Wild chickens. wild chickens wild chicken south america

These birds belong to the genus of wild, or bush, chickens. In total, the genus includes 4 species: banking, Ceylon, gray and green bush cock (or chicken; both names are used). All of them can be domesticated to one degree or another, but only the banking rooster has become globally widespread.

All types of wild chickens are characterized by decorations on their heads - a comb and earrings.

The appearance of these birds is typical: a medium-sized body with well-developed pectoral muscles, a relatively long neck, a small head, decorated with a fleshy crest, legs of medium length and a bushy tail. But the coloring of wild chickens is not like domestic ones: in their plumage all the colors seem to have thickened, the colors have acquired a special richness and clarity.

The banker's rooster has a pure red comb, fiery red feathers cover the neck, back and ends of the wings, the rest of the body is painted in rich dark green. IN English language this species is called the "red rooster".

Bankivsky bush cock (Gallus gallus).

Chickens, of course, are inferior to roosters in beauty, but protective coloring is necessary for females to breed.

Banking bush chicken.

The Ceylon rooster is similar to the Banking rooster, only it has a comb with a bright yellow spot.

Ceylon Bush Rooster (Gallus lafayettei).

The green rooster looks a little more modest: in this species, red feathers cover only the outer part of the wings, the back feathers have a border, and the rest of the body is dark in color with a greenish tint. But the green rooster has a purple comb! In terms of color details and body proportions, the green rooster is more like a pheasant than other chickens.

Green Bush Rooster (Gallus varius).

The most modest representative of the genus is a gray rooster, very reminiscent of poultry.

Gray Bush Rooster (Gallus sonneratii).

Wild chickens live in Southeast Asia: from India and Sri Lanka in the west to Indochina in the east. Wild chickens inhabit the jungle and woodlands and are not too inclined to show themselves to people. All types of wild chickens live on the ground, where they search for food, hide from enemies and raise offspring. In case of danger, they can run quickly, hiding in dense thickets. Chickens do not like to fly, but on occasion they rise to the lower branches of trees.

During the mating season, wild roosters arrange fights. In all species, males have characteristic "spurs" on their legs. This feature is peculiar only to birds of this genus and is not found in anyone else. Spurs, as everyone knows, are fighting weapons that roosters use in close encounters. Females arrange simple nests in a hole under a bush. In the clutch of wild chickens, there are only 5-9 white eggs and they breed only once a year. The relatively low fecundity of wild chickens is compensated by the rapid growth of chickens (they can follow the chicken from the first minutes of life), the protective coloration of the chicks and the protective instincts of the mother. Chickens are caring mothers.

Banking hen keeps chickens warm.

These birds have many enemies. They are attacked by both small animals and large birds of prey, often nests of chickens with chicks or eggs become the prey of numerous snakes. Previously, people also hunted chickens, because chicken meat is unsurpassed in its taste. But they began to domesticate chickens not at all for the sake of meat or eggs (after all, wild chickens are not prolific). The first attempts at domestication were associated with the unique mating behavior of roosters - birds began to be bred for the sake of ritual fights. Until now, in the historical homeland of chickens in the countries of Indochina, not productive, but fighting individuals are more valued. Chickens turned out to be birds (as it is customary to call it among biologists) plastic, that is, easily adaptable and changing their biological properties. This was the beginning of the selection of chickens, which led to the emergence of numerous and diverse breeds.

Wild chickens are the direct ancestors of domesticated chickens of various breeds. The fact that they are still part of natural ecosystems pleases not only ecologists. The availability and accessibility of wild ancestors allows geneticists and breeders to use the original genotype to improve the condition of domesticated breeds.

Jungle chickens are a genus of birds that belongs to the pheasant family and the order of chickens or chickens. This genus includes four species:

• banking;
• Ceylon;
• gray;
• green.

Chicken birds are common on almost all continents, with the exception of Antarctica. These include five families:

• pheasant;
• bigfoot;
• guinea fowl;
• kraksy;
• toothed partridges.

The relationship with pheasants is confirmed by the ability of both wild and domestic chickens to mate with pheasants. This indicates that pheasant birds have outward signs and elements of behavior that allow individuals different types recognize each other as members of their own species. Only in this case is mating possible.

If we compare representatives of the pheasant family, then we can distinguish the signs by which pheasants and chickens “see” each other as “their own”. This:

• bright and colorful plumage of roosters;
• similar sexual differentiation;
• the same sexual behavior;
• the similarity of individual sounds made by roosters or hens.

A similar situation develops in many closely related species, which leads to the appearance of hybrids. However, these crosses are usually incapable of reproduction. The reason is the difference in the genome, which contributes to the preservation of the species as a permanent biological phenomenon.

Wild chickens live in the forest zone of South Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Jungle chicken got its name from its attachment to the forest zone of the tropics.

But the biotope of these representatives of the pheasant family can be called edge. Wild birds prefer to live not in the thick of the forest, where it is difficult to get their own food, but on its border - in bushes, light forests, grassy thickets of clearings.

Most representatives of the chicken order lead just such a lifestyle. But there are exceptions: they extend mainly to the taiga zone, where capercaillie, black grouse, partridges have adapted to eat the needles and seeds of plants in this zone.

Wild ancestors of domestic chickens

It is believed that the wild ancestor of the domesticated individuals was the banking jungle chickens. This claim was originally based on phenotypic and behavioral similarities, as well as the ability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. This is usually enough to prove origin. But all other types of jungle chickens could claim to be the ancestor of popular poultry.

And also the similarity of the representatives of the genus gave grounds for the assertion that domestication took place on the basis of several species. All scientists, including Darwin, identified South Asia as the center of origin of the domesticated chicken, but the name of the wild bird that was the ancestor of the domesticated one has always been in doubt.

Studies have shown that the domestication of feathered savages occurred 8,000 years ago. These birds very quickly became common inhabitants of chicken coops in Asia, Africa and Europe. In America and Australia, they appeared only after the resettlement of Europeans there.

Despite the fact that domestic chickens are able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, DNA analysis revealed some differences in the genome in chickens from different regions. Differences are observed in domestic chickens of the Pacific and South Asian populations. They differ not only from each other, but also from chickens in other regions.

This fact indicates the origin from different wild species. This version is reflected in the LiveJournal "Wild Zoologist", where the gray jungle bird is mentioned as the second species that gave rise to domestic chickens.

There is another explanation for the phenomenon of some difference in the genome - the accumulation of mutations in isolated bird populations. The latter statement is considered more true, since all chickens successfully interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

If different populations of domestic chickens came from different ancestors, then their genomes would have more differences, and crossing between European and Chinese chickens would lead to infertile offspring.

Doubts about the origin of domesticated chickens have been dispelled by genetic and molecular analysis. A genetic map was made for this bird for the first time in the world. So domestic chickens became not only a source of meat, eggs and feathers, but also scientific information.

The genetic code of the domestic chicken dispelled all doubts - its ancestor is the banking jungle chicken.

Wild Banking Hens

Banking birds have a strong physique that allows them to run fast. Wild birds fly badly. But their endurance makes it possible to compensate for the disadvantages of a terrestrial lifestyle.

Bankers weigh less than domestic chickens. The wild male of the breed weighs no more than 1.2 kg, and the hens gain no more than 700 g. This difference with domestic relatives is associated with the costs of a wild lifestyle. In chicken coops, there is no need to run away from predators and constantly look for food. And also breeders and geneticists have formed breeds with a special physiology that allows you to gain big weight in short time.

Bankers feed on everything they can get in the jungle. Their diet includes:

• seeds;
• arthropods, worms, mollusks;
• plant parts;
• fallen fruits.

They make their nests on the ground. This is what most of the species of the order of chickens do. The condition for the survival of the quoy and chicks is not only the ability to hide and run fast. A flock of life, the participation of a rooster in protecting hens and chicks, and a complex signaling system help wild hens learn about danger in advance.

Banking rooster is a beautiful and bright bird. Despite the poor flight, his pectoral muscles are well developed. The whole body is adapted for fast running, sudden flight, as well as for fighting with other roosters and predators. It has a small head, a large crest and a long neck. The legs, compared to domestic rooster, are long.

The bright color of the rooster impressed the British so much that they called this bird a red rooster, although it would be more accurate to give the name "fire bird". After all, a rooster of this species has a fiery red crest, bright red feathers on the neck, back and ends of the wings. This fiery coloration is especially noticeable against the dark green feathers of the rest of the body.

It would seem that this coloration makes the rooster very noticeable against the background of the green jungle. However, only chickens have camouflage coloration, as they sit on the nest and take care of the chicks. A wild rooster, on the contrary, attracts the attention of harem hens, flock rivals and predators.

Other members of the genus

Other wild birds of South Asia and the adjacent islands have some differences in phenotype, but their behavior and lifestyle are very similar. This is evidenced by a comparative description of the three types of "savages".

Lives in southwestern Asia. The rooster and hen have modest plumage, which camouflages them well in thickets of grass and shrubs.

• If it weren’t for the classic cock’s tail, which is still significantly inferior to bankers in beauty and splendor, then these chickens could be compared with guinea fowls.
• The predominance of black and white variants in the color of feathers gave the name to this species.
• The sizes of individuals of gray chickens are also modest. The average body length fits in the range from 70 to 85 cm. The average gray hen weighs about 700 g.

Green Jungle Chicken

This species has an insular range. Green chicken can only be found on the Sunda Islands and on the island of Java.

Since individuals of this species fly better than other representatives of the genus of jungle chickens, the coloring of the female allows her to camouflage against the background of tree trunks and soil. Its feathers are painted in a uniform brown color.

The rooster has special distinguishing features.

• His comb and beard are painted bright red. But at the base of the ridge there is a clearly visible green stripe. On the beard, such a strip is located at the very tip.
• The plumage on the body is predominantly dark green with an emerald sheen.
• And only decorative, hanging cords, feathers have a muted red color.

The rooster of this species also has reason to be called fiery.

• Its entire head, including the large comb and beard, is red.
• There is a wide yellow stripe in the middle of the crest.
• Decorative cord-like feathers on the neck, chest and back are bright red.
• The rest of the body is painted in masking black shades with a metallic sheen.

The hen has feathers only brown and gray shades.

Ceylon chickens are small - a rooster in length fits in the range from 60 to 70 cm, a chicken - from 35 to 45 cm.

The name of this species speaks for itself - it is immediately clear that these chickens live in Ceylon, being a symbol of Sri Lanka.

• All jungle chickens have pronounced sexual dimorphism, which indicates a significant difference in the behavior of males and females.
• The rooster does not incubate the eggs and does not take care of the chicks.
• He maintains order in the harem, fights for females with other roosters, and also protects his hens from all kinds of trouble.

Roosters by their behavior and appearance stand out from the general background. This allows them to keep chickens near them, control them using voice commands, and distract predators. Not surprisingly, these guardians of the chicken community die much more often than the chickens they protect.

People and banking jungle chicken

Many wild ancestors of domestic animals died out because they were exterminated by people, and the habitat was rapidly changing. A sad fate befell the ancestors of the cow and horse. They were exterminated in the Middle Ages.

The once vast range of the Banking Jungle Chicken is shrinking along with the rainforests. However, in national parks this species is protected not only as a natural component of ecosystems.

In our time, experts have recorded about 700 breeds of chickens with different properties. Most of the breed diversity is concentrated in Europe, where selection work is actively carried out.

Usually, the efforts of breeders are aimed at maintaining two directions for the formation of breeds - fleshiness and egg production. But the chicken is seen not only as a source of food, but as an aesthetic object. In this case, the selection is carried out on the basis of the features of the size and shape of the body, the state of plumage, crest and beard. Ornamental breeds also include birds with a special voice.

There is another direction of selection - this is the fighting qualities of roosters. In the latter case, wild banking jungle chickens are especially in demand, since at home the roosters lose their ability to fight for the abundance and safety of the harem.

Among the people, aesthetic needs in relation to chickens have always faded into the background. But in the villages, the owners of farmsteads have always been proud of a beautiful rooster, which showed the color of a wild Indian ancestor. Such roosters live long because they are protected like a work of art.

Of the industrially significant breeds, the most famous are the Bress Gallic chickens, or French meat chickens. This breed is considered elite. It is used to produce both meat and eggs. In order for these all-white hens to lay well, they are not castrated. To quickly produce meat, teenagers are castrated.

