> Well Billy Connolly once queried why it was that there was no such
> product as mouse-flavour cat food...

Possibly because the cat-food manufacturers use human taste-testers (who ensure it doesn't taste of nothing), and they don't know what mouse tastes of.

Generally, though, the individual death is a tragedy, but it helps keep the population bounded. You'd be surprised how few generations of (eg) starlings it would take, in the absence of starvation, sudden death by cat etc, for the offspring to entirely fill a sphere the diameter of the solar system with starlings. In the particular case of robins, they're vicious little offenders with a correspondingly shortened life expectancy.