Structural features of forest birds. Chickadee and Black-headed Chickadee

Brown-headed Chickadee- a smart and agile tit that lives in the forests of Asia and Europe. She is a lover of coniferous forests, insect larvae, plant seeds and is not averse to eating leftovers from the human table.

Among the variety of birds, there are species that, at first glance, are unremarkable. And not very famous, perhaps because they do not hover before our eyes every day, like sparrows or tits, or cannot boast of the luxury of plumage, like parrots or peacocks. In general, they do not have any outstanding features to be popular with people. But the difficulty of their existence and the tenacity with which they overcome it evoke well-deserved respect. And small, but brave and strong lumps have every right to learn as much as possible about them.

Behind dark forests, high mountains...

Until recently, a small representative of birds called the “puffy bird” was classified as a titmouse family. But, having studied the habits, appearance and way of life better, ornithological scientists realized that this is an absolutely independent group of birds. Therefore, they were separated into a separate genus, which was given a funny and affectionate definition - chickadees.

Chickadees are divided into two subspecies: black-headed and brown-headed. These little ones do not particularly favor humans and prefer to spend their lives in remote, impenetrable forest thickets. They can visit human habitation only as a last resort, if hunger forces them to visit. They even visit feeders with food very reluctantly.

Chickadees have chosen the thicket of coniferous forests of Eurasia and America, the Canadian and Caucasian mountain and taiga regions, as well as the Carpathians, Sakhalin and the Japanese Islands as their homeland.

Appearance and description of the powder

The brown-headed chickadee family is distinguished by its miniature size, only 12 cm, maximum 14 cm . Plus a small tail of 5-6 cm. The weight of the small one does not exceed 10-15 grams.

The appearance of the bird is rather nondescript:

A head with a dark cap extending far to the back of the head. The difference between the two species is that in the black-headed chickadee this cap is coal-black, while in the brown-headed chickadee the blackness gives off a brown tint.
The bird's neck is white with a black “butterfly” on its chest.
The back and the area above the tail are gray, all with the same brownish tint.
The abdomen is dirty white.
The sides and undertail are a pale reddish hue.
The flight feathers and tail feathers are gray, with the same brownishness as the back.

That's why the bird was called Puffy that during bad weather or cold weather she fluffs up her feathers greatly. At these moments, her plumage can hardly be called unremarkable. Yes, she does not begin to sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow, but her tail and wings with splayed feathers at this time look like three small steel fans with clearly defined edges connected to each other. A very beautiful sight.

Musical talents

It is simply impossible not to mention separately the singing abilities of the chickadee. Given the isolated habitat of the bird, it is not often possible to witness its trills. Those who were lucky enough to do so will unanimously say - the baby’s singing is amazing! It's great! The bird's repertoire is not rich in variations; in fact, there are only three of them:

to designate territory;
to find a couple during the mating season;
for a male to express sympathy to his girlfriend during courtship.

But if only you knew how inspired, melodic and tender the chickadee sings her songs, how captivating her voice is and caresses the ear. The bird's musical abilities completely compensate for its ordinary appearance.

Diet and nutrition of the chickadee

IN winter period plant foods are the basis of the diet. Seeds of cones of fir trees, cedars, yew trees. The lack of animal food is compensated by hollowing out sleeping insects, larvae and caterpillars from under the tree bark. It is noteworthy that chickadees practically do not go to the ground for food, preferring to collect it directly from a bush, trunk or stem.

Characteristic features in life and behavior

Puffy birds are sedentary birds and rarely migrate. We can say that these are family birds. They look for their soul mate long before the breeding season, choosing a mate in the fall, arranging a family nest, and only after six months of happy life together they begin to prepare for breeding.

Independent birds rely only on their own strength and never occupy someone else's abandoned nests. They hollow out their homes themselves, in trunks with soft, rotten wood. Dilapidated, outdated birch, alder, and aspen trees are suitable for this - the most favorite options for housing.

The couple hollows out the hollow together, 20 centimeters deep, with a fairly wide entrance hole - up to 8 cm. The painstaking work takes on average up to 2 weeks. Chickadees furnish their homes with bark, twigs, feathers and animal hair. And they never use moss to line their nests.

Video "Singing of the Brown-headed Chickadee"

The lovingly furnished nest is ready and it will be warm and cozy for the winter. By the way, little birds are very smart. In order not to attract attention to their house, they take all the hollowed out wood chips away or hide them in pine needles.

Birds do not live in built nests all their lives.. Chickadees rarely return to last year's nesting site. Having overwintered and raised offspring, they begin the cycle in a new way in the fall: searching for and arranging housing, wintering, brood. And other birds happily settle in the abandoned houses: kinglets, titmice, flycatchers and other forest inhabitants.

