Nut bird. Migratory birds. Common types of nutcracker

Belongs to the corvid family. In the Alps, the nutcracker feeds on cedar seeds, and on the plains, on hazelnuts. Description of the bird with video and photo

Detachment - passeriformes

Family - corvidae

Genus/Species - Nucifraga caryocatactes

Basic data:

DIMENSIONS

Growth: 30-33 cm.

Wingspan: 54-56 cm.

The weight: 160-180

BREEDING

Nesting period: March-May.

Number of eggs: 3-4 light blue eggs with gray-brown spots.

Incubation: 16-20 days.

LIFESTYLE

Habits: flies slowly with irregular wing beats.

Food: conifer seeds, nuts; during the nesting period - insects, worms, eggs.

RELATED SPECIES

Close relatives of the nutcracker are the American nutcracker and the Siberian nutcracker.

In winter, a hungry season sets in in the northern mountain forests, so many birds living here are forced to seek refuge in more southern areas where there is enough food. Cedar pines are not afraid of winter, because they are in summer, like jays, they make stocks for the winter, which they feed on during several winter months.

WHAT DOES IT FEED

Nutcrackers feed on insects, small vertebrates, fruits, berries, and seeds. The seeds of conifers and the nuts they feed on are much higher in calories than insects. In insects, as in food of animal origin, there is a lot of protein, but in order to survive in frosty winter, birds need energy, which they get from carbohydrates. Nutcrackers that live in the south of the Scandinavian Peninsula feed mainly on hazelnuts. In other places, birds eat the seeds of coniferous trees - alpine nutcrackers, for example, love pine nuts. Harvesting delicious seeds from the cones and kernels is not difficult for the nutcracker. She takes out the seeds from the scales of the cones with a thin long beak, and smashes nuts on a tree or stone. In some birds, as a result of prolonged feeding on the seeds of certain plants, a special beak shape has developed. Nutcracker chicks need animal protein, so their parents feed them with insects.

LIVING PLACE

Kedrovka is a characteristic inhabitant of the taiga. It is found in the forests of the taiga type of Europe and Asia from Scandinavia and the Alps to Japan and China.

The bird prefers spruce forests, cedar and cedar-shale forests. Nutcrackers find their main food in coniferous forests - seeds that are extracted from pine, spruce and cedar cones. But most of all these birds love nuts.

In mountain forests, the living conditions of birds change depending on the season. From late spring to autumn, Nutcrackers find a lot of food here: nuts and berries ripen, insects breed. However, when the first snow falls, the berries and nuts are gone, and the insects have died out or hid in inaccessible places. From the beginning of winter until spring, it is impossible to find food in the coniferous forest, so most of the other bird species fly south. However, nutcrackers remain here. Birds have developed a survival strategy - they behave like squirrels: in summer, nutcrackers make supplies for the winter. Birds hide provisions in numerous underground "pantries".

BREEDING

Nutcrackers are monogamous birds that form pairs for life. During the mating season, they try not to catch anyone's eyes and always nest within their territory. During nesting, the nutcracker leads a secretive lifestyle. Her nest is a messy pile of twigs, grass, moss and lichen held together by clay. It is placed on a coniferous tree at a height of 4-6 meters. Since the nutcracker does not lack food in winter, it starts nesting quite early. Often a bird builds a nest when there is still snow around, and the air temperature is below zero.

Both partners incubate the clutch. It's pretty unusual phenomenon for birds of the corvid family, but quite reasonable, since the male nutcracker does not know where the female pantries are, and his reserves alone would hardly be enough for the two of them. Birds replace each other in the nest to give the partner the opportunity to eat. Nutcrackers also feed their chicks with seeds, which are first softened in the crop. When winter food supplies are exhausted, parents begin to bring insects to the chicks, often caught outside their own territory. After the chicks fly out, the parents feed them for three months.

DEVICE FEATURES

Throughout the summer, the nutcracker is busy collecting seeds of conifers and nuts, which she hides in caches known to her alone, which she later visits in the hungry winter. The bird fills the throat bag with seeds and nuts, in which they stick together with saliva and turn into a lump of a homogeneous mass.

