Migratory birds

Migratory and wintering birds are warm-blooded creatures whose body temperature averages about 41 ° C.

In the autumn season, you can observe how some birds are grouped in packs, leave their homes and fly to the regions with a warm climate. Representatives who migrate annually from the nesting places to wintering areas and always return are migratory birds. They make up the third part of all the feathered planet.

Migratory birds on the territory of Russia are represented by a large group of marsh and waterfowl species.

Detachments and types

This group of birds includes seven detachments, including more than one hundred species:

• Loons;
• Toadstools;
• Stem-like;
• Anseriformes;
• Shepherd's;
• Cranes;
• Waders.

Some migratory birds are listed in the Red Book and hunting for them in Russia is prohibited. This list is quite large: black-legged and white-bellied loons, separate species of herons, geese, and cranes.

What makes the birds migrate?

Each spring fills our forests, fields and ponds with a bird's hubble. These migratory birds of Russia return to the nesting places.

Their flight over the sea and land birds have been performing since ancient times, long before the appearance of people on Earth. Millions of years of the migration period contributed to the fact that the physiological and biological processes in many species proved to be balanced with the ecological conditions of different geographical regions.

Many questions are related to migratory birds. How do they navigate day and night, overcoming thousands of kilometers? How can one explain their attachment to specific places of nesting? Why do chicks cross huge distances, flying for wintering in tropical areas, and how can they return next spring to the places where they were born?

There is no answer to the question of how migratory birds determine the flight time.

Hops are a response to climate change and other environmental factors that make feathers much easier than other vertebrates to expand their habitat. Each spring for several weeks migratory birds accurately repeat the path that their ancestors overcame for many thousands of years during the gradual settlement and expansion of the range.

Birds are constantly engaged in the search for the most optimal habitats. They use physical mobility to better realize the biological aspiration of each species to produce offspring or survive. Birds, nesting in the Arctic, for example, can feed the chicks around the clock, thanks to the onset of the polar day at this time , which allows them to successfully grow their offspring.

Establish the fact that waterfowl are constantly returning to a particular nesting site, allowed massive ringing of birds, which is now systematically carried out on all continents. According to these data, the degree of constancy of breeding populations of ducks in a particular locality is judged, as well as the migration and migration of chicks.

However, under the influence of various factors that affect the state of the environment along the way of their displacement, their locations and numbers can vary significantly. For example, due to deterioration of the ecological situation in the lower reaches of the Ob River in Tyumen due to oil processing and destruction of bird habitats, their gradual shift to the south occurs.

The main routes of seasonal migration are Africa and Eurasia, Southeast Asia and Eurasia, Australia, and South and North America. Most birds fly by the shortest distance, but sometimes this way is tortuous. For example, cranes deviate from the shortest distance to stop to rest. Migratory birds can be in flight by day and by night. Quickly flying representatives (swallows and swifts) sometimes feed directly on the fly, and fly in the daytime.

Wren, cuckoo and other birds with a secretive way of life rest and eat during the day, and fly at night.

Waterfowl and water birds travel at any time of the day.

Small birds in one hour overcome not more than 50 km. The speed of the hawks reaches 50-60 km / h, and the ducks - almost 95 km / h.

Birds fly from 30 to 300 km per day.

In the afternoon they are guided by the elements of the landscape and the sun, or by the magnetic field under cloudy weather.

At night, birds can determine the direction of their flight through the stars.