Chickadees have a mania hide numerous caches of seeds. But their memory almost always fails them. Very rarely, they are subsequently able to find their treasures themselves, and from a lot of such repositories, new trees then sprout for new generations of chickadees.

Reproduction and survival

In one season, a married couple breeds offspring once. In very rare cases, when favorable conditions this can happen twice. The female lays eggs by the end of May. Sometimes the eggs lie right at the bottom of the hollow, because there is very soft, warm litter there.

At one time, a chickadee is capable of laying 6-12 tiny white eggs with light red speckles. She will now have to spend two weeks of landing in the nest. The partner is responsible for hunting and bringing food to mommy. Then, over the course of two days, the chicks appear alternately. And again, a caring female, like a hen, warms tiny newborns, without leaving the nest for a minute.

When the kids get a little stronger, mom helps dad carry food for them, because before that he had to make 200-300 flights a day to feed the whole family. After a month, the brood is ready to fly out of its parent’s house on its own, but the caring parent feeds them for some time.

Young chickadees that have grown up join several representatives of the older generation, and the newly formed flock joins other birds. Together they explore the northern regions to build nests and hatch their offspring.

Married couples are faithful to each other all their lives, giving birth to offspring more than once, giving each of them all their care, strength and attention. But, unfortunately, in difficult conditions wildlife Not all members of large families survive. Only the strongest are able to live their lives and die a natural death. Only 30% of chickadees survive the first year. This is approximately 300 heads out of a thousand.

Harsh nature only allows birds to enjoy life for 2-3 years. Very rarely this period can reach 9 years, no more. The bird can live as long as home environment, probably because she doesn’t have to constantly fight for her own existence.

31.12.2016

If I had to choose a bird - a symbol of Russia, then I would suggest not an eagle, not a crane, not a swallow or a lark, but brown-headed chickadee – chubby. Funny? And look at geographical map. More than two-thirds of Russia on it are forests, and mainly from coniferous trees(spruce, pine, larch) or with their participation. And winter in this territory - with snow and frost - lasts from four months to six months. No wonder Russian bird lovers complain that International days bird watching events that take place on the first Sunday in October, many where most of the birds have already flown away.

There are many different birds in Russian forests. But most of them are migratory. Warblers, blackbirds, flycatchers, pipits, warblers and others - they all spend the winter in warm regions: in the tropics of Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean. And if closer, then in countries Western Europe, in the Caucasus and Crimea. There are very few birds wintering in the forests of Russia. And the brown-headed tit is the most numerous of them. This has been confirmed by long-term censuses of wintering birds, conducted in Russia and adjacent regions for three decades. Over a vast area - in Yakutia, Altai, the Urals, Bashkiria, the Arkhangelsk region, Karelia, Tatarstan, the Moscow region, Bryansk forests - everywhere the puffball is one of the most widespread wintering birds. And in other seasons, in spring to early May, in the second half of summer and in autumn, puffballs in the forests are common and clearly visible. Only in May-June do they seem to disappear - during nesting they become very cautious and hardly noticeable. So, if you calculate on average for the year, the puffball will turn out to be one of the most numerous, and perhaps the most numerous, bird species in Russia.

In winter, plumes, unlike their closest relatives, great tits and blue tits, do not flock to bird feeders in settlements. Although they are happy to visit feeders on the edges of coniferous or mixed forests. They remain in the forests - they look for insects and spiders hidden for the winter, seeds, and use food reserves that they prepared in the summer and autumn. On frosty winter nights, puffballs hide in hollows or climb under the snow, into the voids under the roots, the lower branches of trees covered with snow, under the snow caps on the branches.

Puffy birds are regulars in winter tit flocks of coniferous and mixed forests. However, a flock of tits is not an entirely accurate name; In addition to tits (powder tits, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, grenadiers), it may also include other birds - yellow-crested kinglets, blue tits, pikas, nuthatches, and the lesser spotted woodpecker. Birds, fluttering in the treetops, constantly squeak, thus maintaining communication with each other. Something like: “Are you here? - I'm here! How are you? - Everything is fine!". If something dangerous is discovered - for example, the birds find an owl hiding among the branches - they begin to scream louder. Louder signals are also heard when one of the members of the flock intends to change the direction of movement, for example, turn or fly across a clearing.

Pairs of adult chicks that managed to successfully hatch chicks in the spring, all year round stick to a permanent area of forest. When they grow up (usually this happens in the second half of June - early July), parents drive away their offspring. Young people wander through the forests in flocks, and in winter they join a couple of adults - but not their parents. He spends the winter with them, but in the spring the adults drive them out of their area, and the young have to look for another territory for nesting. If one or both of the adults do not survive the winter, they are replaced by young birds. So a habitat can exist for many years - much longer life birds (and in the wild, the life of a chubby bird usually does not exceed 5 years).