Kedrovka collects seeds only on its territory, which has clearly defined boundaries. The bird buries food in the ground, carefully disguising the pantry, and flies off in search of seeds for the next hiding place. After some time, the nutcracker finds hidden reserves with incredible accuracy. As a result of the experiment, it was found that the nutcracker "remembers" about 86% of its stores.

GENERAL PROVISIONS

In Ukraine, it is called a nutcracker - because, due to the lack of cedar pines, nutcrackers feed here on hazel seeds.

Small, no more than a jay, a bird from the corvid family. It is found in mixed and coniferous forests of Eurasia, most of all in cedar. Pine nuts - the main food of the nutcracker whole year. In good years, the nutcracker extracts seeds from cones and hides them in the most secret places, and then lives for a long time due to supplies, since cedar pines do not bear fruit every year. It has now been established that birds are the main friend of cedar pines, since a significant part of the seeds hidden by the nutcracker in the ground germinate. In addition, birds carry seeds over a considerable distance. Other animals also use the supplies of nutcrackers - up to the bear. They feed their chicks on insects and crushed seeds.

• It is still unknown how the Nutcrackers find their hiding places. Some believe that they navigate by smell, but this method does not work during heavy snowfalls. Most likely, the birds remember the places where their "pantries" are located.
• When there is a poor harvest of pine nuts and conifer seeds in the Siberian taiga, Nutcrackers make mass migrations to the west in search of new food sources. In such lean years, Eastern and Central Europe are filled with flocks of these thin-billed Siberian birds.
• The parents incubate the chicks together as the birds nest early and require food.
• If the Nutcracker, who is digging in supplies, notices that she is being watched, then she will try to disguise the hiding place.

CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF KEDROVKA

Eggs: 3-4 light blue or pale green eggs covered with gray and brown spots.

Wings: rounded, dark brown or black. In flight, white spots are visible on the underside of the wings.

Beak: long and strong. With its help, the nutcracker takes out the seeds from the cones and breaks the nuts.

Throat: the throat bag of a nutcracker holds several dozen nuts.

- Area of ​​nutcracker

WHERE Dwells

Kedrovka lives in the coniferous forests of Central and South-Eastern Europe, in Siberia to Kamchatka and Sakhalin. An isolated population lives in the mountains of South Asia.

PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION

Coniferous forests grow faster than deciduous forests, but they are also threatened by fires, logging and pollution, the consequences of which affect the populations of these birds.

Kedrovka. Brateevograd. Video (00:01:26)

In Brateevo and Maryino it occurs only during migrations. We saw a small flock in winter on Saburovsky Spusk to the Moskva River. Looks like I'm late with my flight...

Nutcracker hides nuts. Nutcracker hides nuts. Video (00:02:34)

December 2010, This winter the nutcracker wintered in the Main Botanical Garden in Moscow. Surprisingly, she was not afraid of people and let them close to her quite bl...

Kedrovka. Video (00:00:45)

Outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, February 2014. Nutcracker rests on birch branches.

Nutcracker and pike! Video (00:01:23)

the nutcracker is a taiga bird, it wanted to eat and dragged off the pike I caught from under the ice.

The nutcracker hides, the jay seeks. Video (00:00:59)

In November 2010, I had to observe such a picture Kedrovka took a nut and went to hide it. Jay noticed this and flew after the nutcracker. While the nutcracker is hidden ...

Kedrovka / Birds. Video (00:00:23)

Krasnoyarsk/Pillars.

Nutcracker, disassembly with a squirrel because of a nut. Video (00:00:20)

The feathered inhabitants of Siberia, who are not afraid of even 50 degree frosts, are nutcrackers or nuts. These birds are representatives of the corvid family, to which another species belongs - the North American walnut.

In its beak, the nutcracker drags a cone, this is a cedar dwarf and the cones are small, they are still green, but they like it.

Geography of residence

Nutcrackers can be found in the taiga forests of Europe and Asia, they remarkably live in the Scandinavian countries, the Alps, the Kuril Islands, Japan and China.

For their habitat, birds choose coniferous forests, where spruces and cedars grow. In mountain forests, their living conditions depend on the season; with the onset of cold weather, most of the birds fly south.

Nutcrackers are tied to land, so they do not carry out long flights through water bodies. Often these birds get to the islands along with a typhoon or a storm, they do not return home, remaining to live in a new place.

Kedrovka, Eastern Sayan.
Kedrovka in rainy weather.

