Birds of cultural landscapes and urban environments. City birds and their role in city ecology

The most powerful factor that changes natural landscapes is human labor. The use of natural resources is sometimes unsystematic and accidental, but under our socialist forms of economy it always changes the character of the country in a planned and deliberate way, creates new types of landscapes in place of former ones.

1 Portenko L.A., Outline of the bird fauna of Western Transcarpathia. Memorial in memory of Academician P. P. Sushkin. Ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, M.-L., 1950.

Deforestation, plowing virgin steppes, artificial irrigation, draining swamps, laying roads, highways and graders, building cities and towns, planting artificial forests and creating plantings to strengthen the sands - all this changes environmental factors beyond recognition.

The change from the virgin steppe to the cultural landscape does not have any significant effect on representatives of songbirds. The song passerines, belonging to the most perfect groups of the class of birds, fully possess the ecological plasticity that allows animals to widely adapt to changing environmental conditions and spread in them. The species composition of birds, characteristic of the steppe landscape, will remain unchanged. Larks, buntings, coinage, yellow puffins will remain just as numerous here. Plots of perennial grasses, collective farm crops, hedges and groups of trees planted near the fields will also attract a variety of warblers, gray warblers, shrikes and other birds that are not characteristic of the open steppe.

Tree plantations, produced in order to fix the shifting sands in a number of southeastern regions of our country, will create convenient places for the settlement of songbirds. We had to examine such plantations - "forest dachas" of the Stavropol Territory, surrounded by sagebrush steppe and outcrops of loose sands. When approaching these "forest dachas", a very special bird life immediately catches the eye, bubbling up in them. The monotonous composition of the steppe larks, chasers, rare black-headed buntings is replaced by numerous ones associated with trees and shrubs, great tits, warblers, black-headed shrikes, shrikes-shrikes, marsh warblers, pale robins, field sparrows and flycatchers. Pine plantations in the central part of our country are somewhat different. We had occasion to observe the life of songbirds in such forests 10-50 years old in the Bryansk region. More or less extensive areas are occupied by dense pine forests. The absence of light in them hinders the development of not only shrubs, but also herbaceous vegetation and does not create favorable conditions for the settlement of birds in them. Rare pairs of finches and gray flycatchers, even rarer great tits, and misshapen thrushes that accidentally fly here - these are, perhaps, all the songbirds of these new forests.

The biggest changes, however, in the natural landscapes are brought by the settlements and cities that arise among them. Many of them have existed for more than one hundred years, others have arisen in our time. Some songbirds, over hundreds of years of living in settlements, have completely adapted to living near human habitation and have lost direct links with natural landscapes. Other birds, preferring to settle near humans, still live in natural conditions, while others, finally, before our eyes, following the development of culture, penetrate into cities and towns from the surrounding forests and fields.

We have to meet the songbirds of cities and villages most often: we can observe them, they are closer to us, regardless of our specialty and inclination, and therefore we will dwell on these “companions” of ours in somewhat more detail.

There are no cities in our country devoid of a bird population (regardless of the size of the city and its geographical location). Even in such a huge city as Moscow, there are relatively many songbirds. We met garden redstarts, gray flycatchers, great tits, finches in Moscow for nesting, on the outskirts of the city - white wagtails and starlings, to which we must add numerous house and field sparrows, less often city and village swallows. During the autumn and spring migrations, the number of species, of course, increases. When listing the species of Moscow city birds, we "talked only about those that nest inside the city limits - on boulevards, squares, in small gardens of quiet streets and in the city buildings themselves. In large gardens and parks surrounding Moscow (Sokolnichesky, Leninsky Gory and others), there are many more bird species.

In cities smaller than Moscow, especially in more southern latitudes, there are even more nesting songbirds and their number can reach up to 25-30 species (in the city of Ordzhonikidze of the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - 26 species).

Songbirds inhabiting cities can be divided into three groups. The first should include those species that are not found without humans and outside human settlements. These are specific birds of the city, relatively few,. lost characteristics and "habits" of "wild" birds. These include house sparrows, city and village swallows and jackdaws. However, urban swallows, or funnels, in the Caucasus, and especially in the Central Asian Soviet republics, also nest in natural mountain landscapes.