I prefer to feed on invertebrates: various insects, spiders, but in the cold season they also willingly eat seeds. In winter, few seeds are available to birds in the taiga zone. These are the seeds of weed plants sticking out from under the snow, birch seeds if they are stored until winter, alder seeds from cones. But spruce seeds are especially good as food: compared to the seeds of most grasses and other trees, they are large and very nutritious. The disadvantage of such seeds as bird food is that the spruce bears fruit not every year, but once every 3-4 years, and, accordingly, this food is not available. In addition, most of the time the scales of the cones are pressed tightly together, and the seeds are inaccessible to small birds that cannot open them. The cones open only in clear, sunny weather, when they heat up and dry out. This usually happens at the end of winter, in March. Cones open less often on clear, warm autumn days. When, during a large harvest, the cones open and the seeds begin to spill out, the spruce forest turns into a giant feeder, and many birds - tits, finches, and chickens - actively feed on spruce seeds.

At such a time, puffballs not only eat plenty, but also store seeds - they hide them in different secluded places on trunks and branches. They can also store other food when there is a lot of it, including insects. Tits do not remember the places where food is hidden, searching for it later in the same way as insects hidden for the winter, searching for suitable shelters. This results in a common “food bank” - the reserves can be found by other birds of the same or similar species. This distinguishes tits from other food-storing birds, such as jays and nutcrackers, which hide acorns and pine nuts for the winter. Experiments that assessed the speed of these birds finding their own and other people's stores showed that nutcrackers and jays remember and find their own storehouses much faster than others. One bird makes several hundred storehouses for the winter and remembers where they are all located.

Puffy tits, like other tits, are able to forage for food in winter due to the specific features of their behavior. The main thing is their ability to find hidden food objects (hidden invertebrates, seeds in fruits) and extract them: peck at shelters, pick them out, pull them out. Among our avifauna, not all birds can do this. For example, a wagtail, warbler, flycatcher or swallow cannot retrieve hidden insects - they do not have the necessary behavior program for this, nor specially designed beaks and paws. Tits are ready to pick out anything. There is a widely known story about how in England, blue tits learned to open, first, milk bottles covered with foil caps left on the street at the doorstep of traders by traders, and later – bags of milk.

We had an interesting case at the Kostroma biological station, illustrating the ability of puffballs to search for hidden food objects. Once, while marking a route through the forest for bird counts, we hung paper “flags” on the branches - we folded small sheets of paper in half, put them on the branches and secured them on the sides paper clips. A few days later they discovered that the puffballs had “gnawed” the top of the sheets of paper. Apparently, they decided to check if someone was hiding in the empty space between the paper and the branch. How carefully they examine, scan all possible nooks and crannies in the snowy winter forest! In addition to the ability to find and peck insect shelters and fruits with seeds, tits in their winter life are helped by another ability - to “hang” on branches from the side and below, including upside down, clinging on bent legs and grasping tightly with their claws. The movement they perform is reminiscent of an athlete doing pull-ups on a bar. This exercise is quite difficult for a person. Tits, due to the structural features of their lower limbs, perform similar movements without special effort hundreds of times a day. This allows them to inspect branches from all sides and find insect shelters, including from below, under branches and needles.

In total, according to winter censuses, there are about 20-25 million brown-headed chickadees in the forests of European Russia in winter. In total there are probably 5-7 times more of them in Russia. Is it a lot or a little? It’s an amazing coincidence - it turns out that the number of chubby people in Russia is approximately the same as there are people... And in European Russia there are about 4 times fewer chubby people compared to people. It would seem that there should be more birds, especially the most abundant ones, than people. But that's not true. In addition, the number of pufferfish wintering in European Russia has decreased by more than a quarter over the past three decades. So, in the 1980-1990s there were, according to estimates, 26-28 million, in the first decade of the 2000s - 21-26, in the second - 19-20 million. The reasons for this decline are not entirely clear; The main ones among them, most likely, are massive deforestation of taiga forests and climate change. Puffballs tolerate wet winters with thaws worse than heavy snow and frosts.

Bird lovers in Russia pay a lot of attention to rare species. This is, of course, correct. But the example of the brown-headed chickadee shows that it is time to think about widespread bird species - after all, in fact, they are not that widespread... Especially if you take into account the “economics of nature”. One chickadee weighs on average about 12 grams; one person – let’s say – about 60 kg. That is, in terms of biomass, a puffball is 5 thousand times less than a person. If the number of chubby creatures and people on the territory of Russia is approximately the same, then how many times more do people consume resources? It is clear that thousands of times. With such a load on the habitat, survival of even the most widespread species, if they need not anthropogenic, but natural environment habitat becomes difficult.

Usually when we're talking about about the “bird of the year”, then the question arises - what can we do for this species? The main thing that can help chickadees is the protection of their habitat - mature coniferous and mixed taiga forests - from destruction, logging and fires. Well, a feeder in the winter in the forest or not far from it, of course, will also come in handy.