The breed qualities of Bress Gallic chickens have made them popular all over the world, although the French consider these chickens to be their property.

Wild Ancestral Instinct and Domestic Chickens

The massive use of chickens as a source of eggs and meat became possible due to the organization of the flock and the peculiarities of nesting behavior. The following instincts have been preserved in the domestic chicken, which once helped to domesticate the wild bird of South Asia.

1. Pack organization. When chickens grow up to the stage of changing from down to feathers, they develop secondary sexual characteristics. After a couple of months, the bettas begin to arrange fights, as a result of which the dominant individual is determined. This allows people to use "extra" roosters for meat. The producer and custodian will be one rooster for a dozen hens. But as a result of natural selection, the most aggressive rooster remains, which people do not always like. Often the most pugnacious rooster is sent for meat, which defends its harem from people. It remains to "lead" the harem rooster of moderate mood. - review of breeds.
2. The undoubted advantage of wild ancestors is the lack of an instinct for migration. There is enough food in the jungle all year round, so it makes no sense for wild chickens to fly to other lands. The lack of desire to change places creates the stability of the flock, as a result of which the chickens, even when wild grazing in the courtyard and on the street, do not go far from the chicken coop.
3. A sophisticated voice control system for flocks and chickens once helped to keep chickens at the “self-management” level. It is enough for a person to take a closer look, and most importantly, to listen to what chickens are doing in order to understand which individuals will conscientiously breed chickens, and which ones are incapable of such complex behavior.
4. Of no small importance for the cultivation of chickens are the vocal data of roosters. The morning crowing has become an element of the culture of many nations, which is captured in fairy tales and legends. The cry of a rooster drives away evil spirits and announces the sunrise. For chickens, this signal is like the sound of a bugle that gathers soldiers to build. The flock, after the morning crowing of a rooster, should not only wake up: the hens should gather around their vociferous leader. Roosters with a good voice could gather many hens around them, which contributed to the transfer of genes for vociferousness from generation to generation.

Incubator breeding of chickens leads to the degeneration of their instinctive base. For this reason, new breeds are not formed in cage conditions. The preservation of the instincts of wild ancestors is an indicator of the integrity of the domestic chicken genome, which is a condition for good health and environmental resistance.

Wild banking jungle chicken is a treasure of the whole world, as it is a guarantor successful work on breeding new breeds and maintaining the genotype of domestic chicken. Moreover, to perform their functions, wild chickens need a large number. Otherwise, the isolation of populations with a small number of individuals will contribute to the accumulation of micromutations and the manifestation of the effect of inbreeding, which can lead to negative consequences for wild and domestic chickens.

The detachment is large and ancient. The wings of chicken birds are short, wide, facilitating a quick vertical rise. They wave them often, sometimes they plan, but peacocks do not plan. They run fast on the ground. The legs are strong, with spurs in the males of many species. The grouse has horn fringes along the edges of the fingers: they help to grip the icy bough more tightly and walk on loose snow without falling through.

Large goiter, only some gokko do not have it; the coccygeal gland in all but the argus, and the blind outgrowths of the intestine. The type of development is brood. Males are larger than females and more brightly colored. Mostly polygamous. But monogamous, contrary to previous ideas, as it turned out, are not at all rare: African peacocks, hazel grouses, gray, white, forest partridges, snowcocks, kekliks, francolins, fork-tailed wild chickens, crested guinea fowl, tragopans, collared hazel grouses, dwarf, pearl, virgin and all other scalloped quails, hoatzins, many gokkos, and apparently golden pheasants. Males, even in monogamous ones, usually do not incubate or care for the chicks. They take care - in guinea fowl, francolins, African peacocks, white partridges, snowcocks, pearl and toothed quails, many gokkos, collared and, apparently, ordinary hazel grouses. Males incubate (in turn with the female) with hoatzins, alpine kekliks, sometimes virginian quails and gray partridges (there is such data). Some species of gokko seem to live in monogamy for years.

Peacock. Photo: Ricardo Melo

Nests on the ground - a small hole, lined with dry grass and leaves, later - feathers. Peacocks sometimes - in a fork of thick branches, on buildings, even in abandoned nests birds of prey. In pearl argus - often on stumps. In African peacocks - always above the ground: on broken trunks, in the fork of large branches. Only hoatzins, tragopans and, as a rule, gokko nests are always in trees. In clutch from 2 to 26 eggs (in most), on average - 10. Development is fast. Incubation - 12-30 days.

Having dried, usually on the first day the chicks leave the nest for their mother. Their tail and flight feathers grow early, and therefore already one-day (weed chickens), two-day (pheasants, gokko, tragopans), four-day (grouse, African peacocks) and a little later, many others can fly. Chicks of African peacocks, Virginian quails fly well on the sixth day after birth. Wild chickens, turkeys, pheasants and others - on the ninth or twelfth.

Sexual maturity in small species (dwarf quail) - 5-8 months after birth. For the majority - for another year, for large ones (gokko, peacocks, turkeys, argus) - after 2-3 years.

There are few truly migratory birds among chickens - 4 species, all quails. Nomadic, partially migratory, from the northern regions - gray partridges, virginian quails, wild turkeys.

During molting, the ability to fly is not lost. Grouse, molting, shed the horny covers of the claws, beak, and fringes of the fingers.
250-263 species in countries around the world, except for Antarctica, the nearest part of South America and New Zealand. Settled by different countries: Only in New Zealand are acclimatized 9 species of gallinaceous birds from other parts of the world. In Europe, more than 22 foreign species of this order are bred, many of them in the wild. The smallest of chickens weigh 45 grams (dwarf quail), the largest - 5-6 kilograms (eyed turkeys, peacocks, capercaillie) and even 10-12 (wild turkeys, argus). Virginian and pygmy quails lived in captivity up to 9-10 years old, tragopans - up to 14 years old, African peacocks, golden pheasants, capercaillie - up to 15-20 years old, Asiatic peacocks and argus - up to 30 years old.

Five families of chicken birds:

Hoatzins. 1 view - South America.

Weed chickens, or bigfoots. 12 species in Australia, Polynesia and Indonesia.

Tree chickens, or gokko. 36-47 species in Central and South America.

Pheasants - pheasants, peacocks, turkeys, guinea fowls, chickens, gray partridges, quails, snowcocks, kekliks. 174 species in almost all countries of the world.

Grouse - black grouse, hazel grouse, capercaillie, white and tundra partridges. 18 species in the northern regions of Europe, Asia and America.
In Russia, there are 20 species of this order (8 - grouse, 12 - pheasant).



The detachment is large and ancient. The wings of chicken birds are short, wide, "facilitating a quick vertical rise." They wave them often, sometimes they plan (peacocks do not plan). They run fast on the ground. The legs are strong, with spurs in the males of many species. The grouse has horn fringes along the edges of the fingers: they help to grip the icy bough more tightly and walk on loose snow without falling through.

Large goiter, only some gokko do not have it; the coccygeal gland in all but the argus, and the blind outgrowths of the intestine. The type of development is brood. Males are larger than females and more brightly colored. In most leagues. But monogamous, contrary to previous ideas, as it turned out, are not at all rare: African peacocks, hazel grouses, gray, white, forest partridges, snowcocks, cake-licks, francolins, forked-tailed wild chickens, crested guinea fowls, tragopans, collared hazel grouses, dwarf, pearl, Virginian and all other scalloped quails, hoatzins, many gokkos, and apparently golden pheasants. Males, even in monogamous ones, usually do not incubate or care for the chicks. They take care - in guinea fowl, francolins, African peacocks, white partridges, snowcocks, pearl and toothed quails, many gokkos, collared and, apparently, ordinary hazel grouses. Males incubate (in turn with the female) with hoatzins, alpine kekliks, sometimes virginian quails and gray partridges (there is such data). Some species of gokko seem to live in monogamy for years.

Nests on the ground - a small hole, lined with dry grass and leaves, later - feathers. Peacocks sometimes - in the fork of thick branches, on buildings, even in abandoned nests of birds of prey. In pearl argus - often on stumps. In African peacocks - always above the ground: on broken trunks, in the fork of large branches. Only hoatzins, tragopans and, as a rule, gokko nests are always in trees.

In clutch from 2 to 26 eggs (in most), on average - 10. Development is fast. Incubation - 12-30 days.

Having dried, usually on the first day the chicks leave the nest for their mother. Their tail and flight feathers grow early, and therefore already one-day (weed chickens), two-day (pheasants, gokko, tragopans), four-day (grouse, African peacocks) and a little later, many others can fly. Chicks of African peacocks, Virginian quails fly well on the sixth day after birth. Wild chickens, turkeys, pheasants, etc. - on the ninth-twelfth.

Sexual maturity in small species (dwarf quail) - 5-8 months after birth. For the majority - for another year, for large ones (gokko, peacocks, turkeys, argus) - after 2-3 years.

There are few truly migratory birds among chickens - 4 species, all quails. Nomadic, partially migratory, from the northern regions - gray partridges, virginian quails, wild turkeys.

During molting, the ability to fly is not lost. Grouse, molting, shed the horny covers of the claws, beak, and fringes of the fingers.

250-263 species in countries around the world, except for Antarctica, the nearest part of South America and New Zealand. They are settled in different countries: only in New Zealand 9 species of chicken birds from other parts of the world are acclimatized. In Europe, more than 22 foreign species of this order are bred, many of them in the wild. The smallest of chickens weigh 45 grams (dwarf quail), the largest - 5-6 kilograms (eyed turkeys, peacocks, capercaillie) and even 10-12 (wild turkeys, argus). Virginian and pygmy quails lived in captivity up to 9-10 years old, tragopans - up to 14 years old, African peacocks, golden pheasants, capercaillie - up to 15-20 years old, Asiatic peacocks and argus - up to 30 years old.

Five families.

Hoatzins. 1 view - South America.

Weed chickens, or bigfoots. 12 species in Australia, Polynesia and Indonesia.

Tree chickens, or gokko. 36-47 species in Central and South America.

Pheasants - pheasants, peacocks, turkeys, guinea fowls, chickens, gray partridges, quails, snowcocks, kekliks. 174 species in almost all countries of the world.

Grouse - black grouse, hazel grouse, capercaillie, white and tundra partridges. 18 species in the northern regions of Europe, Asia and America.

In the USSR - 20 species of this order (8 - black grouse, 12 - pheasant).

Current!

April. There is still snow in the forests and ravines. And on the glades, in the black forest - a steam room, warm earth. The first spring flowers are blue sprouts, blue lungwort, with redness. Lilies of the valley... No more lilies of the valley. But the golden coltsfoot is on all the bare mounds.

Let's delve into the northern, coniferous forests and, perhaps, we will see somewhere on a pine tree a large black bird, very strange in appearance, red-browed, bearded.

The capercaillie stretched out his neck. Alert. In fright, it breaks down and flies heavily over the swamp. The darkness of the forest hides him. And around - a fabulous story. On the ground, moss and moss, sphagnum, peat. Cranberries on moss, wild rosemary and cotton grass. The stunted pine trees hesitantly surrounded the bog. Ate gloomy scowled unfriendly. The pine needles rustle anxiously. Windbreak and rot, stumps and snags.

Champs rusty slurry. The studs are failing. The rotten moss of the churned-up bog covers the pale gray hair of the hummock-dweller like a brown stitch.

And suddenly, in the middle of the night, in the darkness - some clicks, a click of a wooden timbre - “tk-tk-tk”. Sounds weird...

Here is a pause, no clicks. Quiet around.

Clicks again. The clicking speeds up and - as if someone tapped the box with a match - a fraction. And behind it is what the hunters call "skirting": a quiet short grinding, the sound of turning a knife on a bar. Fans of one of the best hunts in the world are waiting for him with bated breath. They are waiting to make two or three quick jumps to this “song” (or better, one big one!) And freeze at the last sounds of “turning”.

Lights up quickly. Gray shadows of bushes and trees sink waist-deep in gray mist. A capercaillie sings loudly and quite as if close by. The initial sounds of his song: “Tk-tk-tk” - a sing-along. More and more clicking. The rhythm grows, and suddenly capercaillie syncopations merged into one short creak.

