Although modern young people are often accused of infantilism, among them there are...
The Russian Bird Conservation Union (SOPR) has chosen the brown-headed chickadee as the 2017 bird of the year. This bird is also called the fluffy bird, due to the way it fluffs up its plumage greatly in cold weather.
The chickadee is the most numerous species of tit, after the great tit. It is a small bird with a wingspan of 16-22 cm and a weight of 9-14 g.
Contrary to the name of the bird, its head is not brown, but black, although duller than that of the black-headed, or marsh, chickadee. Black color occupies the entire upper part of the head and even slightly covers the neck. The rest of the upper body plumage, as well as the wings and tail, are gray, while the cheeks, chest and belly are white.
Since autumn, these tits often stay in common flocks with other tits, pikas and nuthatches. They inspect both coniferous and deciduous trees and, more often than other tits, jump to the ground to look for food among fallen leaves in the fall, and on the surface of the snow in winter.
It is very easy to see the tracks of a chickadee jumping in the snow. The size of her paw print is noticeably smaller than that of a great tit, and slightly larger than that of our other tits - blue tit, grenadier and tit. Moving through the snow, she lowers her paw not from above, but slightly dragging it along the surface, dragging it. Therefore, the length of the imprint on the snow is often slightly longer than the supporting surface of the foot.
In the summer, you won’t find a puffball near human habitation. 
Until July, young titmice are tied to the nest; later they will unite in noisy, cheerful flocks with kinglets and other small birds. Until winter they wander from place to place. In winter, when there is not enough food for birds, they can be seen in city parks, gardens, and near reservoirs. The food of the brown-headed chickadee is very diverse - it is mainly caterpillars, weevils and spiders.
Like some other species of tits, chickadees store food in the summer and early autumn. The tendency to hoard food is very pronounced in chubby goats. Throughout the year they hide some of the food they find. Food storage can be observed even in winter, seemingly under the most unfavorable feeding conditions. Young plumes begin to hide food as early as July.
Powderfish hide their reserves in a wide variety of places: on coniferous and deciduous trees, less often on bushes, stumps and even on the ground at the base of trunks. Hidden food is sometimes covered with a piece of bark or lichen. In a day, one bird can equip and fill up to two thousand such storage rooms!
However, chickadees apparently do not remember the location of supplies and find hidden food by accident. The use of reserves sometimes begins almost immediately after they are stocked. The birds eat some of the found reserves, and hide some again. Thanks to this constant re-hiding, the food is distributed more or less evenly over the area.
I've done the work: Rebrov Ivan, 7th grade student, Yasinovatskaya secondary school I-II Art. No. 4 Administration of the city of Yasinovataya. Supervisor: Korchmar Olga Grigorievna, computer science teacher.
What a small bird,
Fussy singer
Lives in mixed forests
Near rivers and swamps?
Flying in a black cap
It stores food for winter.
This bird is a dove,
What's the name?...(Gaichka)
This bird received the popular name “puffy” because in the cold it fluffs up its plumage, turning into a plump, loose ball. The brown-headed tit is a typical forest dweller; in cities it can only be found in forest parks.
Inexorable statistics show that in the first year of life, out of 1000 chickadees, only a third survive, about 50 birds manage to live up to 5 years, and only three manage to live up to 6-7 years. The maximum known lifespan of a puffball is 9 years.
Brown-headed chickadees are birds, which lead a sedentary lifestyle, nest in late April - early May in hollows and tree stumps at a relatively short distance from the ground. Unlike other varieties tits, brown-headed chickadees They prefer to independently, like woodpeckers, hollow out small hollows for themselves, up to 20 cm deep and 7-8 cm in diameter. Because of their small beak, they are unable to drill into the bark of a young, strong tree, so they choose trunks of dead, rotten trees with dilapidated wood to make their nests. It is interesting that puffy birds are engaged in arranging nests in pairs, which are created in the fall.
