Vertichey: why so called a bird? Verticheyka - a bird of the family of woodpeckers

The only family of woodpeckers that does not know how to bark a tree bark and fly to the south in the winter is a top-head, or a twister. Why is this so called a small forest inhabitant inhabiting practically the whole of Europe and Asia, and what other peculiarities is the plain, but very interesting birdie, you will learn from the article.

What does the queen look like?

The crochet is covered with brownish-gray feathers with light and dark pies. The abdomen is light, ocher-gray, decorated with a transverse thin pattern, and the back is dark, with black longitudinal wavy divorces. By the way, the size and color of both male and female are the same.

This bird of the family of woodpeckers differs markedly from its relatives. It is small, slightly larger than a sparrow, and can not boast of the same bright coloration as most woodpeckers. If the twig detects the danger, then it, which is frozen and fallen to a branch of a tree, is very difficult to detect a predator.

The tail at the top of the head consists of soft feathers. It is straight, and at the end slightly rounded and can not be, like the rest of woodpeckers, a reliable support during climbing trees. A bird's beak is small, poorly adapted for gouging.

The twig is similar to the representatives of the family of woodpeckers

And although the bird of the twig looks more like a sparrow, it also has related signs with woodpeckers:

• A long thin tongue that has tiny teeth on its tip (covered with sticky slime) (it helps the bird to extract the main food);
• Fingers on legs, large and divided into two pairs, which look forward and backward;
• The singing of this bird is strongly reminiscent of the cry that is issued by the representative of the squad Dyatloboda its relatives - a small motley and green woodpecker;
• The flight at the moor is diving, consisting of quick sweeps with wings that alternate with the flight by inertia, when the wings are folded, like the other members of this family.

In addition, like woodpeckers, the twig lives in hollows and prefers deciduous forests coniferous.

Vertichey: why so called this bird?

It must be said that this bird is rather lazy, clumsy and moves only when there is an extreme need for it. She completely lacks the speed and indefatigability of her relatives, woodpeckers, and other flying birds, but at the same time she has a name more suitable for a brisk person - a weret, why is that so?

They called the bird equally in almost all languages for its amazing ability to turn its head. Anything that frightens or annoys a bird, makes her build amazing grimaces, and the more she is frightened, the more strange the posture takes. The crochet can stretch forward the neck, swishing feathers and fanning the tail or stretching forward with the entire body, bend over and, closing his eyes, emit a dull grunt.

If you look into the hollow where the female hatches the eggs, she will open her beak and start to hiss loudly, bending her neck like a snake. The dark feathers moving on their back support the illusion of an angry amphibian.

By the way, caught headshots are one of the most entertaining birds that can be kept in captivity.

How the vertiche settles down his housing

The bird about which the story goes is most likely settled on fringes of felling, fringes and small glades in mixed or deciduous forests, where a large number of limes, aspens and birches grows. Do not be afraid of the twirl and people, willingly sitting next to each other. It can live, for example, in a hole in the wall of a barn or an old country house.

Like all woodpeckers, this brisk bird loves hollows, as well as horizontal moves in twisted boughs or other voids. It is arranged also by birdhouses, and even minks of shturks and stamps, if there are trees or bushes next to each other.

In the hollow, it does not spread the litter, leaving only pieces of wood there.

Sometimes a bird of a twister can hollow out a hollow for herself (usually she does it in soft wood of aspen trees), but most often she likes the one she likes with the fight. A brave top-head can drive out the bilberry, and the nuthatch, and the flytrap from their hollow and throw out the nests, even with the ready-made clutch, to lay 6 to 10 matt-white rounded testicles that seem pinkish from the translucent protein.

By the way, on the remains of nests and eggshells, scattered on the ground, you can find a tree where the squirrel settled.

Growing offspring is hard work

Vertishey arrive late and immediately, finding and releasing a living space, they sing at her entrance, slightly in the nose, loudly and slowly: "Tee, ti, ti, ti ...", trying to win the heart of a beautiful lady. If for two days the male never hears an answer, then he goes to seek happiness in a new place, where everything starts from the beginning.

On the nest, the female sits more often than the male, about 11 days, and very tightly, leaving it very reluctantly (in case of detection by a person it allows even to pull itself together) and only for a large need.

Feeding of hatching offspring lasts up to 19 days. It must be said that these creatures, representing the family of woodpeckers, are not very careful. Parents carefully nourish their tiny offspring, but do not care about the cleanliness of the nest, resulting in a hollow at the end of the season turns into a garbage pit.

Adult chicks - a copy of their parents

At the age of ten, the nestlings, who are born naked and absolutely helpless, can already stand up for themselves. They remarkably show their acting talents, hissing and wriggling like a snake, at the moment of danger and justifying the name of the "werewolf" (why these so called birds are now probably understandable).

The fledgling offspring is selected from the hollow and for some time continues to take care of the parents who are still feeding them. But soon they will finally leave the habitat and until the end of summer they will go to more southern regions to fly to their native places and bring their offspring next year.

It must be said that the crooks are quite aggressive even to their species, so they stay alone and rarely gather in small flocks to migrate to warm countries.

The main places where winter squirrels winter are in Central Africa or South Asia.

What is feeding the headgear

This small forest bird feeds mainly on the ground, eating ants and their larvae with their long sticky tongue. Vertical mounds can often be seen near the anthill, which the bird specially digs to get the pupae.

Ant eggs - this is a special treat for vertices, by the way, they also feed their offspring. And they get food at such a speed that it is impossible to keep track of the instantly thrown out tongue, which immediately disappears in the beak along with the pupa.

The caterpillars, aphids and all sorts of small bugs feed much less frequently. Like relatives, she skillfully extracts insect larvae from under the bark of trees, if she has peeled off or rotted.

A little more about the vertices

In Russia, the squirrel occurs in large areas, but still, due to deforestation, changing of landscapes, and also due to unintelligible reasons, the number of birds in certain areas can radically change. This proves their great mobility in the choice of places for nesting, as well as their ability to be redistributed quickly across the territory, depending on the ecological situation there.