So, in leaps and bounds, either stopping at a half step, or rushing forward along the impassability, the hunter comes closer and closer to the tree, on which, spreading his tail like a fan and arching his tousled neck, a bird drunk in spring sings. Choking, tirelessly, without interruption, he sings and sings the ancient song of the wilds of the forest. Suddenly, a loud shot, a second pause, the crackling of broken branches and a dull “too-ttt!”. A heavy bird fell. She fell into the damp moss, barely visible in the predawn darkness.

Capercaillie sing all the dawn every spring in our vast forests. In passionate ecstasy, at the culmination of their chants, called turning, they become deaf for a while, In these meager moments, the hunter must jump two or three steps towards the capercaillie. And freeze, albeit on one leg, before the capercaillie “sparks” again. When it doesn't "skip", hears everything...

It's already light... The hunters came out of the forest to a wide, faded meadow. Withered, last year's grass. They went out and immediately quickly hid, peeping from behind a bush. When they approached the clearing, the forest was filled with mysterious sounds that had been heard in the distance before. And now they have intensified, merged into a many-voiced and friendly muttering. Sometimes he is interrupted as if by separate cries: "Chu-fyy!" And again mumbling.

There, in the depths of the meadow, some black small figures on the ground. Black grouse are running! Many black grouse: a dozen, two, and maybe more. Some selflessly mutter, bending their necks to the ground and spreading their tails. Others call out “choo-fy”, jumping up and down and flapping their wings. Others, converging in oncoming jumps, collide with their breasts. Eyebrows swollen with blood redden on black bird heads, white undertails sparkle in the slanting rays of the sun. In general, the current is in full swing.

At dusk, black grouse flock from all around to secluded meadows, forest swamps, and quiet glades. The sun will rise, and they are still singing and serenading the feathered ladies. They quarrel, sometimes they fight.

And where are those for whom this game is started? Where are the hens? Among the singers they are not visible. They are not far away, but not close either. Brown, dim, inconspicuous on the faded colors of the meadow, slowly walk about 30 meters from the extreme scythes. They will stand, they will go lazily again. They walk modestly and as if indifferently along the edge of the current. They peck at something on the ground. This is an encouragement for singers. Like our applause. Noticing the bite-applause, the Kosachs talk more recklessly.

Hunters build huts on currents in advance. Hiding in them from the night, they shoot black grouse in the morning. And now, when it's light, it's hard to get close to them.

It would be possible to walk through the forest, lure grouse, but such hunting is now prohibited: the hazel grouse is a monogamous bird, lives with one female, takes care of the chicks. In spring, and in some places in autumn, the hazel grouse will quickly fly to the skillful whistle of a good decoy. He will sit close on a branch or run up along the ground, strangely not shy, some kind of careless. Especially and

there is no need to hide from him: they shoot almost point-blank. If you miss, you can beckon again, it will fly more than once, deceived by the insidious call of the decoy.

Capercaillie, black grouse, hazel grouse - our upland birds. They look different, but their lives are similar. In the spring they talk, each in his own way. The mating season will end - males molt, hiding in remote places. The female incubates in a hole under a bush from 4 to 15, but usually 6-8 eggs. The male hazel grouse sleeps and feeds near the nest. When the chicks hatch, he does not leave them either.

Grouse and wood grouse are driven only by mothers. Their children feed on insects for the first time. Five-day-old hazel grouses, week-old grouse, and ten-day-old wood grouses fly low above the ground. After five to seven days they spend the night in the trees. Monthly well fly, even capercaillie. In September, young grouse, male black grouse, already live without a mother, but the females are still with her. Capercaillie gather in small flocks: females with females, roosters with roosters - they feed on leaves in autumn on aspens. It stays that way all winter long. Black grouse have mixed flocks: grouse and black grouse.

Winter food for black grouse and hazel grouse - buds and catkins of alder, birch, aspen, willow, juniper berries. Capercaillie - needles of pines, firs, cedars, less often spruces. They sleep in the snow. From a tree or directly from the summer they fall into a snowdrift, pass a little under the snow (sometimes a lot of black grouse - 10 meters), hide and sleep. In a blizzard and frost, they do not crawl out from under the snow for days. There is no wind and ten degrees warmer than on the surface. If, after a thaw, a severe frost strikes and an ice crust covers the snow over the birds, it happens that they die, unable to break free.

Spring again current. However, in autumn, in some places and in winter black grouse, old mowers and young capercaillie lek. "Squeak" and hazel grouse, in the spring breaking up into pairs. Together, in pairs, they roam all winter along the territory common to the male and female. Autumn currents are not real, no reproduction follows them. And what then is the use of them, it is not very clear.

Where in the spring the black grouse lek not far from the capercaillie, crossbreeds occur. Hybrids are more like capercaillie, not everyone can tell them apart, but they fly to the black grouse to lek. They are stronger than scythes and play more recklessly - more fiery and enthusiastic. The voice, however, is a bit like a capercaillie. All kosachs from the current will be dispersed, “hell” throwing themselves at every rooster that they see, even if they are three hundred meters away. Previously, these bastards, like other interspecific hybrids, were thought to be sterile. It turned out that they did not: they give offspring with black grouse and capercaillie. Better,

than capercaillie, they take root in the modern thinned forests of Europe. Therefore, they are settled where they want to breed capercaillie again, for example, in Scotland.

There are few capercaillie left in Europe. In Germany, for example, according to estimates in 1964, only 6002! Black grouse - 14708; hazel grouse - 4120. Joyless statistics. In the north European Russia at the end of the last century, 6.5 thousand capercaillie were harvested annually. Now there are only a few thousand.

In the Pyrenees mountains, not all capercaillie have yet been killed. In some places they survived in the Alps, the Carpathians, in the Balkans, in Scandinavia, and to the east of here capercaillie live in the taiga forests to Transbaikalia and Lena. Across the Nizhnyaya Tunguska River and from Lake Baikal to Kamchatka and Sakhalin is the range of another capercaillie, stone. He is smaller than usual, black-billed. Ours with a white beak. The current song is "a monosyllabic click that turns into a short trill." He does not deafen, like ours, when he sings, he only hears worse for a short time. The stone capercaillie is darker in color and without a rusty spot on the goiter. Grouse and capercaillie, let us remind those who do not know this, are gray-brown. In hazel grouses, males are gray-brown-ruffled, only a dark spot under the beak distinguishes them from females.

The range of hazel grouse and black grouse almost coincides with the capercaillie, only more extensively to the south it captures the forest-steppe zones, and to the east it extends to Ussuri (near the hazel grouse - to Primorye and Sakhalin).

In the Caucasus, in the alpine and subalpine zone, the Caucasian black grouse lives (its tail has no white undertail and is less steeply curved by a lyre). It flows differently.

“On the current, the roosters either sit quietly, or, lowering their wings and raising their tail almost vertically, jump up ... while turning 180 degrees. The jump is accompanied by a characteristic flapping of the wings... Usually the current passes in silence... Occasionally the roosters click their beaks or emit a short wheezing, reminiscent of the muffled and soft cry of a corncrake" (Professor A. V. Mikheev).

From Transbaikalia to Primorye and Sakhalin, wild grouse live next to hazel grouse - not shy, larger and darker in color. Look like grouse.

Other grouse

Severtsov's hazel grouse lives in Central China. The area is tiny, the way of life is unknown.

Collared grouse: Alaska, Canada, USA. The male has two tufts of long feathers on the sides of the neck. Tokuya, he loosens them with a lush frill. It inflates a striped neck, the tail is spread like a fan. If the female dies, the male leads and guards the chicks.

White partridge - England, Scandinavia, northern European Russia, all of Siberia and Canada. Red-brown in summer. In winter it is snow-white, only the tail is black. Thick, up to the very claws, plumage on the paws - "Canadian skis", which keep the bird on loose snow. In spring, males sit on hillocks, high hummocks, "like at guard posts." White, with a bright red head, neck and goiter - visible from afar.

This is what is required: having chosen a nesting site, they mark it with their own person. They attack and drive all other males with fierce courage.

Current calls of white partridges - a strange, sharp, loud "karr ... er-er-err." Some kind of devilish laughter: you won’t understand if you don’t know who so terribly “barked” in your ear. This can happen in the moss swamps at night, before dawn, when you make your way in the dark to the capercaillie current. The screamer himself is never seen, even though he is motley, still white-winged, black-tailed, even if he “croaked” very close by. Kuropach, flying a little above the ground, soars up steeply, hangs in the air for a second and then screams. Then, with a cry, it falls steeply down.

The female will sit on the nest, her husband, like a hazel grouse, lurks nearby between the bumps, sprawled on the ground. He no longer screams, keeps quiet, does not show off on the mounds, flies a little. In general, he hides so as not to give out the nest to the enemies. A brave guardian of his offspring. Not afraid of people either.

“The male rushed at the observer, knocked off his glasses and was caught by his hands during the second attack” (Professor A.V. Mikheev).

Scottish ptarmigans (a special subspecies) do not turn white in the winter. They are called "grauses" in England. For centuries, British nobles have bred and hunted grouse on their estates. At the end of the last century, grouses were brought to the swamps on both sides of the Belgian-German border. They live there in small numbers.

Tundra partridge - Greenland, Scotland, Pyrenees, Alps, Scandinavia, tundra, forest tundra of Eurasia, Canada, Alaska, mountains of Southern Siberia. In habits, lifestyle and appearance, it is similar to the white, but smaller. In winter, the males have a black stripe between the beak and the eye, in the summer "the coloration is dominated by a gray rather than a reddish tone", like that of the white.

American ptarmigan - mountains of western North America from Alaska to New Mexico. Similar to the first two, but the tail is not black, but white.

Prairie grouse - North America. Four kinds. The largest, almost from the capercaillie, is the sagebrush grouse. Three others (long-tailed, large and small meadow) growth from a small black grouse. Painted colorful and bright. There are two bare yellow spots on the chest, purple on the long-tailed. There are air sacs in the skin underneath. Tokuya, the roosters inflate them, a sound is heard similar to a drum roll or a rattle.

On the currents of sagebrush grouse, there is a strict order, ranks and seniority among the roosters are observed. The main rooster is in the middle, next to it is the second, highest in rank. A little further away, two or six tertiary black grouse lek, and young people around the periphery. Their grotesque black-bellied figures (in white frills in front, with pointed "fans" in the back) stand, walk ceremoniously on hills and plains among the meager greenery of sagebrush meadows. Stately poses, guards breasts are swollen with balls, heads are sunk in magnificent collars ... “Bubbles” on the chest (“yellow, like two tangerines”), swelling and falling, flicker with signal lights in the rays of the rising sun ... A picturesque picture, but, unfortunately now rare. Few sagebrush grouse survive in the northwestern United States.

The current ends, and the roosters sort out the females in order of seniority: the main one usually gets three quarters, the second in rank is six times less, the three or six closest to them - the thirtieth part. Others - a few "unclaimed" grouse.

Wormwood grouse are often called sage grouse. But the first is more accurate, because these birds feed almost exclusively on the leaves, buds and fruits of the American wormwood. The food is soft and easy to digest. Therefore, the sagebrush grouse is "the only one of the chicken birds with a soft inner lining of the stomach." It does not even contain pebbles, which (from grains of sand to pebbles!) are swallowed by almost all birds, so that they grind hard food like millstones.

Pheasant

“As soon as the edge of the sky lit up with purple ... the Argonauts went up and sat down at the oars, two for each bench.”

We sailed for a long time, we saw a lot of miracles. They had fun on Lemnos, where "all the husbands were killed by the Lemnians for their treason." They fought with the six-armed on Cyzicus, freed (with just one arrival!) the unfortunate Phineus from the harpies. The king of the Bebriks Amik, "an invincible fist fighter", fell from the fists of Polideukos, and his soldiers were scattered. Through the terrible Symplegades they went to the Black Sea, Pontus Euxinus, and safely arrived in Colchis, having lost only Hercules and Polyphemus along the way - business delayed them in Mysia. From Colchis they brought the golden fleece (for what and to whom it is not entirely clear), Medea (on Mount Jason) and ... pheasants to the delight of all Greece. Since then, the fate of wonderful birds intertwined with human ones.