E.S. Preobrazhenskaya

Tufted tit(P. cristatus) is clearly distinguishable from all other tits by the tuft on its head, noticeable even from a distance. For this crest she is often called grenadier. The color of the dorsal side of the body, except for the head, is brownish-gray with an inconspicuous olive tint. The elongated feathers on the head, forming a crest, are black with white spots. There are black spots on the throat and sides of the neck. The cheeks and the space between the eye and the base of the beak are off-white. The entire ventral side is yellowish-white. The wings and tail are dark brown. Body length 120-135 mm, tail 50-58 mm, wing 55-65 mm, weight 10-12 g.

The grenadier lives in the coniferous forests of Europe. This is a sedentary bird, undertaking migrations over relatively short distances in autumn and winter and appearing at this time in mixed forests. During the nesting period it is found in old and middle-aged spruce and pine forests, where there are hollow trees. In March there is a breakdown into pairs. At this time, the males sing, sitting somewhere on the top of a spruce or pine tree. The grenadier's song is a short, hoarse trill "tsi-trr, tsi-trry."

Nests are made low above the ground in old hollows of small spotted woodpeckers, in last year's hollows of brown-headed chickadees, in natural cavities of tree trunks, if the entrance hole of the hollow does not exceed 30 mm in diameter. Less often, birds use old squirrel nests or nests of predators, settling in their lower part, among dry twigs and branches. The base of the nest is built from moss mixed with lichen, inner part and the tray are lined with wool, which is trampled down by the birds and turns into a felt-like mass.

There are 2 clutches in the season: the first (consisting of 5-9 eggs) in the second half of April, the second (of 4-6) in June. The eggs are white with reddish-brown spots that form a corolla around the blunt end of the egg. Only the female incubates for 13-15 days. At this time, the male is busy looking for food for himself and for her. Feeding the chicks in the nest and their further life proceeds in the same way as with other tits.

In search of food, grenadiers inspect the forks of branches, cracks in the bark, tufts of needles, often hanging from a branch with their backs or upside down, and less often they flutter at the ends of the branches, looking for prey. Having noticed something, they stop in the air, quickly fluttering their wings and trying to peck their prey in flight. In summer and spring, the birds stay in the crowns of large trees, but with the onset of cold weather they visit the undergrowth in search of insects, often walking on the ground. The grenadier can often be seen in the snow, where it collects fallen seeds and invertebrates blown from tree branches.

Tufted tits feed in summer period exclusively lepidoptera (mainly caterpillars), beetles (among which weevils and leaf beetles predominate), homoptera (mainly aphids and scale insects) and spiders; Less commonly found in food are flies, hymenoptera and other insects. In autumn and winter, along with invertebrates, seeds of spruce, pine and some other coniferous trees are consumed in large quantities.

Like the Muscovy, the tufted tit stores food (insects and spiders, as well as seeds) for future use in summer and early autumn, hiding it in cracks and crevices of twigs and between needles, and in winter it finds and eats it.

By destroying beetles, bedbugs, caterpillars and some other herbivorous insects - potential pests of conifers, tufted tits to a certain extent protect forest plantations, reducing the damage caused by pests to forestry. It is important that the tufted tit and other tits continue to exterminate with particular intensity harmful insects and in winter, reducing their numbers many times by spring.

Brown-headed Chickadee(P. atricapillus) is a small, gray, inconspicuous bird. The head is black with a brown tint on top; the dark cap extends far back, including the occipital region. The back, shoulders, loin and rump are gray with a brownish tint. The sides of the head and neck are white, there is a black spot on the throat. The ventral side is off-white, with a pale rufous tint on the sides and undertail. The flight feathers and tail feathers are grayish-brown. Body length 120-140 mm, tail 58-65 mm, wing 57-69 mm, bird weight 10-12 g. The brown-headed chickadee (or, as it is often called, the chickadee) is widespread in the lowland and mountain forests of the northern hemisphere: in North America, Europe (except for its southern regions), in the northern parts of Asia, the Caucasus, Sakhalin and the Japanese Islands. A sedentary, partially nomadic bird, flying during migrations outside the breeding range both in the north and in the south. Many scientists believe that the chickadee, which lives in Eurasia, is independent species (R.montanus).

