New Weekly contest : Forest Birds

andyson (65)in Steem Geography • 3 years ago

The forests, with their abundance of food, are full of birds. Some feed on seeds and fruits, others - on insects, and some hunt other birds and small mammals, frivolously feeling on abundant food.

In winter, there are few insects in the forest, and many forest birds, such as warblers and flycatchers, fly to Africa or Central and South America. Insectivorous birds that live in the forest all year round, such as tits , wrens and pikas, look for insects in the folds of the bark or under leaves.

Woodpeckers hammer wood with a chisel-like beak in search of beetle larvae. True, when a woodpecker begins to drum on a tree, this does not mean that he is sure to look for larvae. Often this is how the woodpecker warns its relatives to stay away from its territory. By choosing a dry bough that makes a loud sound, a woodpecker can drum on it at a rate of 20 beats per second. The thickened skull protects his brain from concussions.

Many seed-eating birds are well adapted to certain foods. Nutcracker - a bird of the raven family - has a strong, sharp-edged beak . It is convenient for them both to gnaw on hazelnuts, their favorite food, and to get pine nuts from cones.
In the fall, nutcrackers bury their nuts in the ground to feed their chicks in the spring. One bird can bury 32 thousand nuts in its life, but only a small part of them is dug up. The rest of the nuts sprout, so nutcrackers play an important role in the settlement of cedar pine. In the same way, jays and squirrels, burying acorns, contribute to the resettlement of the oak.

Forest birds of prey must be fast and agile. Sparrowhawk and Goshawk show aerobatics, maneuvering between trees when they chase prey.

Owls are nocturnal predators - due to the special properties of their sight and hearing, they find prey in the dense twilight and attack suddenly, since their plumage makes the flight noiseless.