In Colchis, in Georgia, on the river Phasis, now Rion, the Greeks had a colony of the same name - this is already a reliable fact, not legendary. The multi-colored long-tailed birds that were found here were resettled by the Greeks to their homeland, to Hellas, and called pheasants. In the "golden age" of Pericles (4th century BC), pheasants were already bred throughout Greece. The Romans, among other military "prizes" received from the conquered Hellas and pheasants. In various countries of the empire, pheasants were arranged, even in Britain; fried pheasants were served by the thousands at feasts. Even the lions were fed in the menageries!

The empire fell, the Colchian prize passed to other conquerors. The pheasant, a tasty bird, fell in love with chivalry both fried and live - as a high-class hunting game. Pheasants were served on silver, in gold necklaces with pearls, to the loud sounds of a horn and the solemn rhetoric of a herald. The pheasant has become a symbol of the highest nobility. The pheasant oath was the most faithful among knights.

I swear before the ladies and the pheasant that I will not open this eye until I see the Saracen army!

I swear by a pheasant that I will not sleep on the bed, eat on the tablecloth, until I write my name with a spear on the gates of Jerusalem, etc.

The oaths are different, often strange and funny, but the pheasant was often mentioned in the most solemn of them.

Later, when geographical discoveries opened wide the "windows" and "doors" of distant countries, other pheasants, not Caucasian, were brought to Europe from Asia. However, the same species, only subspecies and races are different. The Japanese ones were especially valued, because they do not hide in front of the cop, who has made a stand, but take off and easily fall under the shot. Therefore, almost all European pheasants are hybrid, of various colors, some with a full, some with an incomplete white ring on their neck, and some without it. Very rarely one is like the other.

It is interesting that by this white “ring”, or “collar”, it is not difficult to find out where the pheasant comes from: from the west of its vast homeland or from the east. In Caucasian, North Iranian pheasants, the blue-green gloss on the neck is not separated by white rings or a semi-ring from the plumage of other tones lower on the neck and chest.

The common, or hunting, pheasant has 34 races and subspecies, and its range is wider than, perhaps, that of any wild chicken bird: from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, within temperate latitudes, and further beyond Pacific Ocean, in USA. In the New World, as well as in Western Europe, New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands, with the light hand of the Argonauts, hunting pheasants were resettled by people. Pheasants' favorite places are bushes, reeds along river valleys, floodplain forests, the outskirts of sown fields. Along the river valleys they also rise to the mountains, but not very high and only where there are dense shelters from different vegetation.

In early spring, in February-March, in some places later, pheasants from winter flocks go. Roosters choose nesting territories. Everyone has their own. He guards her, feeds on her and draws on her. He has his own favorite routes for walking, well-trodden paths. Walks, shouts "ke-ke-re" and "koh-koh" and flaps its wings. He will be silent for about five minutes, peck at something - he screams again. She will reach the end of the path from half a kilometer - and back, with a cry and flapping of her wings.

A single female, she is somewhere nearby, in the bushes, encourages his current enthusiasm with a low “kia-kia”.

Will come to him later. He immediately, like a domestic rooster, approaches sideways, lowering the wing facing her to the ground. And "coo": "gu-gu-gu." Like a rooster, it seduces with a found or imaginary grain, a worm.

They now roam their territory together. And if they part, they call each other. The partner's voice is well known. If someone else's rooster appears, they drive away. Some researchers argue that fights between roosters are “sometimes violent. Males fight in the manner of domestic roosters. Others: "Fights are never seen." Go and figure it out ... They probably fight - all roosters have a cocky disposition.

The nest is a hole in the bushes. Sometimes...

“In some parts of their range, pheasants make closed nests of a spherical shape with a side entrance. The walls of the nest are quite dense and protect well from wind and rain ”(Professor A.V. Mikheev).

There are 7-18 eggs in the nest. The pheasant will cover everything, sit out. If the feather clutch dies or is taken away from under the bird, as they do in hunting farms, it can lay 40 eggs per season (peach - only 25).

By the evening of the day when they hatched, the chicks leave the nest with her. They feed on insects. For the first time they spend the night on the ground under her wing. On the third day they are already fluttering, on the thirteenth they fly so that they follow their mother on their wings to the branches and spend the night there.

At the end of summer, different broods unite in flocks. At first, females take care of them, in autumn - roosters.

The famous hero of knightly traditions, the pheasant, is rather stupid (within the limits where one can talk about the mind of animals in comparative categories). In any case, a crow, a jackdaw, a goose, a parrot and many other birds are smarter than a pheasant. It is considered so. However, Oskar Heinroth somewhat shook this unflattering statement for a pheasant.

The young pheasant, whom he raised, became completely tame, sat on his hand, took food from the palm of his hand, loved it when they scratched “behind the ear”. He became very attached to the owner and was desperately jealous of his wife. He rushed at her, beat with his beak and spurs. Spurs, in fact, he did not yet have, they had not grown, the blows were weak. But he pinched with his beak until he bled.

Once they decided to check whether he recognizes people by sight or only the look of the dress is hateful to him. Husband and wife changed. The pheasant was a little confused, not used to seeing the owner in a woman's dress. He looked intently into his face and rushed to him, expressing his former joy and love. Then he turned to Heinroth's wife and with furious attacks threatened to tear her master's suit. When Frau Heinrot exchanged dresses with her sister, here, too, "looking into the face", he recognized his "enemy". Later, this pheasant at the Berlin Zoo also hostilely accepted the necessary services from the caretaker, but when Oskar Heinroth came to visit him, he recognized his friend and was delighted.

The rooster bustard, says Heinroth, behaved more stupidly in such situations: without making out faces, he was at enmity with the clothes of people whom he disliked.

Pheasants, except for those acclimatized in other countries, live only in Asia, there are more than two dozen species of them. Long-tailed, bushy-tailed, white-tailed, black-tailed, yellow-tailed, white-backed, horned, crested, eared, diamond, gold, silver - in a word, all sorts. The plumage of all is magnificent, current habits are amazing no less.

I’ll tell you about three, there’s no room for the rest.

On the slopes of the foothills of Tibet in April, a golden pheasant, spreading a colorful collar like a wide fan, so that it covers its beak in front, its neck in the back, jumps around the pheasant, turning, then one side, then the other, and shouts "metal voice". “Han-hok”, “han-hok” sounds like mowers are beating off a scythe. Over the collar, like a coquette from behind a fan, she winks with an amber eye to heighten the effect. A sharp turn, the other side to the female. Now, on the side facing her, the “fan” is unraveling, on the former it is assembled. Now from this side she winks.

In the Himalayan mountains at the same time, with a loud melodious whistle, which resembles the melancholy cry of the curlew, the monals call their chickens to the currents. The arrivals are seduced like this: first, the gentleman walks sideways with timid steps around the lady, lowering the wing facing her to the ground and resting his beak on his chest. The circles are narrower and narrower. Then he suddenly stood with his chest to her - both wings and

beak on the ground. Bow? Demonstration of brilliant plumage on the back. Bowing, the rooster walks rhythmically back and forth, spins around, scattering colorful flashes of "metal" plumage around. (This “pa”, however, is more common with another monal who lives in China, the green-tailed one.) Then ... the female is immediately forgotten, the hungry dancer is looking for something to eat. It is interesting that, digging in the ground, he digs it with his beak, like palamedeas, rarely with his feet, which is typical for chicken birds, but not for grouse.

In the forests of Kalimantan, the white-tailed pheasant, tokuya, reincarnates unrecognizably, as soon as the female comes to his call. It immediately becomes thin, flat and tall, shrinking to the impossible from the sides. The tail fluffed out like a white wheel behind its black body. But not like a peacock, on a different plane: no. in horizontal and vertical. The upper feathers of the tail turned into a wheel touch the back, and the lower feathers draw on the ground.

But the most amazing thing happens with the head. It has two pairs of bare blue growths. Fleshy decorations, like many roosters, turkeys, guinea fowls. Two, like horns, stick up, two hang with earrings down. Now these “horns” and “earrings” are filled with blood, swollen, stretched out unreasonably (two down, two up). They closed their beak, and the pheasant's head turned into blue, with a red eye in the center, almost half a meter long crescent, if viewed from the side. He became like a shark named hammer-fish. Do not forget that an impressive white circle is attached to the back of this strange figure. "There are no such birds!" - you involuntarily say, looking without preliminary explanations at the photo, which depicts this feathered creature.

wild chickens

Billions of chickens feed mankind with meat and eggs. In Germany alone, more than 13 billion eggs are produced annually from 75 million laying hens. On average, 126-200 from each (record - 1515 eggs in 8 years). 80 million non-breed chickens are fattened and slaughtered each year for meat. Chickens are everywhere, on farms around smog-shrouded cities, and in Indian, Negro, Papuan villages lost in the wilderness of forests. Is it conceivable to calculate how many of them (they assume - at least three billion) and what is their total and average egg production? But the productivity of wild chicken ancestors is known - 5-14 eggs per year. Poultry farmers of all times and peoples have worked hard.

Wild chickens are essentially crested pheasants. Somewhere between monals and silver pheasants, their place is in scientific system feathered world. They undoubtedly stand out from the typical series, but remain within the general framework that unites all the birds of the pheasant subfamily.

The direct ancestor of all breeds of domestic chickens, the Banking rooster, still lives today in damp and dry, mountain and lowland forests - from the Himalayan mountains, East India, through the whole of Indochina, Burma and southern China to Sumatra and Java. It is very similar to village roosters of a fiery ("wild") color. But less, s.grouse. Crows! Only the last syllable in "ku-ka-river" is short. In winter, they live in flocks. In the spring, the roosters lek separately on their private estates, gathering about five hens around.

The two species of wild chickens of India and Ceylon are similar to the banker's way of life and appearance. Painted, however, a little differently. All females have no crests or earrings. The fourth species, the fork-tailed wild rooster from the island of Java, is distinguished by the fact that it lives in monogamous monogamy with one hen, does not crow, but shouts piercingly: “Cha-a-ak!” He has a crest without notches at the top. The rest is the same.

Argus

A half-pheasant, half-peacock, called an argus, declares his love in an unusually picturesque manner. Many in the "Khokhlatkin family" talk colorfully: just remember the peacock's tail. But Argus, perhaps, surpassed all.

He has very long wing feathers, secondary (only, it would seem!) fly feathers. They are completely strewn with many eye spots, which are so well shaded that they seem to be convex. For them, the name Argus received in honor of the hundred-eyed giant from Greek legends.

The two middle feathers in the tail are also incredibly long - one and a half meters. The bird itself is twice as short. With such a tail, and most importantly, with such wings, it is not easy to fly. Not so much for the flight, for other things uses their argus.

In a clearing in the forest, he will clear the ground from leaves and branches, three steps there, three here. He leaves only to drink and eat and sleep on a tree at night, and again hurries to the “dance floor”. He calls the females with a long, plaintive “quia-u”, 10-12 times repeats it more slowly and quietly. The female replies: "How-ovo-how-ovo". Come running. Squat on the site. He is bent, stretching out his bare blue neck, squinting with his eye, sideways, expectantly, as if even incredulously, looking closely, walking around. The incomparable tail trails in the dust. Rhythmically, at a measured pace, he slaps his paws strongly on the ground. Step - slap. Slapping, he steps. Loud bangs are heard.

He has an absurd look, some kind of caricature: he looks like a hunched vulture or a Jesuit, like a caricature monk in tonsure (a black tufted fluff on a bald head). This is just the beginning. Prelude. The main show is ahead.

Here it is: he turned sharply to the female and knelt down, legs half-bent, chest near the ground. He spread his wings with two "round screens": with a wide wheel of many-eyed feathers he surrounded himself from the sides, and in front, and behind. As if out of a frame, very large and very chic, the head looks like cobalt blue, too scanty in a grandiose frame. And above this splendor, like banners, two tail feathers sway in the wind!

Freeze argus. Suddenly jump in place! He shakes his feathers so that a ringing rustle is heard.

The female looks indifferently at the picture pantomime. Soon there will be nothing left of her gentleman's gallantry. One for almost a month, without getting up to drink and eat, will sit on the nest. As soon as they dry, they will lead two descendants into the bushes, where there are many ant eggs and worms. They will run after her, hiding, like under an umbrella, under her long tail!