Chickadees stay in pairs all the time, apparently forming in the fall. In March, birds begin searching for nesting sites. They nest in coniferous or mixed forests, choosing areas of spruce or pine plantations. Unlike other species of tits, the brown-headed tit can itself hollow out a hollow in trees with soft wood that easily rots in natural conditions (aspen, alder, birch). Both the male and the female take part in hollowing out the hollow, taking turns. In order not to unmask the future nest, the chickadees carry away in their beaks the wood chips formed during the chiselling process 7-10 m from the hollow under construction. The hollows of chickadees are usually located at a height of 0.5-3 m from the ground, in a stump or in the trunk of a withered tree with a diameter of 7-13 cm. A hollow hollowed out by a chickadee differs from a woodpecker hollow in the irregular shape of the entrance hole and small internal dimensions: the diameter of the widest (lower) part of the hollow is 5.5-9 cm, the height is about 18 cm, the diameter of the entrance is 2.5-3 cm. The couple spends from 4-5 to 10-12 days to build the hollow. Immediately after the construction of the hollow is completed, the birds begin to drag it into it construction material. The construction of the nest is very intensive: in an hour there are 12-14 flights to the hollow with building material. However, every 1-2 hours the birds usually stop building for several hours. In the time free from nest building and when the female is laying eggs, the pair spends most of its time storing food. On average, it takes about 3 days to build the nest itself.

The material from which the nest is made varies greatly. More often, the nest is made of thin soaked bast fibers, small wood chips, thin dry roots and stems, dried moss plants, and the hair of various animals (only thin, short and soft hairs). Less commonly, the nest is made of scales from pine trunks and birch bark films, with a small admixture of dried plants and wood chips. Sometimes eggs are laid directly at the bottom of the hollow, on which in this case there is always a lot of wood dust and wood chips. Having finished the inner lining of the hollow, the female waits 1-5 days and then lays 6-11 (usually 7-9) white eggs with reddish-brown spots. Only the female incubates the eggs for 13-15 days. All this time the male feeds the female. Like most other tits, the chicks do not hatch simultaneously, but usually over the course of 2 days.

On the first day after hatching, the female almost never flies out of the hollow: she warms the chicks and the remaining eggs; The male carries the food. On the second day, the female is already more involved in feeding the chicks, and on the third day she begins to regularly feed the chicks along with the male. Subsequently, the female warms the chicks during the day only when it is cold. The female spends the night in the nest with the chicks. The chicks usually stay in the nest for 19 days.

The male and the female bring food to the nest up to 250-300 times a day. After the chicks fly out of the nest (in the middle part of the range this happens at the end of May), adults feed them for 7-10 days. Then the birds stay in a family flock, usually consisting of 2 old and 7-9 young birds. In July, such family flocks unite with flocks of other species of tits, kinglets and some other birds into large flocks wandering through the forest. In autumn and winter, chickadees can be found in all types of forests; with the onset of cold weather, they also appear in city parks, gardens, and in bushes along the banks of reservoirs. However, they still gravitate towards coniferous trees. Unlike all other species of tits, chickadees quite often gouge bark and thin branches, extracting, like woodpeckers, secretly living insects.

The food of the brown-headed chickadee is very varied. These are mainly small homoptera, which are consumed in huge quantities, as well as lepidoptera, represented exclusively by caterpillars, and coleoptera (weevils and leaf beetles predominate among them). Of no small importance in nutrition are spiders, hymenoptera, and in winter and spring plant seeds (mainly pine and spruce). In small quantities, the chickadee eats bugs, dipterans and some other insects. Like some other species of tits, chickadees store food (insects, spiders, etc.) in the summer and early autumn. In winter, these storehouses are found and the supplies are eaten.

Consuming huge quantities of various small insects that feed on pine and spruce, the brown-headed chickadee plays an important role in regulating their numbers. The importance of this bird for the life of the forest will become even more obvious if we consider that chickadees, by chiselling, obtain insects that live under the bark of thin branches and are therefore inaccessible to woodpeckers, who cannot stay on such thin branches, and even more so to other bird species incapable of chiselling. Finally, brown-headed chickadees, by hollowing out hollows, create, along with woodpeckers, a “housing fund” for other small cavity-nesting birds (tits, flycatchers, etc.).

Black-headed Chickadee, or chickadee(Parus palustris) One of the interesting features of the life of chickadees is the great stability of pairs. Partners do not separate either in autumn or winter, even when they form flocks or join flocks of other tits. The chickadee leads a sedentary lifestyle and stays close to nests in winter. In the spring, usually in April, pairs occupy nesting sites and females begin choosing a hollow. The height does not matter: the female can settle close to the ground or ten meters above it. Having built a nest of moss, lichen, grass stems and wool, she lays 7-10 white eggs, sparsely covered with red dots. The female incubates them for 14 days. After 17-19 days, the chicks fly out of the hollow, after which the male also takes part in their upbringing. Parents continue to feed the young. Unlike other tits, the vast majority of chickadees breed only once a season. Chickadees feed on insects, their larvae with a hard chitinous shell, as well as aphids, spiders, and flies. In autumn and winter they eat seeds. Chickadees usually live in deciduous and mixed forests, parks and gardens, in most cases located at a distance from the city center.

