CAT ATTACKED BY BLACKBIRDS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1137, 2 September 1882, Page 4

CAT ATTACKED BY BLACKBIRDS.

The following extraordinary and touching scene was witnessed by a gentleman in his garden at Maldon. A fledgling blackbird, evidently just escaped from its nest close by, had with some difficulty fluttered from a fence into the overhanging branches of a lime tree. A cat had also watched the young “ flyer,” and immediately gave chase, rushing up the stem of the tree with the intention of getting on to the branch to obtain her prey ; but meanwhile the parent birds had come upon the scene, and seeing the situation of their nestling, attacked the cat with the utmost bravery, trying to prevent to prevent her crawling on to the branch. They kept alternately flying at her, using their beaks and wings incessantly with the utmost fury and getting fearlessly within range of the cat’s claws, and while one was pouncing at her head, the other would execute a “flank” attack, both of them keeping up all the time that continuous, noisy, angry, chatter which blackbirds know so well how to make on occasion. These bold strategic movements confused the cat very much, as her position in the tree was not advantageos, but she kept snarling and striking out with her talons whenever an opportunity occurred. The interested observer tried to help the birds, but, from the lower branches of the tree intervening, missiles were not of much use. He was obliged to leave the exciting scene, but after a long aqsenoe returned and found the combat still going on, and a person who had watched during the interval said the birds had kept up the attack without ceasing, forcing the enemy to keep on the defensive only; and this desperate struggle kept on for two hours till the birds were completely exhausted, “ and sat all in a neap’’ looking as though they had lost their feathers. But they kept the destroyer from their little fledgling, and their friend at last managed with some trouble to dislodge the cat. In the afternoon the birds seemed to have recovered themselves, and were singing victoriously in the garden in celebration of what, perhaps, was one of the longest apd pluckiest lights of the kind that has ever been known,