Goldenhead: description, features and interesting facts

This article will tell you about one of the surprisingly small inhabitants of mixed and deciduous forests. The conversation will be about a bird that brings considerable benefits to forestry.

It's a blackhead. She also has other similar relatives, which you can learn by reading this article.

It should be noted that the characteristic of this bird is a little difficult due to its great similarity with other types of gaits, for example, with a brownwood. But more on this later.

Blackhead (or marsh) nut: description

Swallowtail, or blackhead, is a small blue bilberry weighing about 10-11 grams. The size of it is smaller than the sparrow and has a coloring of the feathers not very bright.

The total length with weight up to 15 grams is 12-14 centimeters, and the wingspan reaches 18-20 cm. The neck and head are blue-black, the throat and chin are black, and the feathers on the tips have a white border. The back is dark sand with olive tint, and the hips are more brown. Tail (with stripe) and gray wings. The sides are reddish, and the abdominal region is light gray in color. Dirty white cheeks, beak black, paws dark gray.

Blackhead is a pretty mobile bird. Its flight is very fast and wavy. These birds do not express sexual dimorphism, it is difficult to distinguish the female from the male. Young birds are shaded by the shade of the feathers, and their cap is matte and dark-brown.

External differences of species

The blackhead and the plump are very similar. How to distinguish them? Unlike the second, the upper and lower parts of the trunk in the black head are clearly distinguishable in color.

This bird has one more black feathering detail - a small spot with slightly indistinct edges under the beak itself (does not reach the breast).

It is also practically indistinguishable in nature from yet another species. What is the difference between brown and blackhead? There are two barely visible distinctive features - a shorter with a bluish tint cap and a thicker beak at the second.

Habitat, lifestyle

The Blackhead is a bird that lives mainly in deciduous forests and riverine thickets of poplar, bird cherry and willow. It occurs, in addition to the swampy moist lowlands, and in dry wild thickets, gardens, groves and parks.

The habitats of this small bird vary depending on the season. Unlike the brown-headed gaichki, the blackhead escapes coniferous forests, it can appear in them only in the winter and in the autumn, during the travel period.

In February-February, gaichki are observed in meadows, among willow thickets and in alders. In May they can live in spruce-alder, in alders, hornbeam-oak forests, and in June - also in hornbeam-oak and alder forests. In dense thickets of hazel, in mixed spruce-deciduous forests and in oak young animals, they can be found in July, and in mixed forests, among the birch forests and young pine forests, this bird lives in August-September. In October-November birch forests, mixed forests, alders and burs become the habitat of the village.

This bird nests in hollows of deciduous trees and in stumpy trees with rotted wood. As a rule, the hollow is at an altitude of about 1-1.5 meters above the ground, sometimes higher. It is cleared up by the little guy. If it hollows out the hollow itself, the wood chips are carried away from the future nest by some distance.

The hollow is usually so small that the litter of the nest and the bird sitting in it are often visible from the outside. In the masonry (April-May) there are 5-9 white eggs with a patch of reddish-brown hue. Rarely, but these birds sometimes make a second masonry.

Гайчка the black-headed is an ordinary (and sedentary, and nomadic) bird. Keep these kinds of birds, like other tits, by joint flocks and pairs. They are very dexterous and mobile, like to cling and hang on the tip of thin branches.

How is the nest built?

Outside, the nest is built of green moss alternating with wool and cobweb. The tray itself is usually lined with wool alternating with horsehair, and sometimes with down and feathers. The size of the nest on average in diameter is 3-6 centimeters. The height of the tray is no more than 3 cm, and its average dimensions are 1.4 cm.

Nests blackhead with single pairs. For the most part, unlike its close kind (brown-haired), it uses the existing hollow, only by expanding it by plucking the wood out of it. Nests are sometimes located at an altitude of about 3 meters. Usually, the diameter of the tap hole is no more than 3.5 cm. This bird can also populate artificial duplexes.

In full clutch this bird has an average of 7-10 eggs. The shell is milky white, shiny, covered with small rusty-reddish brown spots. The weight of the egg is 1.3 g, the diameter reaches up to 13 mm, the length - up to 17 mm.

Food

It feeds on the blackhead, mainly caterpillars and spiders, and in autumn and winter with seeds, including thistle seeds.

Also feed for these birds are insects and their larvae with a chitinous hard shell, and also flies, spiders and aphids.

Adult birds feed on ants in the summer, weevils, spiders, various small beetles. In spring they eat anthers of black alder, willow, aspen, drink maple juice, birch. In autumn and winter, most of the diet is represented by seeds of spruce, pine, maple, black alder, mountain ash, various herbaceous plants, etc. The chicks feed their butterflies mainly with butterfly caterpillars and spiders.

Features

The voice of the blackhead is very diverse. Calling him is a sonorous "tsi-chi-zhe-zhe" or a little sad "piyu-piyuy." Her singing is amazingly sonorous and melodic. Also gaichka can publish a quick "sip, sip" with hoarse exclamations and with metallic notes, or a prolonged "tey-tei-tei," meaning anxiety. There is another whistling song - "sis-si-pic-si".

Characteristic for this bird feature - the manner to keep only in pairs and strong affection for each other. In winter common mixed flocks, in which small wintering birds gather, as a rule, one or two marsh gays can be found. They rarely live alone. The partners do not separate either in the winter or in the fall, even when they are in a pack of their relatives or join the flocks of other tits.

The life at the gaicha is sedentary and in winter it is always kept by the nest.

In conclusion: some interesting facts

• In spring (usually in April), couples are identified with a nesting site and females begin to choose a hollow. Nasizhivayutsya eggs for 14 days. Nestlings are usually on the 17-19 day already depart from the nest, after which the male joins them in their upbringing.
• There have been cases that there were nests of gaichoks lined with moss alternating with the hare's hair and with a few feathers.
• Blackheads are useful for forestry birds, as they feed on many insects, especially small bugs (several studies of the stomachs of these birds have been carried out).