The father of eBird says keep your cats indoors

At today’s annual Alumni Day at Princeton, John Fitzpatrick received the university’s highest honor given to a graduate school alumnus or alumna, the James Madison Medal.

Fitzpatrick, who received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1978, led the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology from 1995 to 2021. Under his leadership, the lab developed eBird, the voluminous database into which birders worldwide report their sightings.

Fitzpatrick give a lecture before receiving the medal this morning, and I was fortunate to hear it.

Fitzpatrick charmed the audience of several hundred alumni, faculty, staff and students in Richardson Auditorium, recounting highlights from his career and noting some of the alarming findings on declining bird populations, statistics gathered with considerable help from eBird. Fitzpatrick said eBird is believed to be the largest citizen-science research project in existence.

In a brief question-and-answer session after the lecture, Fitzpatrick was asked what individuals and society as a whole can do to reverse the devastating decline in birds.

His quick reply? Keep your cats indoors.

Cats are believed to cause more than 1 billion bird deaths each year in the United States alone. While many of the cats responsible are feral, Fitzpatrick called cats let out of doors by their owners to prowl neighborhoods “subsidized recreational killers.”

Brightly lit buildings are another major killer of birds, which by the thousands crash into buildings at night during spring and fall migration. Data gathered from eBird and other sources can help predict migration peaks and help cities determine what nights its best to dim their lights.

Fitzpatrick also encouraged people to stop using lawn chemicals, many of which are harmful to birds. Not only that, pesticides also decimate insect populations, a major source of food for birds. So don’t coat your lawn with chemicals, he said, but plant native plants or “xeriscape,” that is, use materials that don’t need to be watered (or coated with pesticides).

Fitzpatrick, who once stood in front of a bulldozer to stop a development in Florida, also recommended that supporting local conservation organizations as a good way to help the cause.

The Madison Medal, by the way, is named for James Madison, fourth president of the United States and is considered by Princeton its first graduate student.