The second group of urban songbirds includes species that are quite adapted to the conditions of existence in the cultural landscape of the city, mainly settling in it, not avoiding the proximity of humans, but also nesting in natural landscapes. These birds are called "preferents" ("companions") of human culture. Among the birds of the cities, they include starlings (settling in our specially made birdhouses), white wagtails, garden redstarts, gray flycatchers and field sparrows. These four species often make their nests in the crevices of houses and fences, under the roofs, under the rafters of barns and warehouses. For the Carpathians, one more species must be added to these birds - the canary finch, a bird that is currently spreading to the east and has reached the Soviet republics of the Baltic states and the Dnieper. A. B. Kistyakovsky writes that the canary finch is an ordinary nesting bird in the parks and gardens of the villages of Transcarpathia and large cities. It breeds in Uzhgorod, Mukhachev, Ture-Remet, Rakhiv, Yesen and other cities. Between settlements, this bird is rare and especially often settles in small gardens, arranging its nests on spruces planted in them.

The first two groups of birds - specific urban birds and "companions of culture" - are the main "core" of the urban fauna of songbirds (understanding the term "urban" in the broad sense of the word). For the most part, these are widespread forms, and they can be found in many cities of the USSR, from Vologda and Kirov in the north to Tbilisi and Yerevan in the south. The third group of birds that settle in our cities includes species that are most often confined to the forest landscape. Our modern cities, with their green spaces, with their boulevards, parks, squares, reproduce forest and park landscapes in miniature. It is quite clear that songbirds easily adapt to living in new conditions created by man. These birds do not retreat before human culture, but on the contrary, more and more adapt to it. In the course of the historical process of adaptation, due to the growth in the number of human satellites, the bird population of cities and towns will increase. The songbirds of this category include blackbirds, tits - great and blue tit, shrike-shrikes, garden and black-headed warblers, goldfinches, greenfinches, finches, gray flycatchers and many others.

We can find data that make it possible to understand the moments of adaptation of birds of this group to life with humans from the very beginning of their appearance by studying the behavior of songbirds in sparsely populated areas. The first step in approaching man will be the use of human structures as nesting sites and settlements close to man in order to obtain food. Let us present some data of our observations.

Pink starlings are not ordinary human companions. They always settle in significant colonies in natural crevices and potholes of steep slopes of ravines, steep cliffs of mountain cliffs and gullies. We also had to observe large colonies of pink starlings nesting in a completely different environment. In 1926-1927, in the eastern part of the Caspian steppes, the steppes of Stavropol and the Grozny region, mass reproduction of locusts was noted. It attracted masses of pink starlings, for which locusts are the main food. Driving around the steppes of Stavropol in May-June 1927, we found nests of pink starlings in piles of dung and in pyramids of adobe bricks stacked in a checkerboard pattern near most farms and settlements in the Achi-Kulak district of the Stavropol Territory.

Adobe bricks, made from clay and finely chopped straw, mixed together, are made here in the southeast in the spring, then dried under the sun in the first summer months, and only after that they are used for buildings. Starling nests were placed in holes between adobe bricks and in crevices between layers of dung. They contained eggs of varying degrees of incubation and newly hatched chicks.

Black redstarts, stone sparrows, alpine finches, mountain buntings and mountain wagtails are common birds of the middle and high mountain zone of the Central and Eastern Caucasus. All these birds, belonging to various systematic groups, usually arrange their nests in rock crevices, in mountain caves, under bushes of plants growing on cliffs. But in a number of cases, in the highland zone of the Caucasus, one can observe the listed birds nesting also close to humans. Here they build their nests in the voids that are in the loosely built and not fastened stone slabs of the fences surrounding the saklis and auls of the highlanders, in the walls of watchtowers and residential buildings. Birds settle near people, as there are many insects near barns and cattle pens, and small home gardens along their edges are densely overgrown with nettles, thistles and other weeds. These plants always have a lot of early ripening seeds.

A particularly interesting mountain bird, showing the first timid attempts to approach humans, is the white-throated thrush,

White-throated thrushes are cautious and timid birds. As mentioned above, they inhabit the thickets of rhododendrons and the upper border (chops) of birch forests of the subalpine meadows of the Caucasus. Very close in their systematic features to blackbirds, but in contrast to the latter, more and more approaching a person, white-throated thrushes clearly prefer a deserted area. However, several times we had to observe in the high-mountain villages of Georgia and Dagestan how, during the period of rearing their chicks, white-throated thrushes regularly flew into the yards of the outer houses of auls to search for various insects there, most often large larvae of dung beetles.

