Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

You only need to see a wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) once to experience its two characteristics: one is its petite size, and the other is to be highly nervous at all times. Its petite size is designed to allow it to explore very small gaps and hidden passages in the dense vegetation where other birds rarely go. The highly nervous nature of the wren is reflected in its incessant calls.

Every time you enter the wren's habitat and don't see them, you will hear the restless sound, similar to a series of "tap" sounds. They can sing more than 100 individual notes in seven seconds, like the fierce shouts of sports commentators describing the end of the 100-meter dash.

The wren is petite and restless. The combination of these two features can occasionally get them into big trouble. Especially on cold winter nights, when the temperature drops to near freezing point, or when it is windy and rainy, these birds are miserable. In this case, being small is very disadvantageous. For small birds, their surface area per unit volume is relatively large, which means that heat is lost faster than larger birds. Therefore, large-scale death of wren population often occurs in the cold winter in the north.

However, one way to alleviate this heat loss is to spend the night with your partner. Several birds huddle together to form a small colony, which has a smaller ratio of surface area to volume and is more conducive to keeping warm. Many species in the world do this.

However, there is a hidden danger that wrens are unstable in temperament. Usually solitary wrens tend to occupy their own territory and are unkind to their neighbors. Imagine that if you have a heated argument with a colleague one afternoon, you certainly don't want to snuggle up to the quarrel a few hours later. It is obvious that wrens do not ask for hugs unless they have to. They are good at squeezing into cracks in rocks and walls and dense vegetation. For countless nights, that's how they come through.

But if there is a severe cold, the birds have to put aside their dignity for a while and gather together in the cave. There have been dozens of records of wren gathering-61 wren have been found in a nest box, and 30 wren have been found living together on a thatched roof. The birds are curled up in the narrow space, their wings and tail feathers facing outward, stacked layer by layer to form a pile of birds. At this time, their hearts must be very desperate.

Antbird A group of terrible marching ants are advancing. You'd better take a deep breath before stepping into their march route. When the ants in front go in and out of the mottled forest, don't be paralyzed by their movements. Because in the 4-12-meter-wide marching ant team, each ant is very aggressive and has a strong bite force.

Every hair on your body is telling you: don't step on it. After checking the dust on your feet, make sure everything is well protected, then swallow and spit hard, sweeping away the workers around you, hoping to get rid of the hellish army of insects in front of you, and you are on your way again. Sometimes you have to be hard on yourself on the way to bird watching.

You need to face up to the mighty marching ants to see this special group of small birds in the forest-they have abandoned everything and willingly become the servants of the marching ants. These birds have been following army ants all their lives. A wave of other insects scattered from the place where the legions of ants passed, bringing a big dinner to the birds that followed the army ants. The panic-stricken swarm is easily caught by birds. Antbird really occupies a very comfortable niche.

Follow the antbird and you will see a very rare situation: the bird is full. After a few hours of feast, the birds became more and more fastidious and ate only the food they liked. But there is one thing they will not eat, and that is the marching ants.

These specialized antbirds begin their search at dawn. They would jump about one or two meters above the ground in the forest, singing songs from time to time. Antbirds search places where marching ants spend the night and assess the movement of ants. They also send messages to each other by singing until they find an ant colony that is hunting. After that, at least 20 antbirds will gather at the hunting site, and many birds will stay there almost all day.

Pheasants do exist. They live on islands in the Pacific Ocean.

But these Bigfoot are peaceful creatures that only dig with their feet and do not use them to engage in any violent activities. The true identity of these Bigfoot monsters is actually the pheasant pheasant (Megapodes), a very small family of birds. The name comes from the generic name Megapodius, which literally means "Bigfoot". There are more than 20 species in this family, all with huge feet, which is what distinguishes them from other birds: they dig caves and build mounds.

Pheasants do not hatch their eggs through physical contact, but use some external resources to provide heat for their eggs, which is unique among birds.

The pheasant builds a large mound in the soil to hatch its eggs. For this medium-sized bird, it is a great thing to build mounds by ploughing sand on its feet. The mounds are generally 7 meters long, 6 meters wide and more than 1 meter high. Of course, the key to the mound lies in its structure, not just piles of nest material. Most mounds contain a large amount of organic matter, which incubates eggs by the heat released by microorganisms when they degrade plants. The rest of the mound is usually sand, which is used to prevent heat from decomposition from escaping from the mound and to better hide bird eggs.

Their development begins with the egg. The eggs of the pheasant are 2-3 times larger than those of birds of similar size, and the content of yolk is much higher than that of similar birds. Their eggshells are thinner than other birds and have special adaptive pores that allow eggs buried in the soil to exchange gases. So the hatched chick looks like an enlarged version of the chicken. Chicks don't break their shells with broken egg teeth, but with their feet.

After birth, the chicks crawl in the sand and litter, sometimes resting with their feet on their back to keep their lower bodies dry. After climbing out of the mound, the chicks are already highly developed and can take off almost immediately, which is unique among birds. But in fact, newly crawled chicks are often exhausted and vulnerable. Although they are born with big feet, the chicks still stumble while walking, which can last for several hours.

It is hard to believe that during such a difficult hatching process, the chicks' parent birds are completely missing, and they do not know whether their offspring have survived or not. But the mound has largely replaced the parent bird. The mound frees the pheasant from the painstaking and risky work of hatching and rearing, but they can still enjoy the fruits of successful breeding.

Wen Yuan: "the spectacle of the World's wonderful Birds: the amazing Survival of 41 species of Birds"

Part of the network copyright of the image source belongs to the original author.

Introduction to ★ Books ★

The spectacle of the World's Wonder Birds: the Survival of 41 breathtaking Birds author: Dominic Cusen translator: Shen Hanzhong Li Siqi Tsinghua University Press follows ants to prey, use geothermal resources to incubate eggs, and keep warm with old enemies. Can you think of any weirder bird behavior? In the book "the spectacle of the World's wonderful Birds: how to survive 41 species of Birds", you will be in a magical world of birds, discover a variety of unexpected ways of life, and explore the "mindset" behind these unique behaviors with the author. A brief introduction to ★ Book authors ★

Dominic Coulson, a freelance writer and leader of bird-watching tours, has been looking for birds for more than 20 years, publishing more than 30 books such as "Bird Migration" and "complete Handbook for Bird watchers in the back Garden". His personal favorite place for world bird watching is the prickly forest of Madagascar, which has a completely different habitat and unique birds from other parts of the world. This article comes from Wechat official account: Origin Reading (ID:tupydread), author: Dominic Cusen, Editor: Zhang Runxin

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.