Ornithologists spoke about the secret life of Moscow pigeons and crows

According to long-term monitoring by the Birds of Moscow and Moscow Region program, there are 261 species of birds in the capital. About 100 of them fly to warm countries in the fall, and about 20 species, on the contrary, choose Moscow for wintering, arriving from the north.

Today, 88 species of birds are listed in the Red Book of Moscow. “The main habitat of birds, which are an important part of nature, are considered to be specially protected natural areas,” reports the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the capital. Birds destroy insect pests, distribute plant seeds, and regulate the numbers of invertebrates (insects, arachnids, worms) and vertebrates (rodents).

Where do pigeons hide their chicks?

“Every year, scientists collect data from everyone who wants to observe their feathered neighbors, thanks to which there is a map-atlas of the distribution of species in Moscow, nesting places or meeting places during migration,” Maria Sinkova, a zoologist at the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, told MK. “Such data helps estimate not only the total number of birds, but also changes in species composition over time.

In Moscow you can meet not only crows and pigeons. Our city is inhabited by many small songbirds – tits, sparrows, nightingales, thrushes, warblers, buntings, various waterfowl, and even large raptors such as the eagle owl and the goshawk. City residents don’t even know about many of them, since many birds lead a rather secretive lifestyle.

One of the most common myths about birds is, perhaps, the myth of “drunk waxwings.” These birds fly from rowan tree to rowan tree in search of food, and sometimes people find almost a dozen birds lying under one tree. Alive, but lethargic and refusing to stand on their feet. What brought them down? “Drunken berries!” – Those who find them are sure, and they are absolutely wrong. In fact, these birds are flocking and always stay very united, but they are very shy. If suddenly the noise of a car or a flying predator scares the flock, it will rush in one direction in a single impulse, often colliding with the glass facades of high-rise buildings. But the birds will not fall right away, but will find the strength to fly to the nearest place with food. They will calm down, the adrenaline will subside, and then they will be knocked to the ground by the blow that they received a little earlier. Such birds should not be warmed up and given water, but placed in a quiet, dark place and handed over to specialists for assistance.

Another little-known fact: in Moscow, for example, real wild partridges live! They are found, of course, not in the very center, but more in the outskirts and park areas, but they feel quite at ease among the noisy roads of the metropolis.

– Very interesting! What other birds do people not notice in the city, but they exist?

– Proud predators nest on high-rise buildings – goshawks, kestrels, and the famous peregrine falcon. The peregrine falcon is the fastest bird in the world; it can reach speeds in vertical flight of more than 340 kilometers per hour! It’s hard to even imagine. And she is very vulnerable. It is in the Red Book and is protected by the state. But anyone can look at it, the main thing is to know where to look. We have this protected nesting site on the main building of Moscow State University, where on a cloudless day you can use binoculars to watch the peregrine falcon’s rapid hunt for pigeons.

– By the way, about pigeons. Why does none of the townspeople ever see their chicks or at least growing pigeons?

– These birds, about which we seem to know everything, hide their secrets. Where do they hide their pigeons? You can see a young thrush or yellowthroat sparrow, a baby crow and even a fluffy owlet, but we only come across adult pigeons. Everything is explained by where these birds came to us from. In the wild, they inhabit either forests (pigeons, pigeons, tropical pigeons) or mountainous areas. It was from our mountain ancestors that our rock pigeon arose, for which rocks have now been replaced by high-rise buildings full of attics and vents. Why not caves, crevices and rocky ledges? They hide their nests from prying eyes, and the chicks, covered with yellow down, do not leave the nest until they learn to fly. And pigeons have one more feature, which you just mentioned – no one has seen their teenagers. Because they do not have the fledgling stage (when the chick is no longer sitting in the nest, but still flies very poorly, and the parents feed it on the ground). After all, with rock birds everything is harsh. He stepped out of the nest over the cliff – and that’s it, he disappeared.

Ornithologist Dmitry Matyunin told MK what can be expected from the city birds that are in plain sight – pigeons and crows.

– Pigeons do not pose a great danger to humans, but they can get dirty with feces, and unexpectedly. But I would not advise people, especially children, to feed pigeons, because the following situation may arise: concentrating on the food in order to have time to grab the bread thrown by a person, pigeons can accidentally touch a person’s face with their wings in flight or crash into him. And if these are children, then they may be seriously scared. As for the myth about the contagiousness of pigeons to humans, it is unlikely that you will catch any infection from them (although many people think so), but still you should not feed pigeons by hand with children, because children may start eating something after this without washing your hands.

– Can a crow harm a person?

– Crows rarely attack humans; they are smart enough for this. This can only happen in the spring, during the nesting period. But to do this, a person needs to disturb them and get close to the nesting site. In addition, a crow may begin to attack a person (usually from the back), protecting the chick if it has fallen out of the nest, for example, somewhere in the park. But such cases are also extremely rare. Crows still distinguish between people and animals: cats, dogs. Most likely, when a child or adult approaches, they will watch the fallen chick or croak loudly, worry, or fly around.

