Recently, in Baoshan, Yunnan, the staff of the local nature reserve accidentally found a rare animal - a spotted fish dog, while sorting out the wildlife photos taken by the field camera.
Seeing this, I believe many friends will be curious, is this a fish or a dog? After all, the name sounds a little too strange, but in fact, it is neither a fish nor a dog, but a bird, it belongs to the kingfisher family, it is a small bird with black and white stripes on its body, which looks like blue and white porcelain.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > a rare spotted fish dog appeared in Baoshan, Yunnan</h1>
Spotted fish dogs are birds that like to feed on the surface of the water, their favorite is a variety of small fish, and occasionally eat some aquatic insects, or small frogs.
They are all swarms of activities, the most common places, that is, the wide water edges, as well as in the mangroves, in general, the spotted fish dog infested places, will be very noisy, because they are a lively bird themselves, the call is also very sharp.
In terms of distribution, spotted fish dogs can be seen in Eurasia and northern Africa, but because they are extremely alert and widely distributed, this also makes them rare in many places.
This time, Baoshan, Yunnan is also the first time to find a wild survival record of spotted fish dogs, you know, because spotted fish dogs are social birds, which also means that there is not only 1 spotted fish dog in the local area.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" > why call them spotted fish dogs? </h1>
Another curious question is: Why are they called spotted fish dogs? Obviously they are a very beautiful bird, looking neither like a fish nor like a dog.
According to the data, the earliest record of spotted fish dogs, in the Song Dynasty's "Erya Wing" article, recorded this bird that likes to eat small fish, called them "fish dogs", and later in the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen also explained them in more detail, mainly because they often stopped on rocks near the water, so now for the kingfisher family, basically will be called "fish dogs", spotted fish dogs because of the black and white patterns on the body, it is also named.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="26" > what is the survival status of the spotted fish dog? </h1>
In terms of population size, although in many places, spotted fish dogs are very rare, they are a non-endangered species and are not in danger of extinction in the wild.
However, as a small and medium-sized bird, the biggest natural enemy of the spotted fish dog is not a bird of prey or the like, but a snake. This is because spotted fish dogs not only like to eat fish, they also have a characteristic, that is, they like to build their nests on the soil cliffs, and then live in them.
Moreover, the nest of the spotted fish dog began to exist in "multiple rooms", in addition to the place where daily life rested, a special nursery room was also set up to lay eggs and incubate eggs in it.
As a double-flying bird, the spotted fish dog will enter the courtship mating season from January to March every year, and after finding the desired partner, the male and female spotted fish dogs will build their nests in pairs, the whole process will take about 1 month, after which they will lay eggs in the nest.
And the male spotted fish dog is still a "good husband", because of the fear that the female spotted fish dog laying eggs too hard, so the male spotted fish dog will also let the female spotted fish dog rest, and will also take on the responsibility of incubating the egg after the female bird lays eggs.
Generally speaking, female spotted fish dogs will lay 3-6 eggs each time, and then through the incubation of eggs, they will welcome their baby birds after about 20 days, and then they will start feeding.
We all know that the young birds are fed by the mother of the bird and the father of the bird, because the young birds cannot fly, so it is generally the female or male birds that go out to feed, and then another housekeeper protects these bird babies.
However, there will still be snakes sneaking into the nest of the spotted fish dog, eating the bird eggs, or the newly hatched young birds, so that it is equivalent to the blood of the spotted fish dog couple in vain, naturally, the snake has become the biggest natural enemy of the spotted fish dog.
summary
In nature, every creature has its own rules of survival, take the spotted fish dog, although they belong to the kingfisher family, but their living habits and other aspects, there are some differences with other kingfishers.
For example, they are one of the few "loving couples" in nature who will know how to defend their homes and protect their offspring, and the male will not be like most male animals, after completing the mating work, they will give the responsibility of parenting to the female, and they will not care about anything.
This time, spotted fish dogs were found in Baoshan, Yunnan, and the staff of the local reserve were also very happy, believing that this was the local ecological environment getting better, attracting their arrival, hoping to make them settle here, so that this beautiful bird could settle down in Baoshan, Yunnan, and the number of them continued to increase.