The male and female are the same, their coloring is not very variegated. Along the back they are gray-brown, the bottom is off-white. A shiny black cap, a black drop on the chin and the white sides of the head catch the eye. The easiest way to distinguish a chickadee from the very similar brown-headed chickadee is by looking at the underside of the tail: the outer tail feathers of the chickadee are a maximum of 4 mm shorter than the longest feathers, and the tail itself is less stepped than that of the brown-headed chickadee, in which the outer tail feathers are more than 5 mm shorter than the average ones. mm.

Juveniles are very similar to adults, but their head coloration is matte. The difference in pennies between the males of these species is also quite noticeable. The chickadee's song is melodic, as if bubbling, and the brown-headed chickadee's song consists of 5-6 flute sounds of the same height, similar to “tsie-tsie-tsie-tsie-tsie-tsie”.

The torn habitat of the chickadee is interesting: it lives in Europe and Asia Minor, and then is found thousands of kilometers away in the extreme eastern regions of Asia.

Ordinary remez(Remiz pendulinus) is noticeably different from other representatives of the tit family. Its dorsal side is rusty-red, with a white head and neck, but a number of subspecies living in the south of its range have different shades of brown. The forehead and wide stripes running from the beak through the eye to the ear are black. The shoulder feathers and rump are buffy in color. The flight feathers and tail feathers are dark brown with whitish edges. The throat and crop are off-white, the rest of the ventral side of the body is buffy, with rusty streaks on the chest and sides. The beak is straight, thin and very sharp. They are small birds with a relatively long, notched tail and rounded wings. Body length 105-115 mm, wings 53-58 mm, weight 9-11 g.

10 subspecies of this species are distributed in Central and Southern Europe, the Caucasus, Asia Minor and Central Asia, as well as in Southern Siberia (reaching Primorye), on the Korean Peninsula, in southern Japan and in the southern provinces of China. In the northern parts of the range, the remez is a migratory bird (arriving in March - April, and departing in September - October), in the south of the range it is sedentary. The common remez overwinters in Central Asia, Transcaucasia, south from Asia Minor to the southern provinces of China, as well as on the Balkan Peninsula and southern Italy.

It nests in thickets along the banks of rivers, lakes, ponds and other bodies of water, in floodplain and coastal forests, in thickets of reeds and reeds in swamps. It is much less common in dry areas of the forest near large ravines or small streams or puddles that dry up in the summer. Pairs form in the second half of April - early May and soon begin building a nest. Plant fibers and plant fluff (sedge and willow fluff, willow and poplar seed fluff), flax, hemp and nettle fibers, and less often wool or bird fluff are used as building materials. The outside of the nest is studded with elm seed flakes, birch bark or bud scales, and flower catkins of willow and poplar. The walls of the nest, 20-25 mm thick, are so strong that the nest hangs on the tree without collapsing for several years. The nest is usually located at the end of a willow or poplar branch drooping above the water, at a height of 1 to 3-5 m. If the nest is not above the water, it is located at a height of 10 m or more from the ground.

The pair spends at least 2 weeks building a nest. Having chosen a suitable branch, the birds twist the arch in its fork; then wide plates, expanding downward and connecting to each other at the lower corners, are lined up along the two branches. In place of the oval hole formed below, a deep bottom is twisted. One of the side spaces between the plates is tightly sealed, in its place a blunt cone-shaped protrusion is formed, noticeably protruding when viewing the nest from the side, a pipe-shaped entrance to the nest is attached to the other. In cases where the nest is not built in a fork, but right at the end of a branch, only one plate is built along this branch, while the other, opposite, is built without any additional support. When finished, the nest resembles a bag hanging at the end of a branch with an entrance that looks like a more or less long tube. Typically the structure is 70-100 mm in diameter, its height is 130-170 mm, the length of the tube is 40-50 mm, and the diameter of the flight hole is 23-28 mm. Among the remez of Central Asia, the nest is suspended between two reeds.

Egg laying sometimes begins even before the nest is built, but more often 2-3 days after its completion. The clutch usually consists of 6-8 pure white eggs. The female incubates for 13-14 days. The hatched chicks remain in the nest for 16-18 days, during which they are fed by both parents. After the chicks fly out of the nest, adult birds feed them for several days, and then the family flock wanders in the thickets along the banks of reservoirs until departure. In August, birds nesting in the northern and central parts of their range begin to fly to their wintering grounds. The food of the remez consists mainly of small insects (beetles, caterpillars, butterflies, bedbugs, etc.) and spiders; seeds are consumed in small quantities.

hanging tit(Anthoscopus minutus) is one of the smallest representatives of the family: the length of the bird's wing is 44-55 mm (in size this titmouse is close to the yellow-headed kinglet). The color of the hanging tit is rather inconspicuous: a faded yellowish-gray color, with a brown tail and brown flight feathers.

