits on the garage roof. Within seconds - or minutes at most the red kites swoop and take them. The magpies are always on alert too for bits.

I have the remains of a sparrow hawk which a crow was eating. I can’t think what killed it.

Could it be a sparrowhawk?

I suppose it is the down-side of nature and the food chain. The one that annoys me is when the neighbours big ginger cat gets one of the little blue tits or yellow hammers that come into the garden. I don't really mind if he picks off the odd wood pigeon, mind you ours are so fat that they are almost the size of the cat.

It could be crows, they frequently kill other birds. I saw a bunch of them killing another crow in the park.

I saw a terrible sight at the weekend on our small lawn. A Herring Gull had a Blackbird half way down its gullet. The adult Blackbird's legs were still paddling away - it was awful. I opened the window but the Gull just took off with it. Guess that's 'Nature red in tooth and claw'.

Next doors cats kill and leaves us a present.
Foxes don't always take their kill away. One very bad winter in our other house we had what I kept saying was a dead rosemary bush in a pot, come spring there was an awful smell, we realised there were pheasant tail feathers sticking up. It had been buried by the resident fox that stalked our gardens for squirrels and buried then covered in snow.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Sparrowhawk