From the above examples, the following conclusions can be drawn: mountain buntings, finches, stone sparrows and other songbirds are gradually becoming such culture preferences for cultivated mountain landscapes, as the previously noted birds are in non-mountainous conditions.

White-throated thrushes make weak attempts to approach humans. After a number of generations, these birds will probably acquire the qualities of their black relatives, turning into more common inhabitants of the cultural landscapes of the high-mountainous human settlements of the Caucasus.

The example of pink starlings and white-throated thrushes convincingly testifies to the presence of high ecological plasticity in songbirds, which easily adapt to new and completely unusual conditions of existence for them.

The composition of the bird population of any landscape, as well as of any organisms inhabiting this landscape, is never in a state of immobility or any balance, always changing both quantitatively and qualitatively. This continuous dynamics of the bird population is especially noticeable when studying the fauna of the cultural landscape, in particular the fauna of cities. Before our eyes, Soviet cities are growing and changing their appearance. Gardens and parks appear in them, green spaces grow around. At the same time, new conditions for the existence of birds are being created.

The bird population of cities in our Soviet conditions, as a rule, with very few exceptions, tends to increase. A well-known fact - a decrease in the number of house sparrows in cities following the development of mechanized transport - is explained by the impossibility for sparrows to eat undigested grains, previously collected by birds in horse excrement. This fact, however, is not absolute. House sparrows, which have declined in numbers in recent years in major cities our country, over the same period of time, they have inhabited and are inhabiting more and more new settlements that arise in previously uninhabited places - the Far North, along the Pechora River, in the semi-desert regions of the southeast of the RSFSR, and so on.

Consequently, the total number of sparrows living in the USSR is constantly in motion, and fluctuations in their numbers in total (but not in individual cases) apparently have the same progressive character.

We had to study in some detail the qualitative and, in part, the quantitative composition of the bird population of the city of Ordzhonikidze in the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Observations were made for decades and gave very revealing results.

Let us briefly present some data relating only to the group of songbirds, and the conclusions arising from these data.

During the period from 1917 to 1920, the total number of songbird species nesting within the city of Ordzhonikidze was 26. In 1929-1932, this figure dropped to 18.

Finally, the data for 1946-1948 again show an increase in the number of nesting species, almost reaching the 1920 figure of 24 species.

How can such a fluctuation in the number of nesting species in the same urban cultural landscape be explained? Upon careful analysis, it turned out that the number of birds characteristic of the city - house sparrows (for Ordzhonikidze and field ones), urban and rural swallows remained almost unchanged. However, shrike-shrikes, lentils, blackbirds, wrens, forest convoluters, gray warblers and swamp warblers have ceased to nest in the city.

A number of species also decreased in the number of nesting pairs, namely greenfinches, goldfinches, finches, tits, black-headed warblers and others.

The main reason for this disappearance and quantitative decrease of songbirds nesting in Ordzhonikidze was the change in the appearance of the city. Period civil war, economic devastation during it and the period immediately following it, led to the destruction "for firewood" and in strategic goals protective plantings (trees and shrubs) in gardens (often gardens themselves) and in city parks. The cemeteries located within the city limits were completely bare of bushes and old hollow trees, which provided shelter for numerous birds. The difficulty of restoring a "green" economy, which requires several years for its development, the inability to find suitable places for nesting did not allow all the listed species of birds to continue to live in the city. And, on the contrary, birds that are typical for cities and villages, not being associated with tree and shrub vegetation, but building nests on buildings and under the roofs of houses, did not suffer from the change in the “image of the city”.

The fact of a new rise in the number of birds by 1946-1948 fully confirms our conclusions. Concern for the "green" economy of the city was one of the most important concerns of the Soviet urban economy. Thanks to this, the number of green spaces in Ordzhonikidze not only recovered, but also exceeded the number of the pre-revolutionary period. “The trees that have grown over two decades have again made it possible for songbirds to settle in the city, which we can see from the figures for 1946-1948.

The species that did not return to the city after the forced “leaving” of it include three: lentils, forest hawthorn and wren. These birds usually build their nests in thorny and other bushes, that is, in just such plantations, which have not been restored in Ordzhonikidze. Compared with 1917-1920, in 1929-1932 and in 1946-1948, the appearance of one "new" species - mountain wagtails was also stated.