When the argus sleeps, long tail feathers, like watchful radar antennas, protect its peace. Argus live in Kalimantan, Sumatra and Malaya. So, the Kalimantan Dayaks say: at night, the argus always settles with its tail to the trunk. A wild cat, leopard or boa constrictor can only get to a sleeping argus along a branch. But on the way they will stumble upon two long feathers and, of course, wake up the argus. Without thinking twice, he will fly away, scolding the robbers with a loud cry, who even at night do not give rest to peaceful birds.

The tail of an argus is three times longer than that of a peacock! However, a clarification is needed here. The fact that the peacock, while tocking, spreads a chic fan over itself, which is usually called its tail, is not a real tail, not tail feathers, but upper covering feathers. Their poultry farmers are called "loop". This "train" is 140-160 centimeters. So the longest peacock feather is 17 centimeters longer than that of an argus. But this is not a record either: the pheasant Reinart has a tail of 173 centimeters! The longest feathers in the world of wild birds. Only the domestic decorative Japanese phoenix rooster has a tail of more than five meters.

Ocellated argus, pearl argus, Reinart's pheasant, simply Reinartia - this long-tailed bird is called differently. Reinartii live in the deep forests of Malacca and Vietnam.

Like the argus, the Reinartia rooster clears the dance floor from the leaves. In Malacca, where both meet, they sometimes take turns playing on the same platform. Kurmets-Reinartia also leads the chicks under the tail.

Argus nest on the ground, Reinartii often on stumps, on fragments of trunks, in general, somewhere higher, a meter from the ground.

Roosters have different “dances”: Reinartia poses more, ruffling the crest on her head with a white “ball”. Freezes in front of the female with outstretched wings, in a peacock manner, raising her tail above her. Feathers in the tail - with a human (above average!) Height and each width of the palm - 13 centimeters. Where does the strength come from in a small, in general, cock's tail, in order to straighten such a grandiose fan and lift it up!

Peacock

The peacock (who doesn't know him?) chose the green hills of India and Ceylon as his residence. Families with few children, just companies, crowned firebirds fly out of the forest to the cultivated fields of farmers. They will frighten them from here, run away briskly into the bushes. They will fly only when the chase is about to overtake.

Only Muslims, Christians and pagans scare them. Anyone who professes Hinduism is forbidden to offend peacocks. Near the settlements, where their religious customs are guarded, peacocks feed fearlessly in the rice fields. In the hot hours they doze, bathe in the dust along the forest roads. They sleep on trees chosen for more than one night, sometimes right in the villages.

The peacock is dedicated to the god Krishna. Not only for beauty, for considerable services as well.

The meowing call of the peacock "mi-au" in India is "translated" as "minh-ao", which means "it's raining", or, more precisely: "rain, go!" Indeed, before a thunderstorm and monsoons, peacocks are especially talkative, they “meow” a lot. During the rainy season they have current games. Well, it turns out, as if the peacocks are shouting "the abysses of heaven." For people whose lives depend on crops in thirsty fields, this means a lot.

Tigers, leopards guard the unwary in the forests around the fields and villages. Whether you are walking along the road, grazing cattle or collecting firewood, you must always remember the dangerous neighborhood, beware. Listen to the voices of the jungle. Langur, karker, chital and peacock are the main informants: with alarm cries they warn everyone who is vitally interested in this about the proximity of the tiger and leopard.

Snakes are the second, if not the first, danger of those places. And here the services of peacocks are invaluable. Many young cobras are killed and eaten. The whole district where they settle is cleared of this kind of snakes. Reasonable people love and cherish peacocks for this.

The peacock flows as if with the consciousness of its unconditional irresistibility. He does not run headlong after brides, like a rooster after hens. Waiting, showing off, their approach and respectful attention.

His harem is small: two or five crowned, like him, fell. But wedding invitation which they are honored to behold is regally splendid. The peacock's tail spread out like a hundred-eyed fan irresistibly draws them under its banner, like the victorious banner of a regiment of old veterans. Fireworks of gems... Rainbow cascade... Enchanting riot of colors! Magical dreams about the beauty of the birds of a lost paradise... (What else can I say?) There is an obvious excess of comparisons, but they do not give an idea of ​​the incomparable extravaganza that the bird, spreading its tail, presented in a clearing in the forest.

Peacocks at first "as if by chance" come to the captivating opening day, obedient to the meowing call of the male. As if completely indifferent peck at something that does not exist on earth. The peacock is unperturbed. Posing majestically, demonstrating a chic tail, "only some movements of the neck betray his excitement."

Then, deciding that the tribute to female coquetry has been given enough and its measure has been exhausted, he suddenly makes a sharp turn and turns to the lady ... an inexpressive rear.

The pava seemed to come to her senses and, in order to see the hundred-eyed many-flowers again, runs into the front of the peacock. But the peacock, shaking with a loud rustle and noise with all its feathers, ruthlessly deprives her of a charming spectacle. In short, he turned his back on her again.

Rainbow "eyes" on the tail seem to bewitched her, again the pava runs from the rear to the front. Another 180-degree turn leaves her in front of what she was running from.

And so many times. Until, with legs bent, the peahen lies before the peacock. Then, having rolled up the “banner”, he shouts victoriously “mi-ay”, and the final of the marriage ceremony is accomplished.

The female incubates three to five eggs alone. Nest - a hole slightly covered with dry grass in the thick of bushes, less often - above the ground, in a fork of large branches, in abandoned nests of birds of prey or on old buildings. The mother leads the chicks under her tail, like an argus, or close to her side.

“They grow slowly, the feathers of the crown begin to appear after a month, young roosters receive a full “train” only at the age of almost three years. By the sixth year of life, the feathers of the “train” are lengthened up to 160 centimeters ”(S. Retel).

Four thousand years ago, peacocks brought from India were already living in the gardens of Babylon and other kingdoms in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. Later, the pharaohs of Egypt, Halicarnassus, Lydian and other Asia Minor kings and satraps paid dearly for peacocks - the best decoration of their palace parks. After Alexander the Great and his 30,000 Greeks marched 19,000 kilometers from the Hellespont to India with victorious battles, they brought many peacocks to Greece among other “trophies”. From Greece they came to Rome. Here they were bred in extensive poultry houses. Among the Romans, utilitarianism always prevailed over pure aestheticism: they admired peacocks a little, having plucked overseas firebirds, they were fried and eaten. At the end of the 2nd century, there were more peacocks in Rome than quails, which, says Antiphanes, "their prices have fallen very much."

In medieval chronicles Western Europe peacocks are also mentioned, but until the 14th century there were, in general, few of them here. On holiday tables the peacock was served as a rare delicacy. Whom they just didn’t eat then with great appetite and predilection: hard swans, even tougher nightingale tongues, herons, cormorants, lynxes, dolphins ... There is no need to talk about bison, wild boars, deer.

It was all about the blue, or ordinary, peacock. There is another species in Burma, Indochina, Java. Javanese. His neck is not pure blue, but blue-golden-green. On the head is not a crown of feather rods, pubescent only at the ends, similar to a crown, but a narrow feather tuft, like a sultan on hussar shakos. Therefore, the first can be called "crowned", and the second - "sultan". Shy, cautious, aggressive. In poultry houses, parks and zoos, “sultan” peacocks are not easy to keep: they fight fiercely with each other and terrorize other birds. People are thrown at! Roosters and peahens. They beat with spurs and beaks. Weight 5 kilograms, and the strength of the bird is considerable. Javan peacocks "pose a serious danger to park visitors."

Their cry is not a melodic “meow”, but “a loud, trumpet “key-yaa, key-yaa!”, Which is heard mainly in the mornings and evenings. And yet - a loud, trumpet "ha-o-ha!". A cry of alarm is a warning to other peacocks and everyone who understands this: “So-so-kerr-r-r-r-oo-oo-ker-r-r-roo”, as if someone is knocking against each other with two bamboo sticks ". It happens to be in those places, remember just in case you hear such a “knock” in the forests: maybe a tiger or leopard makes his way through the bushes.

Are there any more peacocks? Until 1936, sophisticated experts would confidently answer: "no."

In 1913, the New York Zoological Society organized an expedition to Africa led by Herbert Lang. His assistant was a young scientist, Dr. James Chapin, whom the Congolese called "Mtoto na Langi" (Son of Langa). Scientists wanted to bring from Africa a live forest "giraffe" - okapi, discovered in 1900 in Eastern Congo.

But it was not so easy to capture an unsociable inhabitant of the dense forests of Africa. Two very young okapi, which they caught with great adventures, soon died. The expedition returned to America in 1915 without the okapi. However, scientists have collected other valuable collections in Africa, and among them are the hats of local hunters, decorated with beautiful feathers. The feathers were from different birds. Little by little, Chapin determined which species they belonged to. There was one large feather left, but no one knew whose it was. It was investigated by the largest specialists and connoisseurs of tropical birds, but the mystery remained as before unsolved.

After 21 years, Chapin came to Belgium to finish his work on the birds of Africa at the Museum of the Congo. Looking through the collections of birds here, Chapin accidentally discovered in one of the dark corridors a forgotten cupboard, in which uninteresting exhibits were kept. In a closet on the top shelf, he found two dusty effigies completely unusual birds, with feathers similar to the striped Congolese headdress that baffled American ornithologists. Chapin hurried to look at the labels: Young Common Peacock.

Ordinary peacock? But what about the Congo? After all, peacocks - this is known even to schoolchildren - are not found in Africa.

Chapin wrote later: “I stood as if struck by thunder. In front of me lay - I immediately realized this - the birds that belonged to my ill-fated feather.

He learned that shortly before the First World War, the Museum of the Congo received small collections of animals from other museums in Belgium. Most of them were effigies of the well-known birds of Africa. But two stuffed animals belonged, as the museum staff decided, to young Indian peacocks. And since the peacocks have nothing to do with the Congo, their stuffed animals were abandoned like unnecessary trash.

One quick glance was enough for Chapin to make sure that there were no peacocks in front of him, and no one else. famous birds not only a new species, but also a new genus. Undoubtedly, these birds are close to peacocks and pheasants, but they represent a very special variety of them.

Chapin gave them the name Afropavo congensis, which in Latin means "African peacock from the Congo."

He had no doubt that he would catch these birds where their feathers were obtained. In addition, one of his acquaintances, who served as an engineer in the Congo, said that in 1930 he hunted unknown "pheasants" in the forests of the Congo and ate their meat. From memory, the engineer sketched a drawing of this game. From the picture it became clear that we are talking about an African peacock. In the summer of 1937, Chapin flew to Africa. Meanwhile, the news of the discovery of a new genus of large birds - for the first time in many years! - quickly spread around the world. It also reached the banks of the great African river. When Chapin flew to the city of Stanleyville on the coast of the Congo, seven specimens of African peacocks, taken by local hunters in the surrounding forests, were already waiting for him there.

A month later, Chapin saw with his own eyes a live African peacock. A large rooster flew out of the thicket "with a deafening flapping of its wings." Chapin's handler Anyazi fired at the bird but missed. Two days later, Anyazi rehabilitated himself: he shot a "deafening" bird.

Chapin found out that the birds he discovered were well known to the Congolese: they call them itundu or ngowe. They are fairly common inhabitants of the vast forests from the Ituri River in the far northeast of the country to the Sankuru River in the center of the Congo Basin.

Afropeacock without a breathtaking tail: there is no "train". There are also no iridescent "eyes" on the feathers, only some have black, without gloss, round spots at the ends of the tail coverts. But the "crown" crowns the bird's crown. The bare skin on the head is gray-brown, on the throat it is orange-red.

African peacocks live in monogamy. Monogamy.

Afropeacock and Afropava are inseparable day and night. Fall fruits peck next to or not far from each other. They spend the night, fleeing from leopards, on the tops of giant trees. At night, their loud voices “Rro-ho-ho-o-a” are heard a mile away. "Govi-e." “Gove-e,” the female echoes.

They rarely come out on forest clearings and light edges. Except at the villages, for the fruits grown by people. Here they are caught in loops. Feathers - for decorations, meat - in the cauldron. (Or alive to the zoo.) In the thick of the forest it is difficult to get these peacocks.