This species is widespread in South and South-West Africa. Hanging tits are quiet (their chirping can only be heard at close range), but very mobile and active birds, reminiscent in their habits of our European tits of the genus Parus. With great agility they search thin branches of trees in forests, very often at the same time they inspect flowers and buds, where they catch small insects that form the basis of their diet. These birds breed, depending on the latitude and climatic conditions of the area, from 1 to 3-4 times a year. Thus, in the Transvaal the nesting season usually occurs in January, and in South-West Africa it lasts from November to March.

This bird's nest is remarkable in many ways. It is placed at the ends of branches, in the forks of small branches, or suspended at the end of a branch of shrubs or trees, usually not high above the ground. This is a dense structure made of soaked bast fibers, wool and plant fluff, felted into a felt-like mass, pear-shaped, with a side entrance in the form of a small tube made in the upper third of the nest. At the bottom of the nest and at its base there is a special protrusion - a “porch”, on which the bird sits down before climbing inside the nest. The entrance to the nest itself is very narrow: the bird has difficulty squeezing into it. The edges of the entrance close when the bird leaves the nest; not always, but often the bird closes the entrance to it even when it sits down to incubate eggs. In order to get into the nest, the bird hangs on the tube with the entrance hole and, helping with its beak and paws and deftly using the gravity of its body, opens the entrance. In the same nest, a pair often breeds 2 broods in a row. There are from 4 to 12, usually 6-8 white eggs in a clutch.

The brown-headed tit is a bird from the tit family. In Russia it is also known as "puffy" because of the way it fluffs up its feathers in extremely cold weather. Inhabits coniferous forest zones in Asia and Europe. Unlike other types of tits, it prefers to settle in remote places, but often shows curiosity towards humans.

Brown-headed tit: description of appearance

The bird has a small dense body, up to 14 cm in length and weighing 9-14 g, a short neck and grayish-brown plumage. The top of the rather large head and the back of the head are matte black. Most of the back, middle and lesser wings, shoulders, rump and loin are brownish-gray in color. Cheeks are white-gray. There is an ocher tint on the sides of the neck. On the front of the throat there is a so-called bib - a large black spot. The bird's beak is off-white with a slight buffy tint on the sides, legs and paws are dark gray.

Brown-headed Chickadee in field conditions can easily be confused with a blackhead. The difference between them is that the plume has a matte rather than shiny black cap and a grayish longitudinal stripe on the secondary wings. The brightest distinctive feature These birds can be called by their singing.

Habitats

The brown-headed tit is found in forested areas of Eurasia, from eastern Great Britain and central France to the coast Pacific Ocean And Japanese islands. In the north it lives in areas of woody vegetation, as well as Scandinavian and Finnish forest-tundra. In the south it is found in the steppes.

The brown-headed chickadee tends to live in lowland coniferous, mountain and mixed forests, in which pine, larch, spruce grow, as well as floodplains and wetlands. In Siberia, it settles in the dark coniferous taiga with willow trees and alder thickets.

In Europe, it mainly lives among the shrubby vegetation of floodplain forests, on the edges and groves. In mountainous areas it is found at altitudes from 2000 m to 2745 m, for example, in the Tien Shan. Outside the breeding season the bird tends to fly much higher. For example, in Tibet, a puffball was spotted at an altitude of 3960 m above sea level.

Lifestyle

Birds of this species nest in April and May. They live mainly in hollows, which are located in stumps and dead trees at a short distance from the ground. The brown-headed tit, like woodpeckers, prefers to hollow out its home in rotten old wood. The depth of the hollows is about 20 cm, and the diameter is 6-8 cm.

Powderwings are engaged in arranging the nest in pairs, which they find for themselves in the fall. In the first year of life, males look for females in the nearest territory (no more than five kilometers). If they fail to do this, they fly away to distant areas of the forest.

On average, it takes one to two weeks for puffy birds to set up a nest. To do this, birds use branches, tree bark, birch bark, wool and feathers. The nests of chickadees differ from the homes of other species of chickadees in that they do not bring moss into their home. The tit - the brown-headed tit - likes to make caches with plant seeds, but most often forgets about the location of the treasure.

Food

Powderfish feed on a variety of small invertebrates and larvae. Thus, chickadees bring great benefits to the forest ecosystem by regulating the number of insects. In addition, they feed on fruits and seeds of plants.

In summer, the diet of an adult chickadee is divided equally between food of animal and plant origin. In winter they feed mainly on the seeds of juniper, pine and spruce. The chicks are fed spiders and butterfly caterpillars with the addition of plant food. Adult puffballs eat earthworms, bees, weevils, flies, mosquitoes, ants, ticks and even snails.

Plant foods in their diet include grains such as wheat, corn, oats and barley. Among the berries, chickadees prefer cranberries, rowan berries, lingonberries, blueberries and cotoneaster. Bird feeders visits very rarely.

Reproduction

This season coincides with the time of nesting. Pufflings find a mate in the first year of life and remain together until one of them dies. The lifespan of brown-headed chickadees is no more than nine years.