The destruction of tree and shrub vegetation was not the only reason for the decrease in birds in the city of Ordzhonikidze, but we think it was one of the main ones.

The dynamic state of bird populations of one species and the totality of species inhabiting the landscape can be traced under any other conditions, but observations in the city, where this dynamics is expressed more clearly, are especially convenient.

The value of songbirds in nature and in the human economy.

Songbirds, which, as can be seen from the previous presentation, occupy a significant place both in natural and cultural landscapes, are not only “witnesses” (it is impossible to say about birds “dumb”!) of the ongoing processes, but actively participate in them.

The importance of birds in nature, and, consequently, in forestry and agriculture, connected by inextricable ties with nature, has been and is being given much attention. At present, especially as a result of a number of experimental works by Soviet Michurin ornithologists, one can speak about the significance of birds not only on the basis of speculative conclusions, but on the basis of strictly verified experimental, digital, factual material.

In this question, as in any phenomenon arising from the activity of organisms, it is always necessary to proceed from certain concrete data that relate not only to certain kind birds, but also to those conditions of existence of a given species in which it is located in a certain place and in certain time. One and the same species of songbirds can be exceptionally useful under certain conditions, but relatively harmful under others.

A. B. Kistyakovsky, who studied many stomachs of great tits and blue tit, writes: “The blue tit and the great tit are undoubtedly very useful birds. Their main food is beetles and bugs, which include a number of pests. remnants cultivated plants not found in the stomachs at all.

KN Blagoeklonov gives a long series of examples of the colossal work that insectivorous birds do "for humans", feeding mainly on pests of agriculture and forestry. For example, one yellow-headed kinglet destroys from 8 to 10 million small insects a year. One swallow during the summer catches from 500 thousand to 1 million flies, mosquitoes and aphids.

1 Kistyakovsky A. B., Birds of the gardens of the lower reaches of the Kuban. Proceedings on the protection of plants. Series IV, no. 2, L., 1932.

In the ravine oak forests of the Rostov region (Kalitvinsky forestry enterprise), attracted birds completely eliminated the centers of sawflies. As a result of attracting birds on the Podcherkovsky collective farm (Dmitrovsky district of the Moscow region) in the garden of the collective farm, “it was not necessary to specially remove the nests of hawthorns or golden tails, to fight against suckers and silkworms, since all this was done by birds”1.

VI Osmolovskaya and AN Formozov,2 who give the most complete summary of the significance of birds as destroyers of forest pests, report a number of verified facts characterizing this significance. The main food of finches, for example (not exclusively insectivorous birds), from May to August are small beetles (80% of all insects they eat), of which 66% are harmful species.

According to observations on the nutrition of oriole chicks in the Kamyshin forest nursery in June 1949, it turned out that 97.5% of the food eaten by birds falls on the share of harmful insects (butterfly caterpillars, small beetles, adult orthoptera) and only 2.5% of the food is berries (cherries ).

Limiting ourselves to the indication of these data given in the literature devoted to the question of the importance of birds (for more details, see the above reports by K.N. Blagosklonov, A.N. Formozov and others), we present some materials from our observations.

In the summer of 1921, during the mass reproduction of mouse-like rodents, which covered a vast area of ​​almost the entire south-east of the RSFSR, social voles and other small rodents were the main food of the rooks, feeding their chicks in June-July. Birds flew in flocks from their nesting sites to the nearest rodent colonies and actively hunted for animals, lying in wait and grabbing voles that ran out of their holes. In the crop and esophagus of one rook, we found four half-adult voles at the same time. When the corn beetle-kuzka reproduces on grain crops in the Stavropol Territory, the same rooks, larks, black-fronted shrikes and shrike pass almost exclusively to this pest.

1 Blagosklonov K. N., Protection and attraction of birds useful in agriculture. Uchpedgiz, M., 1949. 2. A. N. Formozov, V. I. Osmolovskaya, and K. N. Blagosklonov, Birds and pests of the forest. ATOIP, M., 1950.

During outbreaks of mass reproduction of locusts, especially migratory locusts and prusik (Italian locust), birds living in areas covered by locusts completely switch to feeding on locusts and feeding their chicks with locusts. Of the song passerines that ate locusts, larks (of all kinds), field pipits, house and field sparrows, coined-heathens, yellow pliska and a number of others were noted.