Nests on high stumps, in splits of trunks broken by a storm, in mossy forks of branches. Two or three eggs. The female incubates. The male is nearby - on watch at the nest. His alarming cry sounds like the "clucking" of an excited monkey. The female on the nest immediately takes the necessary measures. Below falls to the "roost". Head - under the wing. It is difficult to notice her then on lichens and mosses, on which she incubates her eggs without litter.

After 26-27 days, Afropeacocks hatch. An impatient father is waiting for them downstairs. For two days they hide, gain strength in the nest under the mother's wing. Then they jump down to their father, he calls them with a ringing cackle. This night they sleep with their father under the wings on the ground. And then - who is with him, who is with his mother on low boughs, where (four-day old ones!) They already know how to flutter. Six weeks they live with their parents and then everyone goes to the forest world in his own way.

Argus are evolutionary links connecting pheasants with Asian peacocks. The African peacock combines peacocks with guinea fowls.

Guinea fowl

They have blue or red bald heads with fleshy outgrowths, “bluish” bare necks (red in forest species), white spots are scattered with beads throughout the plumage. These spots appeared as if from many tears that the sister of the legendary Meleager shed when he died from the far-striking golden arrow of Apollo. Having cried out her tears, the inconsolable sister of the fleet-footed hero turned into a guinea fowl.

However, two species of forest guinea fowl apparently shed few tears: they are spotless or almost spotless. This is a white-breasted and black guinea fowl. The rainforests of West Africa are their homeland. They live in secret. Little is known about their habits. They roam the ground in flocks, pecking at fallen fruit. One will find something tasty, but now everyone rushes to her with their shoulders, their legs try to push her away. And now they are pushing like an unorganized crowd for tickets at the cinema.

The strongest get food. It's not a fight, it's a power struggle. Sharp beaks do not /consume: unfeathered heads could hurt them badly.

Red tones on their heads, white on their chests are signal signs. Focusing on them, they find each other in the gloomy thickets.

Four more species of guinea fowl in Africa (one of them is in the south of Arabia). Crested guinea fowls are, in general, forest birds.

Helmet-bearing, or ordinary, guinea fowls are inhabitants of the steppes and savannahs. Domestic guinea fowl, which the Romans bred in poultry houses, are their descendants. Apparently, there were no guinea fowl in Europe in the Middle Ages. Later, the Portuguese brought them back here. Feral, now live in Madagascar, in the Mascarene, Comoros, Antilles.

The largest are vulture guinea fowls (dry steppes of East Africa, from Ethiopia to Tanzania). “Bald”, without crests and helmets, with a strong beak curved at the end, they resemble the heads of predators. Long black-white-blue feathers with a jet "cape" adorn the bottom of the neck, shoulders and chest. The middle tail feathers are elongated in a thin tuft, and at the end they are slightly bent upwards.

Like all guinea fowls, flocks. Like everyone else, they spend the night in the trees. Frightened, they quickly flee into thorny bushes. Few fly.

Turkey

There are no pheasants in America. Except, of course, those who have acclimatized here. In the USA and Mexico, wild turkeys represent the pheasant family. But almost everywhere here they are already exterminated. To see their spring currents now is a rarity.

The chest - with a ball forward, the head thrown over the back, the tail with a wheel, the bare neck, the head and the fleshy "horn" on the forehead turn blue with sapphire - in this form, a current turkey appears before the turkeys. Gradually pacing and freezing, they arrogantly look at him from the edge of the clearing. And he draws and draws the earth with his wings and mutters: "Gobbel-obbel-obbel." Here the people call him "gobbler".

Another "gobbler" will come here - fights cannot be avoided. The one who is weaker, feeling that his strength is leaving him, falls flat and obediently bows his neck to the ground. Pose of submission. If he doesn't, the winner will beat him to death. He will walk around the defeated, formidable and vengeful, but he will not touch the lying one. (To the instincts of a peacock, such a pose of submission does not say anything, only convenient for an attack. Therefore, in poultry houses, peacocks slaughter turkeys surrendering to their mercy.)

Turkeys arrange nests in a shelter: under a bush, in the grass. 8-20 eggs incubate for four weeks. Sometimes collectively. Once three were scared away from a common nest. Counted: it has 42 eggs!

Turkeys lead joint broods together: two mothers and their children mixed in a flock. Two weeks later, the turkey poults are already sleeping on the branches under the turkey wing. Autumn and winter are not far behind her. In winter, many families live in a flock. Roosters separately, male companies.

“Turkeys prefer legs to wings, and when the ground is covered with melting snow, they run away from their pursuers. Audubon on a horse chased turkeys for several hours and could not get ahead of them ”(Alexander Skatch).

For playfulness, the turkey was given the scientific name "meleagris", in honor of the swift-footed hero of Hellas - Meleager from Calydon.

Another wild turkey - ocellated, lives in the forests of Honduras, Guatemala and southern Mexico. They caught a turkey in 1920. They took it to London, but the cage with it fell into the Thames, and the rare bird drowned.

A quarter of a century ago, it was possible to breed eyed turkeys for the first time in one California zoo. (From a lame turkey by artificial insemination!) Now there are almost more of these turkeys in the zoos of the world than in the wild, in the forests of Yucatan, where they are only found, but very rare. Captive breeding may save this species from extinction.

The eyed turkey is similar to the common turkey, but smaller, lighter, the same blue tones on the bare skin of the head and neck, at the ends of the tail feathers are blue, black-trimmed eye spots, like those of a peacock.

Other pheasants

Ulars are children of mountains. This definition has a double meaning. There were no Caucasus, Himalayan, Altai and other Central Asian mountains, there were no snowcocks on the planet. When the mighty upheavals of the earth millions of years ago crushed, compressed and lifted high above the plains heaps of rocks, these mountains rose. Century after century, their ancestors inhabited the Ulars, higher and higher. And finally we reached the transcendental skies, to the very peaks under the caps of eternal snows, where a rare bird and a rare beast meet. Ulars usually live above two thousand meters, and above - up to 4-5 thousand, their usual residence. Only for the winter snowcocks go to the alpine zone, to the borders of mountain forests.

Ular is bigger than black grouse. In general, it looks like a partridge. His run is fast and agile. The flight is surprisingly fast and maneuverable. With a cry, the Ular breaks off the steep, strong flapping of the wings like a projectile throws it into flight. Then he plans and abruptly drops suddenly behind a hillock or rock.

At dawn, the Ulars scream a lot. At first, one of them hoarsely “cackles” or “clucks”, without ceasing for about five minutes. Others echo him. A helpful echo carries around the gorges and slopes a multi-voiced roll call, multiplying the choral sound.

The melodious whistles of ulars, other songs and cries, especially at mating season, enliven the languid silence of the desert highlands.

“The mating song of a male is quite complex and consists of three holenas, with a total duration of about six seconds ... males do not take any part in incubation and further care for offspring” (Professor A.V. Mikheev).

These are Caucasian. Naturalists write differently about the Himalayan and Tibetan snowcocks. Males are constantly on duty at the nests. Danger will happen, the ular rooster whistles loudly. The female lurks on the nest, and he takes the enemy away with a distracting maneuver. A family of ulars with dad at the head travels in single file. They wag their tails up and down as if urging themselves on. Children will grow up, and neighboring families will unite.

Caucasian ulars (about half a million of them) do not live anywhere except the Main Range of those mountains, whose name they bear. Four other species of snowcocks settled in the highlands of Asia - from Turkey to the Sayan and Mongolia.

Stone partridges, or kekliks, are so named for the cry "ke-ke-lek"; they shout, however, in a different way. Four species - mountains of North Africa, Europe, Asia. Acclimatized in England and the USA.

The plumage is variegated: ash-gray "with a pinkish tint". There are black-brown-white stripes on the sides, a light spot on the throat, girded with a black stripe. In deep gorges, on rocky foothills, even among deserts they run quickly.

“The female alpine keklik usually makes two nesting pits at a distance of about a hundred meters and lays nine to fifteen ... eggs in each. Even the great Greek naturalist Aristotle (384-322 BC) knew that one of the two clutches is incubated by a rooster ”(S. Retel).

A completely unusual division of parental responsibilities for birds!

There is a different opinion in science about the activities of the males of our kekliks: “The incubation is carried out by the female. As for the participation of a male in it, there are no exact data on this issue ”(Professor A.V. Mikheev).

Gray partridge - sparse forests, forest-steppes, steppes of Europe, the south of Western Siberia, Kazakhstan (from Scandinavia and the White Sea in the northwest, to the Caucasus and northern Iran in the south, east to Tuva).

The sign that distinguishes the gray partridge from other similar gray-brown birds is a rusty-brown, horseshoe-like spot on the belly. In females, however, it is less clear or does not happen at all.

The life of gray partridges is simple. In autumn and winter they roam in flocks. Early in the spring in the morning, males in their nesting areas call sharply, abruptly, sitting on mounds. Females are invited. Monogamy. When she flies up, he, with an open beak, fluffing up, with a grumpy "cluck", without particularly pretentious poses, tosses around her.

Somewhere in weeds, in bread, bushes along ravines, copses, a female incubates a dozen or two gray-brown-olive eggs in a small hole. (Very prolific bird - record: 26 eggs!) The male is not far from the nest. Perhaps even he incubates, according to some observations. If so, then in the genus of chicken birds this will be the fourth exception to the general rule, the other three are hoatzins, alpine kekliks and virgin quails. The chicks are led by a male and a female.

From areas where winters are snowy (northeast Europe, Western Siberia), in winter, gray partridges fly west to Germany, and south, to Ukraine, Ciscaucasia, and Central Asia.

The bearded, or Daurian, partridge is the border south of our country from Fergana to the east to Transbaikalia, the Ussuri Territory. Northern China. Similar to gray, but smaller. The spot on the belly is darker. Under the beak is a "beard" of stiff feathers, especially conspicuous in autumn and winter.

The white-throated Tibetan partridge lives in Tibet. In the same place and in the Himalayan mountains - the Himalayan. Males have small spurs, the three above do not have spurs.

Sand partridges. Two types: Persian - we call it desert - south of Central Asia, Persia, Iraq, Arabian - rocky foothills and mountains of Arabia, the African shores of the Red Sea.

There are also rocky (rocky hills on the southern borders of the Sahara) and forest partridges: 11 species in the mountain forests of Southeast Asia from the Himalayan mountains to Indonesia.

Turaches, or francolins, there are many different species in the steppes, savannahs, forests and mountains of Africa and Asia. The northernmost border, where turachs are still found, is the plains of Transcaucasia and the south-west of Turkmenistan. Turaches are no bigger than partridges, black, with white spots. A brown ring encircles the neck, white spots behind the eyes. Life is like partridges. Monogamy. The male displays, however, in a different way: throwing back his neck, he flaps his wings. Shouts, climbing a hillock, bush or termite mound. The turacians are famous for the most durable eggshell in the bird world: an egg, if dropped on the ground, will not always break.

A thousand years ago, the Arabs brought turaches to Spain and Sicily. But later they were all shot here.

Finally we got to the quails. 8 species in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia.

The cry of a quail - “drink-weed” or “time to sleep”, as it is sometimes heard, is familiar to everyone who has been in meadows and fields in spring and summer. Quail incubates 8-24 eggs for a little more than two weeks. The male is not around. He does not care about children, whom he has many from different females.

Quails are the only truly migratory birds in the order of chicks. Low above the ground at night they fly away to winter in Africa, India, China.

Already in early August, quails begin to slowly roam closer to the Crimea. They fly alone and only in the south they gather in flocks at well-known places of rest and feeding. In the Crimea and the Caucasus, especially many quails gather. They even come here from Siberia. On the slopes of Yayla, birds wait for warm and clear nights to set off on a desperate flight over the sea. But even in Turkey they do not stay long, they rush further to Africa.

For the summer, which is very dry and fodder in their homeland, North African quails fly north to Southern Europe. But they breed in Africa, in winter.

Many East and South African and Australian quails wander in drought to where it rained and grasses bloomed. They will bring out, raise chicks here and all together from those places are removed, following the movement across the continent of the rainy season.

Once upon a time, flocks of thousands of quails flew over Sinai and Egypt. Even 50 years ago, Egypt exported up to 3 million quails annually. Now very thin migratory flocks. Many quails are beaten on their migration in Southern Europe, many of them die from DDT and other insecticides that are used to treat fields, killing all life here ...