Courtship of males is accompanied by songs and shaking of wings. Before mating, they demonstratively offer food to the females. Before laying begins, the birds resume building the nest. Thus, by the beginning of hatching, the chickadee eggs are covered with a layer of litter. The clutch usually consists of 5-9 white eggs with reddish-brown speckles. Hatching continues for half a month. At this time, the male obtains food for the mother and guards the nest. Sometimes the female flies out of her home for a short time and feeds on her own.

The chicks hatch asynchronously over two to three days. At first they are covered with sparse brownish-gray down, the beak cavity has a brownish-yellow tint. The female and male feed the young together. On average, they bring prey 250-300 times a day. At night and on cool days, the brown-headed chickadee inseparably sits in a hollow, warming its offspring. The chicks begin to fly a little 17-20 days after birth, but they still remain dependent on their parents, since they are not able to obtain food on their own. In mid-July, bird families gather in nomadic flocks, in which, in addition to tits, you can find pikas, wrens and nuthatches.

Singing

The vocal repertoire of the brown-headed chickadee is not as diverse as, for example, the black-headed chickadee. Two types of song are classified: demonstrative (used to attract a mate) and territorial (marks the nesting area). The first type consists of a series of measured, soft-sounding whistles “tii...tii...” or “tii...tii...”. The brown-headed chickadee (see photo below) performs this song at the same pitch or raises the tone from time to time. Powderwings sing all year round, but most often this occurs in the spring and second half of summer.

The territorial whistle is much quieter than the demonstrative whistle and resembles a gurgling trill with an intermittent squeak. It is performed more often by males than females. Also, many ornithologists highlight the “murmuring” song. A frequently encountered call includes the high-pitched “qi-qi” sounds typical of the tit family, behind which one can almost always hear a rattling and rougher “jee...jee...”.

Brown-headed Chickadee BIRD OF THE YEAR 2017

Neverova N.F. - biology teacher of MBOU secondary school No. 17

city of Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region.

Dear friends!

Happy New Year!

May all your most cherished wishes come true this year, may the year be peaceful, successful and prosperous!

And if any trouble happens, let us wish each other not to lose heart, just as a chubby man never loses heart in the most severe winter frosts.

Happy New Year 2017, the year of the plump and the rooster!

Russian Bird Conservation Union

Brown-headed Chickadee – Bird of the Year 2017

2016 is over, and the title of bird of the year is moving from the bright and flashy hoopoe to the humble brown-headed chickadee, or puffy chickadee.

What did this little bird do to deserve such an honor?

Despite its fragile build, it can be a symbol of successfully confronting difficulties: this small bird winters not only in middle lane European Russia, but also in Yakutia, at the “Pole of Cold”, where frosts down to minus 50 degrees are not uncommon. In harsh winters, the brown-headed chickadee is saved by food reserves created in warm weather. Ornithologists have calculated that from spring to autumn, one chickadee stores up to 15 kg of winter reserves (mainly spruce seeds) in secluded places - about half a million food items. To successfully overwinter, 300,000 such objects are enough, but instinct tells you to play it safe - some of the reserves will not be found in winter.

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 survive to 5 years, and only three to 6-7 years. The maximum known lifespan of a puffball is 9 years.

The breeding season begins in April - May, with flight chicks appearing in July. 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. Like the tufted tit, the brown-headed tit prefers to hollow out (or rather pluck out) the nest on its own, but if that fails, it can use ready-made natural voids or old nests of tufted tits, lesser spotted woodpeckers, or its own, having previously deepened and cleaned the hollow.

REPRODUCTION

The main building material is 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.

NUTRITION

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 of coniferous trees - pine, spruce and juniper.

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 as the Year of Specially Protected Natural Areas and the Year of Ecology, caring for the brown-headed tit will help us all not only to form the ecological culture of the population, but to preserve the world for people and birds.

LET'S FIND THE BEAK OF THE BROWN-HEADED CHICKEN

nuthatch

WE WILL ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS

What does the brown-headed chickadee eat?
Why it deserves the title "Bird of the Year"
Did you like the brown-headed chickadee? What exactly?

Tit family (Paridae)

Other species in this family:

Black-headed Chickadee

Tufted tit

Moskovka

Blue tit

Great tit

Black-headed Chickadee

The chickadee is very similar to the black-headed chickadee, differs from it in its voice and some coloring features: the “cap” on the back of the head extends further to the neck and is matte, not shiny; black spot under the beak it is wider and resembles a “bib”; there is a light area on the wing formed by the light edges of the secondary flight feathers. There is no sexual dimorphism.

The chubby bird's song is a repeating sequence of gentle and sad sounds; more typical is a ringing, slightly nasal call (usually expressed in the syllables: “tsitsi-dzhee-dzhee”), which the bird uses very often.