Nutcracker sits with a bump in its paws.
Nutcracker sits with a bump.
The nutcracker fluffed up.
Nutcracker on a branch.
Nutcracker on a branch.

Appearance

Nutcrackers are medium-sized birds, which is confirmed by their photo. The height of the bird is about 30 cm, and the weight does not exceed 200 grams, the tail of the birds is quite long - about 11 cm at the end is slightly rounded, and the wingspan is more than half a meter. The legs of the birds are bright black, the beak is also black, long and very strong.

The plumage of the bird has a dark brown color with a brown tint, on the body, except for the upper side of the head, there are white spots, and the tail ends in a light border.

Sexual dimorphism is almost non-existent, females are only slightly lighter than males, and white spots on the body are not so sharply defined.

Nutrition and behavior

The basis of the bird's diet is pine nuts, which is clear from the name of the bird, the second name - "nut" - the bird received in Ukraine, due to the fact that here it is forced to eat hazel seeds.

Also in the diet of these birds can be:

• acorns,
• beech nuts,
• Pine and spruce seeds
• Berries,
• Insects,
• Small invertebrates.

In places where cedars grow, birds go in search of food as soon as pine nuts ripen. Birds forage from early morning until late in the evening, she does this in order to stock up on food for the long cold winter.

During the short time of the Siberian summer, one nutcracker can collect up to 70 thousand pine nuts, bringing about 100 nuts at a time in a special sublingual bag. When collecting nuts, the bird takes care of their integrity (hollowing the shell with its beak, it does not damage the nut) and safety, for this it hides stocks in small portions of no more than 20 nuts under the moss, in the bark of trees, in rotten stumps and trees, thus, to the top in winter, the bird has about 6 thousand caches. The bird's phenomenal memory allows it to memorize all its hiding places and use them until the next summer. If you look at a photo of a nutcracker in winter, you can see how it is looking for its reserves under the snow, plunging its beak deep into the snow.

Since the bird does not have time to eat all the stocks during the winter, the distribution of cedars occurs in this way, which grow from its uneaten stocks.

Nutcracker on a branch.
Nutcracker dragged the nut off the photographer's feeder.
Nutcracker cleans feathers.
Kedrovka on a July afternoon.




Kedrovka in the Eastern Sayans.

Close-up photo of a nutcracker in the grass.

reproduction

Nutcrackers are monogamous birds, having created a pair, they remain faithful to each other until the death of a partner. For their nests, nutcrackers choose dense and impregnable forests, their nests, located on coniferous trees at a height of 5-6 meters, seem very chaotic and are built from twigs, grass, mosses and lichens held together by clay.

Usually, there are 3-6 light green or pale blue eggs in the clutch, which almost all the time only the female incubates, while the male takes care of the food of his family. Sometimes the male replaces the female on the clutch, because he does not know where she hid her "winter stocks". The chicks are born after 18-20 days and develop quite quickly, and after 25 days the chicks can fly, but for another three months their parents take care of their food. Newborn chicks are fed only with animal protein - larvae and insects.

More recently, in the Siberian Tomsk, which is surrounded by cedar forests, a monument to Kedrovka was erected.

The story of the nutcracker.

Khamidulina Almira Idrisovna
Position and place of work: teacher primary school, MBOU progymnasium "Kristina" Tomsk
Material Description: This story will be useful for elementary school students, as well as for adults. The story about the nutcracker can be used in preparing the teacher for extracurricular activities, for reading in the family circle, and simply for general development.
Target: acquaintance with the life of a nutcracker.
Tasks:
- expand knowledge about birds;
- develop speech, attention, thinking, imagination;
- develop interest in the environment.
Kedrovka- a well-known and widespread inhabitant of the taiga. It is a small bird, about the size of a small jackdaw. She has dark brown feathers with a brown tinge. The tail ends in a light border.
The nutcracker is distinguished by dense and soft plumage. The head is flat and large, the beak is strong and long, and thin feathers that look like hairs cover the nostrils. You should pay attention to the powerful neck, which the bird needs to get a nut.