More often, a crow can annoy a person by stealing some food from him if he is gape. Crows also love to tease other animals. I once watched a crow sitting on a tree branch out of reach of a dog and teasing it, very accurately imitating a dog’s yelp. The dog was furious, jumping up, but could not reach her. By the way, let me remind you that the crow is not the “wife” of the crow, as some people believe; the crow and crow are different types of birds.

– What’s new in the world of birds in our region?

– In the last two winters in February in the Moscow region, ornithologists recorded a common buzzard – this is a bird of prey of the hawk family. This is an interesting event, since it appeared too early in our area, it should have been in the spring, and this despite the fact that the current winter is generally harsh, snowy, although with thaws. Also, in the last two winters, ornithologists noted several sightings of the chaffinch, a songbird of the brambling family. She is one of the first to start singing in early spring, in April.

“We pulled out the ducklings with a net”

Moscow volunteer rescuers of the OPSO “SpasReserve” often have to save the lives of birds: these are pigeons, tits, crows, swifts, hawks… For rescuers, the life of any living creature they can help is valuable and important, although the priority, of course, is life people, and they go to people first. We listened to the most incredible stories of saving the winged inhabitants of the city.

Champions of bad luck are ducks and ducklings. The fact is that ducks and ruddy ducks (or red ducks) feel very at ease in Moscow, they walk wherever they want with their brood, and so they regularly find themselves in various emergencies. The most calls occur in May and June, as this is the time for ducks to hatch their chicks. “Most often we have to rescue newly hatched ducklings,” SpasReserve told us. – In a big city, duck navigators malfunction. Birds lead their children through the streets of Moscow. Along the way, they fall through manholes, run into the doors of office centers, and scare motorists on the road. Rescuers come to the rescue of waterfowl, and sometimes they have to use their entire arsenal of special equipment to do this. Rescued birds are handed over to the Department of Natural Resources or volunteers.”

One day, in a park on Serpukhovsky Val, ducklings fell into a technical hole. Rescue dog handlers from SpasReserv noticed this. A crew from the fire and rescue squad of the State Public Institution “PSC” was sent to the scene, and the arriving firefighters found five ducklings at a depth of about three meters and a number of worried adult ducks. To free the fluffies, it was necessary to fill the hole with water, as a result of which they rose to the surface. The ducklings were handed over to their parents – adult ducks.

Somehow, other children of ducks fell under the grate of the Chertanovsky Pond spillway. Five were “fished out” by removing the protective net (it was then reattached). But the sixth duckling leaked into the overflow pipe. Rescuers had to go down separately to get him. Everybody is alive.

…One duck family settled last year on the territory of the plant in the Lefortovo area. When the time came and the parents took the babies into the pond, several of the chicks along the way fell into the only storm sewer hatch on the territory of the plant. They didn’t notice… “At first, the factory workers tried to pull them out themselves, but they didn’t succeed, the ducklings fiercely defended themselves and tried to peck,” the rescuers told us. – They called us. The chicks tried to attack us too, we had to put on helmets…. Thirteen ducklings were pulled out of the well with a net and handed over to their parents according to the inventory.”

And the funniest story happened with the scorches and their chicks (again, in May) – when a pair of waterfowl with their brood somehow wandered into the Metropolis shopping center and tried to break into the bank. The visitors tried to feed them croissants, but the birds refused. “Ducks are taking over urban space,” they captioned this video online. Rescuers who arrived on call collected the scorches and their chicks and released them into a nearby pond.

On Mazilovsky Pond one day a beautiful duck got entangled in a fishing line with two hooks. The wounded bird allowed the rescuers to catch itself, and the shift leader with great precision removed two small hooks. One tackle went into the beak, having previously tangled it with fishing line, the second – into the skin under the wing. “During the entire operation, the bird remained “zen”, in the end everything was fine with it, it swam about its business,” the rescuers said.

One day a call came: “Please save the crow! Her wing is broken. She cannot fly away, but she sits on a tree, we cannot remove it ourselves.” The rescuers arrived and caught the bird and transferred it for treatment to the Crow’s Nest Center for Rehabilitation and Reintroduction of Wild Birds. As the volunteers of this center later reported, the crow was wounded by a lead bullet… Someone was shooting at the birds.

Another time a swift was saved. This is an amazing bird that is almost always in flight! The crew pulled it out of the kitchen hood (since birds often breed in attics, the swift could have accidentally fallen into the ventilation shaft). The “bird” volunteers received the shearer at three in the morning – due to the fact that there were many calls that day, the journey to them took four hours. The bird was in serious condition: exhaustion, burns on the right side of the body and wing, pain shock… The next day, closer to lunch, “swift mother” Alice wrote to the rescuers: “Fighter! He’s shaking in pain, but he’s even trying to sing.” The swift was released into the wild a few months later, after it had grown stronger.

There was a case of rescue of a pigeon that got stuck in a narrow gap on the balcony between the panels. The gap is narrow, the bird cannot spread its wings and take off. They pulled it out and handed it over to good hands…