In the hot summer, bathing and showering is one of the effective ways for people to cool down. Every day after taking a shower, I feel that I have unloaded my tiredness.
In fact, in addition to people like to bathe, birds also like to bathe, and even some birds like "cleanliness", such as the protagonist we are going to introduce today - peacebirds.
PEACEBIRD Image source: GBIF
1. Cute birds love to be clean
The Peacebird, also known as the Finch, is a member of the genus Peacebird in the family Peacebird family. With a body length of about 18 cm, a wingspan of 34-35 cm, and a weight of 40-64 g, the life span can usually exceed 5 years, and the longest can even reach 13 years.
Peacebird wings are very good-looking Image source: GBIF
Peacebirds are small songbirds with slender, clustered crowns on the top of their heads; The whole body is mainly grape gray-brown, to the head is chestnut brown, a black eye stripe on both sides of the crown extends from the base of the mouth through the eyes to the back pillow, and the chin and throat are also black; The black wings are prominently covered with white wing spots, and the secondary feathers have red drip spots at the ends of the plumage.
In addition, the six pairs of tail feathers of the peacebird all have black secondary spots and yellow end spots, so the peacebird is also called "twelve yellows".
Foraging peacebird Image source: GBIF
Peacebirds love to be clean and bathe often so that they can keep their body feathers and toes clean. And peacebirds bathe more frequently than humans, washing once a day in summer, about every three days in spring and autumn, and not slacking off in winter, washing once a week.
Looking at the bathing frequency of peacebirds, have you sighed?
2. Snack goods that like overeating
Peacebirds generally choose tall coniferous, broad-leaved and poplar birch forests as their habitats. Except for pairs during the breeding season, most of the other times they are grouped together in large groups.
Peacebirds are omnivorous birds, but they mainly eat plants, often forming large groups in trees or bushes to look for the stone fruits of the Rhamnosaceae family, grapes, capsules of the spear, rose fruit, honeysuckle tree berries, orange tree fruits, and so on.
It's hard to imagine that peacebirds, who look so small, are actually greedy "foodies", and sometimes when they encounter their favorite food, they will overeat to the point of almost unable to fly.
Flocks of PEACEBIRDs Image source: GBIF
3. It is widely distributed but we do not see it very often
The peacebird is widely distributed, with distributions in Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States. As winter migratory birds, they are commonly found in eastern China, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Henan and other places.
Peacebirds are widely distributed Image source: GBIF
Although the range of peacebirds is very extensive, this does not mean that peacebirds are everywhere.
A few years ago, we may have seen handsome PEACEbirds in the hands of Uncle Bird Walker, but PEACEbirds are difficult to achieve artificial breeding, so the Peacebirds seen on the market are basically caught directly from the wild. This caused great trauma to the peacebirds, and the population declined rapidly.
Once upon a time, the Peacebird was one of Beijing's dominant bird species, but in previous years it was difficult to see them. Fortunately, with the improvement of the ecological environment in recent years, PEACEBIRD has been recorded to appear again in Beijing's urban parks and in Yanqing, Changping, Huairou and other places.
At present, the Peacebird has been listed in the IUCN Bird Red List, a second-class protected animal in Beijing, and is a bird that needs our protection.
Peacebirds are of great significance to the ecological environment and can spread the seeds of trees, which is related to their "indigestion". Peacebirds like to eat berries, but the seeds of berries cannot be digested in their stomachs, but can only pass through the intestines, and after this process, the ability of berry seeds to germinate will be improved.
In this way, as long as the peacebird excretes the feces to a certain location, there can be saplings germinating, and the seeds will grow fast and well with the fertility of the bird droppings.
However, it should be noted here that the hungry Peacebirds sometimes look for food from their droppings, so it seems that this kind of bird that likes to bathe does not know whether it is a clean bird or not.
Do you think it loves cleanliness or doesn't love cleanliness?