The female is lighter than the male. The length of the nutcracker is 30 centimeters, the tail is 11 centimeters. Weight 130-195 grams. A taiga resident lives in trees for a long time and skillfully climbs trunks like a woodpecker. Her favorite pastime is to jump from branch to branch.
She takes out seeds from cones with a thin strong beak. Favorite food - cedar, pine and spruce seeds.
However, the nutcracker menu also includes fruits, berries, insects, and even small vertebrates. It is known that 10-12 nuts fit into the stomach of a bird at a time. By the presence of nutcrackers in the autumn taiga, one can judge whether there is a harvest of nuts. If it is quiet, then the cedar has not been born. If the cries of birds are heard, it has become a fruitful year.
Nutcrackers look like squirrels! Yes, they also make pantries for the winter! Nuts are "stored" by burying them in the ground within a circle of 3 km from the cedar-breadwinner, thereby becoming the most active distributors of the Pearl of Siberia. Thus, there is a remarkable and rapid resettlement of cedar, overgrowth of burnt areas and wastelands. All summer the nutcracker has been harvesting nuts, which she buries in pantries known only to her. It is here that she flies in the harsh winter months. It has been scientifically proven that the nutcracker easily finds up to 85% of its reserves. In a short Siberian summer, one bird collects about 70,000 pine nuts, which is about more than 85 kilograms of first-class nuts. So try to find them in the winter! Hungry and digging in the snow, the nutcracker finds them by smell.

It is known that she will calmly dig up snow to a depth of fifty or more centimeters.

Nutcrackers are very family birds, since created pairs exist for many years. If you see grass, branches, lichens and moss gathered in a heap in a forest on a tree, firmly fixed with clay. then you know, this is a nutcracker's nest. It is usually located at a height of 5 meters in impenetrable and dense forests. In spring, the female lays 4-5 small, pale green eggs with small speckles. Incubation lasts about 18 days. Partners replace each other, allowing them to fly off to refresh themselves. Already at the beginning of summer, the younger generation enters into life. The nutcracker has the ability to soften the seeds in the crop, so when the chicks hatch, she very usefully uses her skill to feed the offspring. In addition, she has a deep sublingual sac. It helps the bird to carry up to 167 nuts at a time.
The nutcracker brings great benefits, eating a lot of beetles, weevils - pests of coniferous trees. In the fall of 2013, in my hometown of Tomsk, surrounded by rich cedar forests, a monument to this bird was opened for the first time in the world.

Kedrovka is like a pelican,
It has its own pocket in the mouth.
Under her tongue, like in a cart,
Holds up to 100 nuts.

Having collected them a whole warehouse,
The nutcracker flies to hide the treasure.
Imagine ten thousand places!
Will the bird eat them all?

Of course not. Spring remnants
They will sprout like vegetables in the garden.
Taiga won't survive alone.
Nutcracker help is so important!

Where there was fire and destruction,
A rescue bird will arrive.
Where will the nuts go?
The cedar will grow there again. (S. Prilutsky).
Thank you for your attention!

Winter in Siberia is long and severe - it lasts half a year, and frosts fall below 50 degrees Celsius. To survive such a cold, you need to make huge stocks of food. This is exactly what nutcracker does.

Kedrovka- a small bird, painted in dark brown, brown color with white spots on the head, which are absent only on the top of the head. The end of the tail is decorated with a light-colored border.

They feed on insects, acorns, spruce and pine seeds, but most of all the bird loves pine nuts, hence it got its name. As soon as the pine nuts begin to ripen, the nutcrackers gather in flocks and go to the forest to collect food. She works from morning to evening, so that the reserves would be enough for the whole cold, snowy winter for the bird itself and its offspring.

During the short Siberian summer, one bird collects about 70 thousand pine nuts. She can carry more than 100 nuts at a time, for this she has a special sublingual pouch. But it's one thing to collect them, you still need to move them and bury them in a safe place. But if everything is hidden in one large hole or hollow, it will turn out to be too risky, since tasty and nutritious pine nuts in the winter time, which is scarce for provisions, will appeal to a hare, a field mouse, and a bear.

Therefore, the nutcracker hides stocks in small portions - 10-20 nuts each under moss, tree bark, in rotten stumps and logs. It is not difficult to calculate that there are about 5-7 thousand. But how does she find her many reserves? The researchers found that the nutcracker phenomenal memory and she remembers every one of her treasures.

In addition, the nutcracker is the only mass distributor of the nutcracker, since not all of its caches are eaten, and over time they germinate.