For people living in modern society, it is not easy to see wild animals in cities, because most wild animals have lost their habitat, and living in cities is obviously a very dangerous thing, and it is difficult to get enough food.
Although we are strengthening the greening of the city, the habitat space provided by these trees and parks for animals is still very limited. If there are any animal populations that have gradually recovered in recent years, it may be wild birds in cities. In many cases, we can hear birds singing in the bustling city, on the one hand, it is true that our environmental protection has achieved certain results, on the other hand, it also shows that the vitality and fertility of birds are very strong.
The ancients had a poetry cloud: "In the old days, Wang Xie Tang Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people." Birds from ancient times to the present are a kind of animals that accompany humans, and in our country from the traditional culture has been given a rich meaning, such as we know that magpies represent auspiciousness, and the cries of cuckoo birds can often evoke homesickness of wanderers...
But when it comes to the most well-known and common birds, it is probably the sparrow. This small, widely distributed wild bird is found everywhere in China and is often seen in cities. Outside some canteens and restaurants, you can also see flocks of sparrows foraging here, looking for the food left by humans to fill their hunger. Because they gradually adapted to urban life, we got along with this bird in "harmony".
However, the status of the sparrow has not always been as accepted and welcomed as it is now. Once known as a "pest bird", the sparrow was even included in one of the "four pests" that needed to be eradicated, alongside flies, mosquitoes, and rats. Why do the sparrows, which seem to us to be very lively and cute, have the same status as these annoying animals?
In fact, the problem lies in the food of the sparrow. Sparrows are omnivorous birds that usually feed on crops grown by humans, and in an era when that person is not enough to eat, it is natural to make people feel dissatisfied and think that it is an animal that is harmful to people's agricultural production. As a result, people began to eliminate sparrows, and achieved amazing results.
During the period of "eliminating the four pests", the number of sparrows in Our country suddenly decreased, and once reached the point of almost "disappearing". So, do people benefit from it? The answer was surprising, after the elimination of a large number of sparrows, the yield of crops fell sharply.
It turns out that sparrows will not only eat the crops grown by people, but also eat pests that harm crops, in fact, the contribution to people is far greater than the harm, but people at that time did not realize this, so it will cause the opposite consequences as imagined. We should also pay attention to in our lives today, although sparrows can be seen everywhere, but they are protected by law, and we must not be able to catch and hurt them at will.
In fact, it is not only our country that has such troubles at the beginning, but also in Africa on the other side of the ocean, there is also a similar "sparrow", but it is much more "terrible" than the original sparrow, and the number is also very terrible, and it has been flooded, making the African people cry bitterly. This bird is called the red-billed Quelia finch, which belongs to the genus Quilla finch of the weaver family, and the adult bird has a body length of about 13 cm and a weight of about 10 grams, which is indeed similar to the size of a sparrow.
But the "African sparrow" can be said to be far superior to the sparrow, and that is the population. This bird is the world's largest single species of birds, with a total of 1.5 billion birds, and mainly lives in sub-Saharan Africa, the distribution is relatively not too wide, you can imagine how high the density.
The habits of the red-billed Queria finch are also interesting. The name is because it has a very conspicuous feature, that is, a bright red beak, which looks lively and beautiful. By the time of the breeding season, the male's mouth color also becomes more vivid. Of course, the courtship "competition" of male red-billed Quelia finch is more than that, they also need to build their own "marriage room".
This is a kind of "foundation" made of reeds, willow branches and other materials, and if the female is satisfied with this, she will agree to the male's courtship, build the nest with it, and have children later. You may find this courtship process tedious, but the red-billed Quelia finch is so capable of breeding that young birds can be born in less than 10 days and mature after a year.
Because of the short incubation time, the survival rate of young birds in the red-billed Quelia finch is very high. During childcare, the red-billed quelia finch will catch insects to supplement the child's nutrition, and in adulthood, the main diet of the red-billed quelia finch is grass seeds, and they eat about 15 grams of grass seeds a day, which is heavier than their own weight. Imagine how much food the 1.5 billion red-billed Queria finches consume in a day.
And they are also very spectacular when they forage, not alone like those larger birds, but in a huge group, which looks like a dark cloud. Africans call the red-billed Quelia finch "feathered locusts" because they not only eat a lot, but also feed in a very similar way to locusts, advancing like a "carpet" on the ground, "sweeping" all the food on the ground that can enter the stomach.
Even creatures as small as ants can become terrifying when they appear in swarms, let alone birds that can fly? In the scramble for water, even the behemoth elephants of the African land could not compete with the red-billed Quelia flock.
If the red-billed Quelia finch only eats grass seeds, it may not have any effect on people, but it is disturbing that human-grown crops such as wheat and rice are also on the recipes of the red-billed Quelia finch. Every year, the food grown by the African people is "wiped out" in large quantities by the red-billed Quelia finch, which is simply worse for Africa, which is not rich in the first place.
In order to protect crops, African governments have begun to organize the elimination of red-billed quelia finch by hand, and the nationals are simply "national mobilization" to capture the red-billed quelia finch and solve their own food problems by various methods. People didn't have any advanced tools, so they used the most "primitive" bird-catching nets to catch red-billed Quelia finches, and even in this way, they could catch 20,000 birds a day.
These red-billed Quelia finches are put on the market and are popular with the African people as a game game. Do you think this bird will be "eaten" like a dodo or a passenger pigeon? In fact, this is not the case at all, people's spontaneous hunting is simply a drop in the bucket for the red-billed Quelia finch population, and it is impossible to eat at all.