Many stories about migratory birds, cities, happen all around us.
Whether we go to the bell tower day or night, we can often see a small bird, parked on the bell tower, or circling around the bell tower. It was a group of ordinary Lou Yan, who would come to Xi'an every summer to breed offspring.
It is such a common Lou Yan, and there are also many magical stories. Bird scientists finally determined that the winter for Lou yan was wintering in South Africa by putting on ankle rings and watching their flight paths for a year. Flying from South Africa to China, they will fly non-stop for eight days and eight nights, crossing the Indian Ocean.
There are many migratory birds like Lou Yan and such stories in Xi'an. Last week, we held an online bird watching event at Chanba National Wetland Park - "2021 Let's Come to Chanba 'Cloud' Bird Watching".
At the live broadcast site, bird watching experts Ning Feng, Yang Yaqiao and Du Jinghua told us about each bird we encountered at the scene, where they came from, what kind of habits they had, and what relationship Xi'an had with these birds.
20210123 Wetland Park Live_Tencent Video
Here's a breakdown of the individual clips from the livestream, for more highlights, watch the video.
1
Why should we go bird watching?
In fact, the answer is particularly simple. In our city, the most easily seen wild animals are birds, through bird watching, we can get in touch with nature, observe the city, and another aspect is through birds, we can also see the past history.
For example, the wild geese that are swimming towards us now.
The goose is the ancestor of our current domestic goose, which is the earliest domesticated poultry that we humans have so far been confirmed to have, and the image of the domestic goose appeared on Egyptian murals around 2000 BC. In this regard, Asia and Europe are different, and the European domestic goose is domesticated and evolved from the gray goose. They have many very famous breeds, such as the Rhine goose in Germany and the Round goose in France. There are also domestic geese domesticated by gray geese, and in Xinjiang, it is a local specialty called Yili goose.
The famous fat foie gras in French cuisine is made from the foie gras of the rounded goose domesticated by gray geese. Of course, some of our domestic geese also have larger sizes, such as the lion's head goose in Chaoshan District, which is particularly large and weighs up to thirty pounds. Other small geese, including Sichuan white goose, open-eyed goose and the like, weigh about ten or twenty pounds.
Like the most common common cormorants in Chanba National Wetland Park, there is also history to say. In the very famous verse in our poem, "Guan Guan Ju Dove, in the River Continent", the ju dove refers to the ordinary cormorant.
■ The picture was taken by live broadcast guest Du Jinghua | Filming location: Chanba Ecological Zone
Common cormorants are also called ospreys. In our traditional Chinese culture, it is the kind of bird that is raised in captivity as a fishing assistant. Humans use it to catch fish by tying a straw rope around its neck to ensure that the fish will not be swallowed.
With the development of modern society, this mode of production has been slowly eliminated. Only in some scenic spots in the south, cormorants fishing is still retained, but that way can only be regarded as a display type of tourism project.
2
The physical evolution of birds fully proves to us how amazing biological evolution is.
We see that the feathers of birds are generally waterproof, and the way of waterproofing is related to the structure of the feathers.
A feather is divided into two pieces, the part of the feather is called the feather trunk, and the place where there is no feather is called the feather. The feathers are made up of a structure called feather twigs that resemble branches. If the feather twig is enlarged, it has a lot of feather hooks distributed on it. This structure allows the feathers to be forked, but they will soon become very tight and smooth again. Because of the tight combination of the feather hook, the feather also has waterproofness.
The tiniest part of the other feather is made up of hollow phosphorus sheets. When formed, this scale has a natural water resistance similar to that of a lotus flower leaf, and the surface has an air cushion to insulate it from moisture, and it is also very lightweight.
In order to fly, birds have also worked hard to evolve something other than lightweight waterproof feathers. Birds, for example, have highly hollow skeletons, the lowest density of any vertebrate, filled with various bubbles and girders. In addition, birds need to consume a lot of oxygen when flying, and their lungs are very developed. In addition to the lungs, birds have multiple air sacs in their bodies to help them breathe and reduce the weight of the body.
