This is a rare "Bird's Nest Defense Battle" picture, which I just caught, and after the competition, this picture called "Lesson" won the gold medal in the bird group in the Qinghai International Wildlife Photography Competition and won 10,000 yuan in prize money.
This set of photographs vividly shows a petite brown-headed bunting and a large cuckoo several times larger in a desperate struggle for a nest. For the brown-headed bunting, this is defending the country, and for the cuckoo, it may just be "borrowing the nest to lay eggs".
Back on June 25, 2016, I had been tracking the long-legged buzzard for several days in order to photograph the first-class endangered bird, from Changji to Hutubi to the foot of The South Mountain of Shihezi. It was not until about 11:00 a.m. that day that the traces of three long-legged buzzards were finally found.
The long-legged buzzard belongs to the order Crane-shaped buzzards. The mouth is short , the upperparts are grayish brown , the plumage is black in coarse longitudinal stripes , and the wings have broad brown patches. The long rust-brown wings are prominently characterized by the weakness of the wings when flying, and the legs are hanging down, making it the only rare migratory bird in China that has a distribution in Xinjiang.
The long-legged buzzard breeds in China in the Tianshan Mountains of western Xinjiang and is found in western Tibet during migration as a summer migratory bird. It inhabits a variety of environments, including forests, grasslands, wilderness, semi-deserts and farmland. The breeding season is from May to July, and it is "monogamous".
The long-legged buzzard is widely distributed in the world, with a global population estimated at 5.45 to 9.72 million, and the population is in a stable trend, and it is a low-risk protected animal on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It is a national second-level key protected wild animal.
The long-legged buzzard is a very alert bird that is good at hiding, and often moves in the high grass and shrublands along the banks of rivers and lakes, feeding mainly on a variety of insects, worms, grass seeds and grains.
Therefore, in order not to alarm them, I had to hide in the bushes and wait for the opportunity, and this time it was around 4 p.m. Suddenly, a large cuckoo appeared and circled in front of the nest of a brown-headed bunting. My intuition tells me that something must happen! Out of professional habit, I slowly turned my cameras at them.
In a few moments, I noticed that the big cuckoo was playing the idea of the brown-headed bunting nest, and the brown-headed bunting whistled to warn the other party. However, the great cuckoo did not intend to leave, and it wanted to forcibly occupy the place because it was larger than the brown-headed bunting.
It was a battle of great disparity in strength, only to see two birds fighting in the air, and the fierce scene was definitely no less than a century war.
This is a war for homeland territory, and it is difficult to determine who will die. I couldn't help but secretly pinch a cold sweat for the brown-headed bunting, but unexpectedly, the brown-headed bunting, which was much smaller than the cuckoo, did not give up lightly, and it flew out of the nest and faced the big cuckoo with great anger, vowing to defend its homeland to the death.
Watch the battle go on. After a few fierce rounds, I didn't expect that the big cuckoo would eventually be beaten by the petite brown-headed bunting and run away, which was incredible! This is truly a victory to celebrate, you see, the victorious brown bunting crane with its head held high and made a triumphant cry, as if to cheer the victory of its own territorial battle.
The brown-headed bunting and the big cuckoo fight for a long time, about ten minutes, and the bird feathers continue to fall, and the scene is also very tragic. Faced with the large cuckoo, which was several times larger than itself, the brown-headed bunting did not flinch, and finally won the battle and drove away the big cuckoo.
After filming this set of serendipitous "Bird's Nest Defense Battles", I returned to my original position and waited to shoot the long-legged buzzards. At this time, the long-legged buzzard also came out to forage, and after taking a few satisfactory pictures, it returned with a full load.
According to Wu Rongjiao, a veteran birdwatcher in Xinjiang, the large cuckoo is more common in Xinjiang, and the brown-headed bunting is relatively rare. Although these two birds are not scarce birds, such pictures are indeed very rare.
Knowledge popularization
You don't know about the contest of disparities
The brown-headed bunting is a bird of the family Finches, commonly known as the cardinal finch. It is a slightly larger (16 cm) yellowish bunting that lives in open grasslands, semi-desert shrubs and grasses, but also in small oases and mountainous wastelands in the real desert, often in watery man-made landscapes and trees near homes.
The Great Cuckoo is a Chinese subspecies of the common cuckoo. The body length is about 320 mm and the wing length is about 210 mm. Rhododendrons inhabit forests in mountainous, hilly and plain areas, and sometimes on tall trees near farmland and settlements. Fly fast and powerful, always following straight lines. The wings vibrate more amplitude during flight, but there is no sound.
The breeding period of the great cuckoo is from May to July. During courtship, male and female birds jump around on the branches of the tree, fly up and down to chase each other, and make a low "whirring" call, no fixed mate, nor their own nest and incubating eggs, but lay eggs in the nest of various birds such as reed warblers, sparrows, gray magpies, Berau, brown-headed crows, northern red-tailed ibises, brown fantail warblers, etc., and these birds incubate for it. The great cuckoo is the most typical of more than 80 species of parasitic birds, and can be said to be "infamous", it can parasitize eggs in the nests of 125 other birds.
About the Author
Di Jie is a wildlife photographer in Xinjiang, a contracted author of Xinjiang Youth Publishing House, and a member of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Photographers Association. Winner of the Gold Medal in the Theme Category of the 19th Xinjiang Photography Competition.
Photography concept: Strive to use images to promote the protection of nature, so that the camera can become a weapon for the protection of natural ecology and wild animals!
In less than two years of photography time, he has traveled more than 200,000 kilometers, crossing the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, with footprints all over the no-man's land of Lop Nur, the no-man's land of Mount Argin, the no-man's land of Coco Xili, the no-man's land of Tashkurgan, and the hardships can be imagined four times in one year. In order to explore the current situation of rare wild birds and wild animals in Xinjiang, he took a first-hand picture, and once met the big brown bear in the depths of the Tianshan Mountains and escaped death. So far, more than 370 kinds of wild animals in Xinjiang have been photographed, of which more than 100 species are endemic to Xinjiang and some are endangered species in the world.
I hope to record the wonderful moments of wild animals through the lens, show their vividness and charm, take you to understand them together, walk into nature, feel nature, appreciate nature, love nature, and learn to protect wild animals!