Quails of a special species or subspecies nest to the east of Lake Baikal. They call them "dumb" for a deaf, quiet cry, which from a distance looks like a buzz.

Since the end of the 16th century, the Japanese have been breeding quails as poultry. First, they were kept in cages for a sonorous "song", then - for the sake of meat and eggs. Every year, about 2 million tiny, 7 grams in weight, quail "chickens" are hatched in Japanese incubators. A month later, the cockerels are slaughtered, the hens are seated in cages. Each separately. A cell with a small box - 15 by 15 centimeters the area of ​​​​its floor. It has five floors of miniature nesting "boxes". Two weeks later, a half-month-old midget laying hen, getting used to her confinement, begins to lay eggs. After 16-24 hours - a testicle! So the whole year. Then she is put into a frying pan and a new, young one is placed in her place.

A quail egg is seven times smaller than a chicken egg: 9-11 grams. However, it is nutritious, and allegedly some medicinal properties were discovered in it. Therefore, now Japanese quails are bred in European countries: "eggs and meat are already playing an economic role."

Dwarf quail - Africa, India, Indochina, South China, Indonesia, Eastern Australia. These "hens" and "cockerels" from a sparrow! The corresponding weight is 45 grams. “Their chickens are from a bumblebee!”

The tiny rooster bravely defends his "Thumbelinas". Stretching out his neck, lowering his wings, ruffled up to appear bigger, he rushes to attack even the dogs!

He lives with one "chicken" and is always with his family. The kids are growing fast. They will live for two weeks and are already flying. At five months, males, at seven or eight, females are ready to breed.

Toothed quails, or American partridges - America from southern Canada to northern Argentina. The name "toothed" is given for the teeth on the mandible. More than 13 species: some with quail, others with partridge. Many have lush tufts on their heads. Californian and mountain quails have sultans: two thin long (6 centimeters!) Feathers stick out vertically upwards on the crown of the head. Tooth-billed singing quail (Central America) is the only songbird in chicken relatives.

His relative, the virgin quail (USA, Mexico, Cuba), does not sing, but he has two other rare qualities. First, the male sometimes incubates the eggs. The second - already from the first day of life, the chicks, resting on the ground or settling for the night, sit next to each other always in a circle: heads out, tails in. From whichever side the enemy approaches, he will be noticed by heads turned in all directions!

“Having chosen a place to sleep, one walked around it for a long time, soon the second joined him. They lay down on the ground, hugging each other tightly. Two more lay down from the edge, all with their heads outward, their tails inside the small semicircle that they formed with their tightly closed bodies. Other quails descended nearby and soon closed the circle.

But one was late, there was no place for him in the groats! Lostly, he ran, trying to somehow squeeze between the brothers, but in vain: they lay very tightly. Then he jumped up and, jumping over a closed line of beaks and heads, fell already in a circle on their backs. He “dug out” a place among them, then wedged himself between two quails, and his head stuck out into the circle of other heads ”(Linda Jones).

The Americans breed Virginian quails in cages and release them into the fields: "the described species belongs to the number of hunting birds." Many colored races have already been bred: white, black, yellow. Perhaps the virgin quail will soon become a poultry.

Satyrs, tragopans, or horned pheasants, live in the mountain forests of the Himalayas, Assam, Northern Burma and China. Five kinds. Little known but very interesting birds. Colorful like pheasants. Males have fleshy horns on the back of the head, and a weakly feathered leathery bag on the throat. When a rooster roosters, the horns, swelling with blood, grow before our eyes, and the throat sac swells up with a wide and long bib. The rooster shakes its neck so that its "bib" beats and "flies" around the head. Rhythmically raises and lowers the wings, “snorts and hisses”, the tail scratches the ground with a wide fan, the artist froze, closing his eyes in perfect ecstasy. The now swollen horns and swollen “tie” on the chest shine with turquoise, cornflowers and fiery red.

In general, the satyr rooster does the impossible. And this is just a "frontal" mating dance - facing the chicken. He was also preceded by a "side" with a ceremonial step, running, jumping and other tricks.

Before the start of the performance, the rooster crowed a lot in the morning: “Wei, waa, oo-a-oo-aaa” or “wa-wa-wa-oa-oaa”. Different species vary, but in all the last stretched stanzas sound like sheep bleating.

During the extra-marital season, tragopans are silent. The male and the female call to each other quietly, having lost each other in a dense forest. They live in pairs in the forest tops. There, less often on the ground, leaves, berries, fruits peck. Build nests in trees! If they find them abandoned by crows, squirrels, birds of prey, they occupy them by laying green branches, leaves and moss on top. Cream eggs - 3-6. On the third day, the chicks are already flying from branch to branch. They sleep in the trees under their mother's wing.

weed chickens

Nicobar, Philippine, Mariana, Moluccas, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Java, New Guinea, Polynesia (to Niuafu in the east), Australia - only here, and nowhere else, only in the local forests and bushes do birds do things that you can’t help saying until convincing evidence is presented: "It can't be." Undoubtedly, instincts guide those birds, but the actions to which they induce weed chickens invade the sphere of actions that seem to be thought out to the smallest detail.

450 years ago, two surviving ships of Magellan in a roundabout way got to the coveted "Spice Islands". Rushed to those places and the Dominican monk Navarette. Tales of overseas miracles were told by many then. It was even fashionable. But what Navarette told went beyond the embellishments and fantasies allowed by custom. He supposedly saw wild chickens on the islands of the South Sea. Those chickens did not incubate eggs, but threw them into all sorts of rot. (Eggs are big: larger than the chicken itself!) The rotting produced heat, it gave birth to chickens, as in that “furnace” invented by the Egyptians, which the Romans called the incubator.

Two centuries flashed like a second hand on the dial of history, Europeans settled in Australia. In the dry plains in the south of the continent, in the bushes among the eucalyptus forests in its east, here and there they came across large heaps of foliage sprinkled with earth. Burial mounds, perhaps? - they decided out of habit brought from their homeland. There were also smaller mounds. This determined a different origin: they were built by aboriginal women, entertaining black children.

The natives laughed merrily, marveling at the naive stupidity of the whites: “This “woman” is a leipoa with a tail and feathers!” What they told further, they had already heard from that monk...

In 1840 John Gilbert (definitely deprived of " common sense”) unearthed strange heaps: almost every one contained eggs. Three times more than chickens, although the bird that hid them in a makeshift greenhouse, as it turned out later, was as tall as a chicken.

They called her a megapod, a big-footed one. The common bigfoot lives in all countries where other weed chickens are found. Depending on the terrain and weather, the types of nests are different for him and combine almost all the methods known from weed chickens. In the north of Australia, in the tropical forests of Cape York, there are large-footed nests - an impressive cubic capacity of a greenhouse, a five-meter-high hillock ("Egyptian pyramids" in the world of birds!). The circumference of the mound is 50 meters, but this is a record, usually they are smaller.

A rooster and a hen have been working for years, sometimes in company with other couples. They rake the earth, sand and a few fallen leaves in light glades with their feet. Here the sun warms up the incubator well. In the thick of the forest, there are more leaves and any organic humus goes to work: in the shade, the heat of rotting plants will warm the eggs. Every year more and more in breadth and up the garbage heap grows. The rotten material is thrown out of it, the new one is poured. When the job is done, the greenhouse is properly processed, the rooster and the hen dig deep holes in it, up to a meter high. Laid eggs are buried in them vertically, with a blunt end up, and they are not returned to them anymore. After two months, the chicks themselves crawl out of the ground and scatter through the bushes.

In New Guinea and other islands, the hotbed nests of common big-footed birds are simpler: holes in the ground covered with rotting leaves. Where there are volcanoes, the birds do not bother even with this. The eggs are buried in warm ashes. If they come across somewhere in the forest bald spots, rocks well warmed by the sun, they will not miss such an opportunity: they will stick an egg in a gap between warm boulders. That's what it means to skillfully use the environment!

Maleos, Celebes weed chickens that live in the depths of the island, skillfully find places where volcanic ash and lava have warmed the soil, entrust the eggs buried here to its warmth.

When the path to the seashore is not very long, 10-30 kilometers, maleos leave the jungle for sandy beaches. Travel on foot, roosters and hens. They dig holes in the sand together. They lay an egg and fill the hole. Hundreds of maleos gather on some of these beaches. Some come, others leave, only to return in a week or two. For two to four months, this reproductive movement back and forth, between the forest and the sea coast, continues until all the hens have buried six to eight eggs in the sand.

Maleo, Wallace's weed chickens (Moluccas), common and two other species of megapods from the Niuafu and Mariana Islands, form a tribe, an association of closely related genera, small weed chickens. In the tribe of large weed chickens (they are about the size of a turkey), there are seven more species. In New Guinea, there are five species of telegalls, in Eastern Australia, the bush chicken or turkey, in South Australia, the leipoa, or eyed weed chicken.

Big weed chickens, not trusting the thermal instability of volcanic ash and sand, build incubators of a design already known to us. Roosters spend months on duty at the garbage heaps. They even sleep right there on the bushes and trees. From morning to evening, monitor the temperature regime in the greenhouse. If it is too small, sprinkle more earth on top, and rotting leaves inside. When it is large, the extra warming layer is removed or deep vents are dug on the side.

How do birds measure the temperature of a rotting mass?

They have some natural thermometers. What and where is not entirely clear. Telegalls - previous observations convinced of this - having dug out the upper layer, they press against the heap with their wings, their unfeathered underside. But they try it warmly and "taste" - with an open beak. The roosters of bush and eyed weed hens do the same.

“Here and there he rakes his incubator and sticks his head deep into the holes in it. I watched ... how the rooster took sand from the depths of the pile in its beak. Probably, the organs of the "temperature sense" in the big-legged are on the beak, possibly on the tongue or palate ”(G. Frith).

Until the rooster makes sure that the temperature inside the heap is exactly what is required, he does not let the chicken come close. She carries eggs anywhere, but not in an incubator.

But in the incubator, the desired thermal regime was established: not hot, not cold, about 33 degrees. The rooster of the eyed chicken rakes from above, scattering about two cubic meters of earth around. Two hours of work without rest. The chicken is coming. He tries with his beak, where is the most appropriate place. Dig a hole there. He lays an egg and leaves. The rooster buries it and again pours the discarded earth on top of the heap.

Female bush hens place eggs in incubators without the help of roosters. They do not scatter a lot of earth from above, they dig niches in a heap. Putting eggs in them, they bury them. They leave to come back in a few days and more than once. Whether the weather will be good or bad, whether the rooster will be able to maintain the desired temperature in the brood niches of the nest - depending on this, bush chicken eggs develop either faster or slower from 50 to 85 days.

Before the leipoa - the eyed rooster, nature has set a particularly difficult task. Leipoa live in dry places, among the bushes of the South Australian scrub. There are few rotting plants here, everything is dried up by the sun and winds. What's left is eaten by termites. In summer, the heat is at forty or more degrees, in winter it is very cool.

At the beginning of the Australian autumn, in April, Leipoa roosters quarrel with neighbors over places suitable for building greenhouses. It is not the fodder of their land that seduces them, but the abundance of rotten leaves and all kinds of garbage. The strong get the most extensive, cluttered pieces of land - up to 50 hectares of bushes, frail eucalyptus trees, all kinds of herbs that have sprouted here and there from dry land. On its site, a rooster digs a large hole, up to a meter deep, up to two and a half in diameter. All the leaves and branches that he finds, he rakes into this hole at night.

In winter, little rain falls in his homeland. The leaves in the hole, filled already above the edges, swell. While the garbage collected by him is still damp, the rooster fills the hole with sand and earth. A mound grows above it. The leaves are rotting. At first, this process is turbulent. The temperature in the incubator is too high, dangerous for the eggs. The rooster is waiting for the degrees to drop to 33 Celsius.

It takes about four months to set up an incubator and prepare the necessary thermal regime. Only at the end of August and in September, the rooster allows the chicken to approach his creation, having previously removed two cubic meters of earth from the "roof". The rooster covers the egg laid by her with sand, having affirmed it vertically, with the blunt end up, so that it would be easier for the chick to get out. The chicken will come. In four days, in a week or two. Deadlines are indefinite. Much depends on the weather. Suddenly it gets colder or the rain pours, the rooster will not let her in. Afraid in bad weather open the greenhouse: eggs can die from the cold.