During his first year of life, a young male looks for a mate in the nearest territory (about 5 kilometers). If this fails, he leaves his native land and flies to seek luck in the distant regions of the forest. The most favorite trees for brown-headed chickadees are:
- Alder;
- Birch;
- Aspen;
On average, this work takes birds about a week, sometimes two. Hollows up to twenty centimeters deep; bark, twigs, feathers, and wool are used to create them. An important distinguishing feature of chickadee nests is that you will never find moss in their hollows, unlike other species of the chickadee genus.
Basic construction material- pieces of bark, birch bark, strips of soaked bast, sometimes wool and a small amount of feathers. After construction is completed, a break is taken for 1-5 days. Clutch of 5-9 eggs, with rare exceptions once a year. The eggs are white with reddish-brown spots and speckles, often thicker at the blunt end. Egg dimensions: (15-16) x (12-13) mm. The female incubates for 13-15 days, while the male feeds her and guards the territory. Sometimes the female leaves the nest and gets food for herself.
Chicks hatch asynchronously, usually over the course of two or three days.
The fact is that the brown-headed chickadee reacts more sharply than all hollow-nesting birds to a picnic holiday with bonfires (since in this situation, the small dry trees it needs for nesting are cut down first). The brown-headed chickadee disappears from forests in which sanitary felling was carried out after drainage work, and does not tolerate park landscaping carried out in its habitat.
In 2017, declared in Russia the Year of Specially Protected Natural Areas and the Year of Ecology.
1. http http://www.rbcu.ru/news/press/32900 /
2. Wikipedia. Brown-headed Chickadee
3. Personal observations.
4. Internet pictures
Turtle Dove - Bird of the Year 2019
The Russian Bird Conservation Union has chosen the bird of the year for the twenty-fourth time (since 1996). In 2019, the bird of the year was common turtledove
. In the south of Russia, until recently, this bird was the most numerous. But at the end of the 20th century in the European part of Russia, the number of the common dove began to fall sharply, and by the beginning of the 21st century it had decreased almost 100 times. The reasons for such a catastrophic decline in numbers have not yet been fully elucidated, but the salvation of the species will largely depend on the organization of its protection.
The common dove belongs to the Pigeon family and is very similar in appearance to a pigeon, but more graceful and smaller in size. The turtle dove differs from the city pigeon not only in its miniature size, but also in its slenderness, rounded tail, and red paws. The body length of the common turtle dove is from 26 to 29 cm, weight is about 120-300 g. Its head is small, its wings and tail are long.
On the sides of the neck of the common dove there are “mirrors” of black and white feathers; the upper surface is brownish-brown with a dark scaly pattern, the underparts are light, brownish-gray, with a darker, slightly pinkish chest, the lower surface of the tail is black with a white stripe at the end.
There are practically no differences in the color of males and females. Young birds are duller in color, uniformly gray, and there are no “mirrors” on the neck.
Range and habitat
Turtle doves are widespread in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, in the steppe and forest-steppe. These birds are migratory and spend the winter in Africa (sub-Saharan Africa). They arrive from wintering grounds in May and remain until September.
Nutrition
Turtle doves feed on the seeds of a variety of plants and trees (pine, spruce, birch, alder), as well as berries, small mollusks and insects. In spring and summer they look for food in meadows, pastures, river banks, and after the grain ripens - in the fields of wheat, hemp, buckwheat, and millet.
Common turtle doves peck seeds from sunflower fields, but do not peck grains from ears and panicles - they collect them on the ground. Common doves cannot be considered harmful birds, since they bring much more benefit by destroying the seeds of weeds.
Arranging the nest and caring for the offspring
Doves nest on the edges, in parks, and forest belts. Favorite place for nesting is branches of trees and bushes. But the turtle dove’s nest can also be found on lamp and electric poles, roof slopes, cornices, balconies, and power line supports.
The turtle dove's nest is flat, small and sloppy; it is unevenly filled with small twigs and leaves, which is why there are gaps in the structure. The depth of the nest is 4 cm, width is 19 cm. This is enough to incubate 2 eggs measuring 2 by 3 cm.
