Long-tailed mountain pepper bird
Compared with the colorful south, the birds in the north are usually relatively dull, and gray, black, brown, and brown are undoubtedly the dominant colors. Beijing is no exception, in the recorded more than five hundred birds, bright red, blue, yellow and other bright birds are not many, in this few gorgeous birds, to pick one of the most eye-catching, long-tailed mountain pepper birds may be able to stand out on top: they are slender, the male head, back are shiny black, but their abdomen, waist are bright red, the wings also have a distinct red, flying like a small red pepper, the female bird's body size is similar, but the color on the body is yellow.
The pepper bird belongs to the birds of the finches of the family Quail, the word "orange", in ancient times it referred to Berau, and now it is no longer used to refer to Berau, and some birds that look a bit like Berau will also use the word 鵙 in their names, such as wagtails, partridges, swallows and so on. There are about a hundred species in the world, most of which are gray or black, but there are also more than a dozen kinds of thinner and more colorful bodies, which are the mountain pepper bird. Unlike the ancient Chinese character for 鵙, the name Yamaji bird originated in Japan and came from the east. Nowadays, Taiwan is still referring to tailed amphibians as mountain pepper fish, such as Alishan salamander is called Alishan pepper fish, Guanwu salamander is called Guanwu mountain pepper fish, and so on. The name is said to derive from their call like eating mountain pepper (a plant of the genus Pepper in the family Rubiaceae).
There is a science that studies the distribution of animals called zoogeography. According to the distribution law of animals, it divides the world into several large regions: among them, Europe and northern Asia, North Africa belong to the Paleobei boundary, southern Asia belongs to the Oriental boundary, And China just crosses the paleobei boundary and the eastern ocean boundary, and the north-south dividing line that we are familiar with: The Qinling-Huaihe line is also the dividing line of the fauna. Like our country, across the different animal kingdoms, in each country that occupies a large area, it is unique in the world.
In animal geography, the mountain pepper bird belongs to the oriental boundary birds, open the Chinese bird atlas, we can see that the red and yellow color of the mountain pepper bird in China is mainly distributed in the southwest region and south China, warm and humid environment is their favorite, but the long-tailed mountain pepper bird is a special member of this family, and other mountain pepper birds, Yunnan and Sichuan are their most important distribution areas in the country, but they did not stop here, but rushed out of the southwest mountains, along the Qinling Mountains, continue to develop to the east to the north, And along the Taihang Mountains, directly to the mountains of Beijing.
Every summer, we can see them in the Hundred Flowers Mountain and the Wuling Mountain, the long-tailed mountain pepperbird is usually active in the middle altitude area, unlike those birds that hide, they are accustomed to moving in small groups, and will stand generously on the treetops, giving us to find them and appreciate them to reduce a lot of trouble. However, they did not go further, Beijing and northern Hebei, is the northernmost point of their distribution, after all, they are still a class of edible insects, like warm birds, every autumn, they will migrate south, wait until late March next year, and then return to the mountains of Beijing, nesting and breeding. If it is not convenient for us to go into the mountains to admire them, we will also have the opportunity to see them in the park during the migration season. (Source of information "Capital Landscaping" WeChat public account Editor Wang Qiang)