For ten months he has been continuously on duty at the incubator. Lots of worries and things to do. Even before sunrise, in the gray light of dawn, a rooster bustles around the heap. Spring came. The sun warms warmer, and there is still a lot of moisture in the heap - rotting is rapidly going on. The rooster works for hours to break through the vents, to remove excess heat from the incubator. In the evening you need to fill up these holes. The nights are still cold. You also need to eat. He will run away, rummage here and there, somehow have a snack. Doesn't go far. And so that you don’t eat yourself, you also need to watch! A restless life for a rooster. Not a single bird, perhaps not a single animal in the world, devotes so much nervous and physical strength to labor and care.

Summer has come. The heat at noon is 40-45 degrees. Dry. Sultry. The rooster hurries to pour by noon more land on top of the pile. It will keep moisture in the nest and will not overheat. Thermal insulation! But that's only part of the day's work. Even before that, early at dawn, the rooster tore up the pile. Scattered a thin layer of sand on top of the ground. Ventilate in the morning cool breeze. By noon I poured this sand on top: chilled, it will bring coolness to the incubator in the hottest hours.

Day after day is running. Again autumn in scrapers. The rooster fumbles at the nest. The sun warms a little, he scatters sand from a heap. But for a different purpose. Not cooling, but heating is now required. Pale autumn sun. But still warm thin layer sand left over the eggs, and the one that is scattered on the ground around. By nightfall, a rooster will collect it, lay it like a heating pad over eggs.

And one by one, the chickens come out of the pile. For this, all the trouble and work. But the father does not notice the children. It does not help to quickly get out of the cradle, which, if it rains, can become their grave. They themselves make their way through the meter thick of the earth and all the dust there. Like moles, with their wings, legs, breasts, they move apart the blockages of foliage, branches, humus and sand, making their way up to the light.

On the wings of the chicks, flight feathers are already fit for flight. Each is covered with a sheath of gelatinous mucus so as not to fray. While they were digging the ground, all the covers were torn off.

We got out - and rather into the bushes. The chick will hide there and lies, breathing heavily. Very tired. Feathers and fluff dry. In the evening, having rested, it will flutter on the branch. Overnight on it. Alone, without a father, without a mother, without brothers and sisters. He, one might say, does not know them. Without a family, he lives from birth to death. In a year, the almighty instinct will wake up in him - to rake garbage into a heap.

And the rooster, his father? He soon leaves, leaving to the mercy of the elements his structure, on which he worked for almost a year. But his vacation is short - two months. And then back to work days.

“This particular type of 'hatching' is certainly not an ancient sign. It later developed in birds of the same evolutionary line as other smokers. It is worth looking at one such “laborer”, who for months from dawn until late evening rakes leaves and earth back and forth, digs holes, and even madly chases every creature that even looks a little like a rooster, it immediately becomes clear that this whole thing is no not "progress" ... The old-fashioned way is more convenient: it's much nicer, nicer and calmer to sit on the eggs for a couple of weeks ”(Berngard Grzimek).

Gokko, or kraksy

A crest on the head, "combed" forward or backward, for others - a fleshy red horn on the forehead or a blue comb. There are growths on the beaks. Painted waxes. Feathers are black. The belly is white or brown. The tails are long, the legs are strong. Growth is different - from a partridge, a black grouse or a capercaillie ...

This gokko - "pheasants" (as they are called here) of the American selva, the local copses and llanos. From southern Texas to northern Argentina 36-47 gokko species. Food is determined by him - fruits, berries, leaves, buds. Insect seasoning.

Gokko scurry, flutter, run along the branches in the tops of the forest (sometimes upside down, intercepting the branch above with their feet!).

In the dense forests, in the bushes along the outskirts of fields and pastures, night and day, but especially at dawn, their strange cries are heard: guttural and melodic, deafening, “like a sound explosion”; and muffled groans of “mm-mm-mm” (without opening its beak, the helmet-nosed gokko “mumbles” like that); monotonous "boo-boo-boo" (this is a big gokko); castanet clatter of beaks, "wooden" flapping of wings, a quiet whistle of "peeee" and a clear chant of "cha-cha-lac, cha-cha-lac".

“Cha-cha-lak” or “ha-ha-lak” is clearly pronounced by small gokko from the genus Ortalis, as if introducing themselves to everyone and everyone. He sees a chachalak ocelot, some other cat, a person, and immediately announces it loudly to the whole forest. Neighbors immediately pass the message on, and such a deafening cacophony rises in the forest that even plug your ears!

“After the nearest screamer is silent, other voices are still tearing in the distance. The choir seems to fall silent, only far away, perhaps a kilometer away, it can still be heard. But then a wave of screams returns with renewed vigor, growing like the roar of the surf, and finally, the nerve-rending cries of six or eight chachalaks almost directly above the observer’s head rumble deafeningly (Alexander Skatch).

Gokko nests in trees and tall bushes. Loose platforms of branches, leaves and grass, often still green. A few sometimes nest on the ground. Two, rarely three eggs are incubated by females. There were four and even nine eggs in the nest, but they were probably laid by different hens of the same polygamous rooster. Some gokko are monogamous. The couple have been inseparable for years. Penelope, or red-bellied gokko, families - male, female and brood - roam within their jealously guarded territory.

As fluff and feathers dry, gokko chicks leave high nests. They jump down, or the mother one by one, holding them between her legs, takes them to the ground. (And from the ground to the trees!) Chachalaki are sometimes in such a hurry to part with a cramped nest that the chicks that have not really dried up yet, two or three hours old, are carried to the ground in their paws. There they feed berries and insects from their beak. They spend the night with the whole family in the trees. On the second day already, chicks can flutter quite high.

The most goiter bird

It is still not really clear to which birds the hoatzin should be included in the order. They determined it by the opinion of the majority to chicken as a suborder.

Hoatzins have chicks with claws on their wings, like the first bird of Archeopteryx! Unfeathered, they climb branches, one might say, on all fours, clinging to a branch with the claws of their legs and wings. And if a tree snake or a wild cat catches up with them, they fall right into the river - nests are usually built above the water. They dive and swim. They themselves then climb the tree and into the nest. It can be said that you cannot drive an adult hoatzin into the water with a stick, although he once swam in his infancy. It is not easy to drive him to the ground either: everything jumps and flutters along the branches.

It “flutters”, because the hoatzin really does not know how to fly. If it is necessary to fly over the channel, it plans, like some kind of flying squirrel, from a high tree to a low one on the other side of the water. Waving flight is able to overcome only a small space. Then he thumps on the branch and lies, stretched out, resting for a long time.

The hoatzin has an exorbitantly large goiter, it weighs 7.5 times less than the bird itself. And the stomach is tiny, 50 times smaller than the goiter!

The goiter is extremely muscular, reinforced from the inside with horny linings. Divided into different sections, like a cow's stomach. A green mass rushes into the goiter: leaves eaten by hoatzin. The leaves of aroid plants are hard, rubbery. It's not easy to digest them. That is why, obviously, such a goiter was needed.

And in order to “mount” the giant goiter into the bird’s chest, nature had to strongly squeeze the breast bones and muscles flapping wings, reducing their volume, and hence their strength.

"Hoatzin" is an ancient, Aztec name, forgotten in the homeland of the bird. It is commonly referred to here as "stinker". The smell of this bird is unpleasant. Therefore, hoatzins are not hunted.

“This is happiness for a rare crested bird. However, in fact, not meat, but only the contents of the goiter smell like that. Removing the skin from one hoatzin ... I was convinced that the all-pervading smell, which reminded me of a cowshed, comes only from food that fills the goiter ”(Günter Niethammer).

The detachment is large and ancient. The wings of chicken birds are short, wide, facilitating a quick vertical rise. They wave them often, sometimes they plan, but peacocks do not plan. They run fast on the ground. The legs are strong, with spurs in the males of many species. The grouse has horn fringes along the edges of the fingers: they help to grip the icy bough more tightly and walk on loose snow without falling through.

Large goiter, only some gokko do not have it; the coccygeal gland in all but the argus, and the blind outgrowths of the intestine.

The type of development is brood. Males are larger than females and more brightly colored. Mostly polygamous. But monogamous, contrary to previous ideas, as it turned out, are not at all rare: African peacocks, hazel grouses, gray, white, forest partridges, snowcocks, kekliks, francolins, fork-tailed wild chickens, crested guinea fowl, tragopans, collared hazel grouses, dwarf, pearl, virgin and all other scalloped quails, hoatzins, many gokkos, and apparently golden pheasants.

Males, even in monogamous ones, usually do not incubate or care for the chicks.

ostrich from south america 5 letters

They take care - in guinea fowl, francolins, African peacocks, white partridges, snowcocks, pearl and toothed quails, many gokkos, collared and, apparently, ordinary hazel grouses.

Males incubate (in turn with the female) with hoatzins, alpine kekliks, sometimes virginian quails and gray partridges (there is such data). Some species of gokko seem to live in monogamy for years.

Peacock. Photo: Ricardo Melo

Nests on the ground - a small hole, lined with dry grass and leaves, later - feathers. Peacocks sometimes - in the fork of thick branches, on buildings, even in abandoned nests of birds of prey. In pearl argus - often on stumps. In African peacocks - always above the ground: on broken trunks, in the fork of large branches. Only hoatzins, tragopans and, as a rule, gokko nests are always in trees.

In clutch from 2 to 26 eggs (in most), on average - 10. Development is fast. Incubation - 12-30 days.

Having dried, usually on the first day the chicks leave the nest for their mother. Their tail and flight feathers grow early, and therefore already one-day (weed chickens), two-day (pheasants, gokko, tragopans), four-day (grouse, African peacocks) and a little later, many others can fly. Chicks of African peacocks, Virginian quails fly well on the sixth day after birth.

Wild chickens, turkeys, pheasants and others - on the ninth or twelfth.

Sexual maturity in small species (dwarf quail) - 5-8 months after birth. For the majority - for another year, for large ones (gokko, peacocks, turkeys, argus) - after 2-3 years.

There are few truly migratory birds among chickens - 4 species, all quails.

Nomadic, partially migratory, from the northern regions - gray partridges, virginian quails, wild turkeys.

During molting, the ability to fly is not lost. Grouse, molting, shed the horny covers of the claws, beak, and fringes of the fingers.
250-263 species in countries around the world, except for Antarctica, the nearest part of South America and New Zealand.

They are settled in different countries: only in New Zealand 9 species of chicken birds from other parts of the world are acclimatized. In Europe, more than 22 foreign species of this order are bred, many of them in the wild. The smallest of chickens weigh 45 grams (dwarf quail), the largest - 5-6 kilograms (eyed turkeys, peacocks, capercaillie) and even 10-12 (wild turkeys, argus).

Virginian and pygmy quails lived in captivity up to 9-10 years old, tragopans - up to 14 years old, African peacocks, golden pheasants, capercaillie - up to 15-20 years old, Asiatic peacocks and argus - up to 30 years old.

Five families of chicken birds:

Hoatzins. 1 view - South America.

Weed chickens, or bigfoots. 12 species in Australia, Polynesia and Indonesia.

Tree chickens, or gokko.

36-47 species in Central and South America.

Pheasants - pheasants, peacocks, turkeys, guinea fowls, chickens, gray partridges, quails, snowcocks, kekliks. 174 species in almost all countries of the world.

Grouse - black grouse, hazel grouse, capercaillie, white and tundra partridges. 18 species in the northern regions of Europe, Asia and America.
In Russia, there are 20 species of this order (8 - grouse, 12 - pheasant).

Chicken from South America

We greet you!
You came to this portal because you are looking for the answer to a task from a quiz game.
We have the largest database of answers on our website and many other similar games.

So that you can quickly find the answer to the required question from the quiz, we recommend using site search, it is located in the upper-right part of the page (if you are browsing our portal with mobile phone, then look for the search form at the bottom, under the comments).

To find the required question, it is enough to enter only the initial 2-3 words from the required question.

If suddenly something incredible happened and you did not find an answer to a question through a database search, then we kindly ask you to write about it in the comments.
We will try to fix this as soon as possible.

Quiz question:

Which chicken is a migratory bird? Answer options: Peacock Quail Turkey Pheasant