The nesting season is extended, while some birds already have chicks, others are just starting to build a nest.
The clutch consists of two white or cream-colored eggs, which both birds incubate alternately for 13-16 days.
Chicks appear on the 14th day after laying. They are born blind, helpless, with sparse feathers, but they grow very quickly.
Twenty days are spent on the plumage and rise to the wing.
Until this time, teenagers choose to sit on the branches and, sometimes, fall. While still helpless, the birds die. Considering that there are only 2 chicks in the brood, the loss is significant. Therefore, turtle doves make 2-3 clutches per season.
Parents are very attached to the chicks and do not leave the nest even in case of danger.
On the 21st day, the chicks already fly well, become independent and, having left the nesting area, gather in independent flocks of 7-10 individuals.
Parents feed their offspring for some time after the chicks leave the nest. At the age of one month, turtle doves are already able to feed on their own.
Interesting features birds
Turtle doves are a symbol of fidelity. Like swans, turtle doves are faithful to one partner all their lives and, even if he dies, do not choose a new one.
These birds get along well with other birds, are peaceful and not prone to aggression.
Doves have no defense mechanisms against predators.
Turtle doves easily adapt to living conditions in captivity.
In the wild, turtle doves live 5-7 years, and at home and in zoos (with good care) they live up to 20 years.
Caring for turtle doves is not particularly difficult, since these birds are unpretentious in food, easily get used to and even become attached to people, and rarely get sick.
Turtle doves are great talkers. They laugh, chirp, coo, sigh, mumble, walk - they loudly make a variety of sounds. Therefore, it is not recommended for people with unstable sleep or insomnia, as well as those who cannot tolerate constant background noise, to have turtle doves in an apartment with a small area and poor soundproofing of the rooms.
Enemies of turtle doves
During nesting time (especially in the middle zone), dove nests are most often destroyed by marten, squirrel and ermine. Adult birds and chicks beginning to fly are caught by hawks - goshawk and sparrowhawk, as well as kites and buzzards.
During migration, doves are hunted by almost all species of large and medium-sized falcons.
Bird protection
Until relatively recently, the common turtle dove was widespread in the forest and steppe zones of Europe, but now its future causes serious concern among ornithologists.
Ornithologists admit that the reasons for this remain unclear.
Currently, nine regions have included the common turtle dove in the Red Data Books. Russian Federation, but ornithologists propose to include it in the Red Book of Russia. It is now listed as Vulnerable (VU) on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List.
Description of the presentation by individual slides:
1 slide
Slide description:
Brown chickadee Performed by a student of the Municipal Budget Educational Institution of the State Farm School Nikita Shitikov On the eve of the week of “natural science”
2 slide
Slide description:
Description or appearance. A small, densely built bird with a large head, short neck and inconspicuous grayish-brown plumage. Body length 12-14 cm, wingspan 16-22 cm, weight 9-14 g. The top of the head and the back of the head are matte black (but not brown, as can be determined by the name), while the cap extends far back to the front of the back. The rest of the upperparts - most of the back, shoulders, middle and lesser wing coverts, loin and rump - are brownish-gray. The greater coverts have the same color, but are darker in the middle part. The cheeks covering the ears are whitish. The sides of the neck are also whitish, but have a slight buffy tint. The front of the throat is marked with a large black spot - a “bib”. The underparts are off-white, with a slight buffy coating on the sides and undertail. The beak is dark brown, the legs are dark gray.
3 slide
Slide description:
Voice of the Puffy Chickadee The vocal repertoire of the Puffy Chickadee is not as diverse as that of its closely related black-headed chickadee. There are two main types of song: demonstrative, which is used to attract a partner, and territorial, which is used to mark the nesting area. The demonstrative song is a series of measured melancholic whistles “tii..tii..tii...” or “tii..tii..tii...” at the same pitch or with a rising tone. This whistle, performed by a male and female, varies somewhat between lowland and mountain populations, but may include variations of both types.