Another characteristic of birds that we are all familiar with, in order to be able to fly and lose weight, they excrete all the time, unlike our cats and dogs, which excrete once or twice a day. Especially when we look at birds in the wild, we can often see that birds of prey or other birds that fall on the branches will first their tails before taking off, excrete a little, and then take off from the ground.
Speaking of bird bones, bird bones also have a particularly interesting knowledge, in order to increase the stability of flight, after the evolution of bones, birds have combined many pieces of bones after purification. For example, a cat has about 230 bones, but birds have only 120 bones.
This is the result of the continuous efforts of birds to evolve in order to fly.
3
Birds' feathers are not beautiful, largely determined by their needs, we have seen many birds in the wild, feathers are for camouflage.
There is a bird called the cannabis seabird, which has a characteristic, the feathers on the body imitate the color of the reed bushes, and is a very good pretender in nature. When it encounters fright, it often does not flee at the first time, but faces us head-on, heading upwards to pretend to be a reed. It's often hard to tell the difference between this bird in the wild.
The bird known in nature for its beautiful feathers is the peacock. The good looks of male peacock feathers are related to courtship, and the inconspicuous feathers of female peacocks are related to feeding offspring. We human women will be more eye-catching, and men will be relatively simple. The males of the peacock are prettier than the females, just in contrast to our human world. Why is the world of birds completely different from ours? Because females in the bird world are responsible for feeding their babies, they are too high-profile to attract predators and hurt young birds.
Speaking of courtship, in order to courtship, some birds have evolved a move that seems very magical from the human eye.
The most famous is a bird that we often see in the flakes of our animal world, called the partridge. When they court, it is a bit like floating on water, and two birds will jump up from the water at the same time, stick to the surface of the water, and step on the water. They will also erect their bodies on the surface of the water, and the male and female will collide with each other, hitting each other's breasts, and then swing their heads from side to side, courting in a ritualistic dance process.
4
When doing bird science, many people will ask us some birds they have seen in their lives.
Someone would tell us that there were two birds on the balcony of the house breeding and laying eggs. Sending the photos over, there is a very simple empty flower pot on the outdoor balcony of the high-rise resident, or a foam box, or even a rotten cardboard may have a bird nest. Once, a netizen sent us a photo, we saw that two bead-necked doves had built a very simple nest and laid two eggs. At that time, we told netizens that this is a rare opportunity, you can slowly observe their lives, and you can also watch two birds grow up and leave.
The little children of the family were very cute and asked us, uncle, that this bird's call was cuckoo's, were they cuckoos? From the experience of our professional birdwatchers, the sound of the bead-necked dove is actually a bit like a pigeon.
■ The picture was taken by live broadcast guest Du Jinghua | Shooting location: Chanba Ecological Zone | Graphics and text are irrelevant
In addition to the birds that netizens may see near their homes, there are also lou swallows that are often hovering on the bell tower, which are also very interesting.
Lou Yan can stay in the sky for up to 10 months. For these 10 months, they will fly in the sky all the time, not going to the ground, eating, drinking, and sleeping all in the air. Why? It is because they have evolved a particularly awesome skill that Lou Yan's left and right brains can take turns to rest, that is to say, they can direct the body with half of their brains and rest with the other half of their brains.
In addition to answering some questions from netizens, we have also held parent-child bird watching activities. From the activities, you can see that in fact, people are still quite yearning for nature, we often encounter parents with their children to participate in bird watching activities, participate in participation, parents themselves are fascinated by bird watching, more active than children. We watched as they brought bird watching equipment better and better each time.
Birds such as sparrows, vermilion spots, etc. have a very close relationship with humans and are often seen, but everyone knows very little about them. A lifelong commitment to the study and protection of chimpanzees Jane. Goodall once said, "We care only if we understand." Only by caring will we act. Only by acting can there be hope in life. “
Paying attention to birds in nature, migratory birds, should be a very natural thing. We will pay attention to what our friends around us are doing and how the city of Xi'an is doing. In fact, paying attention to migratory birds in the city is the same as paying attention to the city and friends, and since we live with them, we have the obligation to understand a little about their living habits and characteristics.
Author | Bells | Chastity author