4 slide
Slide description:
Distribution The distribution area covers the forest zone of Eurasia east of Great Britain and central regions France (Seine basin, middle and lower Loire) to the Pacific coast and the Japanese islands. In the north it is found up to the border of tree vegetation, reaching the forest-tundra - in Scandinavia and Finland up to 69-70° N. sh., the European part of Russia and Western Siberia to the Yenisei up to 68° N. sh., east to the 66th parallel.
5 slide
Slide description:
Habitat Less than other tits, it is prone to anthropogenic landscapes and is rarely found near human habitation. The main biotope is mountain and lowland coniferous and mixed forests with pine, spruce and larch, often deaf, wetlands and floodplains. In Siberia, it inhabits continuous dark coniferous taiga, sphang swamps, and on the northern border of the tundra, willow forests and alder bushes. In the forest-steppe of Southern Siberia it settles among plantings of Siberian cedar. IN Central Europe It is found mainly in floodplain forests among shrub vegetation, in small groves, and on the edges. In the mountains it is found up to the border of tree vegetation - in Europe on average up to 2000 m, in Altai up to 2300 m, in the Chinese Tien Shan up to 2745 m above sea level. Outside the breeding season, it rises much higher - for example, in Tibet, encounters of puffballs have been recorded at an altitude of 3840 and 3960 m above sea level.
6 slide
Slide description:
Reproduction The breeding season begins in April - May; flight chicks appear in July. Pairs form in the winter in the first year of life and, as a rule, remain until one of the partners dies. During courtship, the male sings and chases the female, both birds shake their wings and arch. Mating is preceded by a demonstrative offering of food, accompanied by the murmur of the male and the calls of the female. It nests in the same area of up to 9 hectares, which it guards throughout the year. The nest is made in a rotten trunk or stump of a dead tree (usually birch, aspen, alder, larch) at a height of up to 3 m above the ground. Often the nest is located very low, at a height of no more than a meter. Like the tufted tit, the brown-headed tit prefers to hollow out (or rather pluck out) the nest on its own, but in case of failure, it can use ready-made natural voids or old nests of tufted tits, small spotted woodpecker or your own, having previously deepened and cleaned the hollow. Less often occupy the gay protein, and only in exceptional cases artificial nests.
7 slide
Slide description:
Diet It feeds on small invertebrates and their larvae, as well as seeds and fruits. In summer, the diet of adult birds is divided approximately equally between animal and plant foods, and in winter up to three quarters consists of food of plant origin, mainly seeds. coniferous trees- pine, spruce and juniper. The young are fed butterfly caterpillars, spiders and sawfly larvae, followed by the addition of plant feed. Adults in large quantities They eat spiders, small beetles (especially weevils), butterflies at all stages of development, homoptera, hymenoptera (bees, wasps), hemiptera and diptera (flies, mosquitoes, midges). It also feeds on lacewings, caddisflies, ants, labiopods, haymakers, mites, earthworms and snails.
8 slide
Slide description:
Systematics and subspecies The brown-headed chickadee, under the Latin name Parus cinereus montanus, was first described in 1827 by Swiss naturalist Thomas Conrad von Baldenstein. Until recently, most authors considered all chickadees as a subgenus Poecile of the larger genus Parus, and the brown-headed chickadee was called Parus montanus. This name is still widely used in the world, however, an analysis of the cytochrome-b gene sequence of mitochondrial DNA, carried out in 2005 by a group of American molecular biologists, showed a more distant relationship of this group of birds to other tits than previously thought. As a result, the American Society of Ornithologists took the initiative to restore Poecile to genus rank, as was customary in late XIX century, and call the puffball Poecile montanus.
Slide 9
Slide description:
Links and literature Vertebrates of Russia - Brown-headed tit Parus montanus Baldenstein, 1827 “Nature of Baikal”. Brown-headed chickadee. Dementyev, G. P.; Gladkov, N. A. Birds of the Soviet Union. - Soviet Science, 1954. - T. 5. - 803 p. Koblik, E. A. Diversity of birds (based on materials from the exhibition of the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University). - M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 2001. - T. Volume 4. - ISBN 5-211-04072-4. Malchevsky A. S., Pukinsky Yu. B. Birds of the Leningrad region and adjacent territories. - L.: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1983. Mikheev, A. V. Biology of birds. Field guide to bird nests. - M.: Education, 1975. - 171 p. Rogacheva, E. V. Birds of Central Siberia. Distribution, abundance, zoogeography. - M.: Nauka, 1988. - 310 p. - ISBN 5-02-005252-3. Ryabitsev, V.K. Birds of the Urals, the Urals and Western Siberia: A reference guide. - Ekaterinburg: Ural Publishing House. University, 2001. - 608 p. - ISBN 5-7525-0825-8. Stepanyan, L. S. Abstract of the ornithological fauna of Russia and adjacent territories. - Moscow: Akademkniga, 2003. - 808 p. - ISBN 5-94628-093-7. von Baldenstein, T. C. Der Vogelbauer nebst Anmerkungen über die Naturgesch. - Calven-Verlag, 1981. - T. XI-XIX. Gosler, Andrew; Clement, Peter. Family Paridae (Tits and Chickadees) // Handbook of the birds of the world. - Barcelona: Lynx Editions, 2007. - Vol. 12: Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. - ISBN 84-96553-42-6. Mullarney, Killian; Svensson, Lars; Zetterström, Dan; Grant, Peter J. Birds of Europe. - United States: Princeton University Press, 2000. - 400 p. - ISBN 978-0-691-05054-6
10 slide
Slide description:
The Russian Bird Conservation Union (SOPR) elected bird of the year 2017
brown-headed chickadee.
This bird is also called the puffbird,
for the manner of fluffing up the plumage greatly in cold weather.
The chickadee is the most numerous species of tit, after the great tit. It is a small bird with a wingspan of 16-22 cm and a weight of 9-14 g.
Contrary to the name of the bird, its head is not brown, but black, although duller than that of the black-headed, or marsh, chickadee. Black color occupies the entire upper part of the head and even slightly covers the neck. The rest of the upper body plumage, as well as the wings and tail, are gray, while the cheeks, chest and belly are white.
Since autumn, these tits often stay in common flocks with other tits, pikas and nuthatches. They inspect both coniferous and deciduous trees and, more often than other tits, jump to the ground to look for food among fallen leaves in the fall and on the surface of the snow in winter.
It is very easy to see the tracks of a chickadee jumping in the snow. The size of her paw print is noticeably smaller than that of the great tit, and slightly larger than that of our other tits - the blue tit, grenadier and tit. Moving through the snow, she lowers her paw not from above, but slightly dragging it along the surface, dragging it. Therefore, the length of the imprint on the snow is often slightly longer than the supporting surface of the foot.
In the summer, you won’t find a puffball near human habitation.Until July, young titmice are tied to the nest; later they will unite in noisy, cheerful flocks with kinglets and other small birds. Until winter they wander from place to place. In winter, when there is not enough food for birds, they can be seen in city parks, gardens, and near reservoirs. The food of the brown-headed chickadee is very diverse - it is mainly caterpillars, weevils and spiders.
Like some other species of tits, chickadees store food in the summer and early autumn. The tendency to hoard food is very pronounced in chubby goats. Throughout the year they hide some of the food they find. Food storage can be observed even in winter, seemingly under the most unfavorable feeding conditions. Young plumes begin to hide food as early as July.
Powderfish hide their reserves in a wide variety of places: on coniferous and deciduous trees, less often on bushes, stumps and even on the ground at the base of trunks. Hidden food is sometimes covered with a piece of bark or lichen. In a day, one bird can equip and fill up to two thousand such storage rooms!
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However, chickadees apparently do not remember the location of supplies and find hidden food by accident. The use of reserves sometimes begins almost immediately after they are stocked. The birds eat some of the found reserves, and hide some again. Thanks to this constant re-hiding, the food is distributed more or less evenly over the area.