However, undoubtedly, the first place as the main enemy and destroyer of locusts belongs to the pink starling. From what has been said, one should not conclude that songbirds are always and everywhere only useful.

Far from it. In a number of cases, their activity can take on a negative character for the human economy.

For example, starlings, thrushes, grosbeaks and other songbirds can harm berries and orchards by eating berries and fruits. Warblers, warblers and other small, mostly insectivorous, birds at stops during the autumn migration willingly peck ripening, sweet fruits of pears and grapes in the orchards of our south, which causes them to rot and spoil.

Let's summarize what has been said about the benefits and harms of songbirds.

Professor G.P. Dementiev quite rightly notes that in the question of the economic importance of birds, one must always proceed from certain conditions of place and time. This issue should be considered on the basis of a thorough study of the life, behavior and diet of birds in certain conditions. The protection and attraction of birds must be based on a strictly scientific basis and go hand in hand with the study of their biology. Based on the numerous data that are available in our Soviet ornithological literature on the benefits and harms of birds, we must conclude that in the conditions of the European part of the USSR, songbirds, almost without exception, are useful for forest and Agriculture. The benefits of songbirds are especially noticeable and tangible in forest plantations, and hence our task is to protect and protect them in every possible way. The insignificant harm brought by songbirds in some cases and in rare periods of their life (the indicated cases of damage to berries, fruits and grapes, the extermination of seeds of cultivated plants) is more than compensated - in our conditions - by the benefits brought by the same species in other periods of their lives. Even predominantly herbivorous birds that feed on grains and seeds of plants always do more good than harm, which is easily established by analyzing the contents of the stomachs of these birds. In the vast majority of cases, granivorous birds eat the seeds of weeds and wild grasses; much less often, birds feed on the seeds of cultivated plants.

The undoubted benefit brought mainly by insectivorous birds to forests and agricultural crops is obvious. Analyzes of the contents of the stomachs show that, especially in cases of mass "reproduction of any pests (often forest ones), insectivorous birds completely (approaching 100%) switch to feeding on them. This is quite understandable: a huge number of insects appearing in breeding centers does not require birds spend time and labor on obtaining and searching for food, and the birds manage to collect quite a sufficient number of insects in a short period of time to get enough. At the village of ChMI (military-Georgian road, North Ossetia), they were fed by variegated stone blackbirds, burners, chernushki and minted stoves. Here in a small area we met up to three dozens of stone blackbirds- birds, under the usual conditions, keeping far from each other in pairs or broods.

In addition to what has been said, it must be added that birds are an essential element in the animal population of natural and cultural landscapes.

The rarely observed absence of birds anywhere in the conditions in which they usually occur must necessarily entail a change in the landscape and affect its other components, in particular plants.

An exceptional case of this kind - the absence of birds - was noted by us for artificial forest plantations in the Karaganda region.

Greetings, my reader. The most significant element in the animal world of birds in our country is the cultural landscape, which arose as a result of both purposeful human activity and the natural environment, which affects many natural processes of nature transformation.

Under the conditions of Russia in the European part of the country and in Siberia, this landscape consists mainly of agricultural land, forming patches of the so-called cultural steppe, which dominates the most populated parts of the country and is spreading more and more.

Another element of the cultural landscape is man-made objects - crowded cities and human settlements.

Finally, in the arid regions of our country, the cultural landscape is mainly in the nature of fertile oases, artificially irrigated territories.

World of birds of the cultural steppe

The richness and diversity of bird fauna in human settlements is largely associated with the development of woody vegetation in them; it basically corresponds to the fauna of broad-leaved and mixed forests. The same fauna is typical for shelterbelts and other artificial plantations.

However, the fauna of agricultural lands is of the greatest importance for the bird world. Here are some that are currently characteristic of the landscape of the cultural steppe:

1. from chicken - quail and gray partridge,
2. from shepherds - corncrake,
3. from passerines - crows and rooks, house and field sparrows, some buntings, in particular steppe and common; field and crested larks, partly magpie, hoopoe and others.

The economic development of these territories by man in the form of plowing land and deforestation has led to a sharp violation of the natural habitat, to such adverse natural processes as:

• soil erosion and sand spreading,
• air and natural water pollution,

which to a large extent affected the change in the distribution certain types birds on the territory of Russia: the northward movement of a number of species, in particular the gray partridge and crested lark.

The development of human settlements attracts -

• house sparrow and swift,
• village and city swallows,
• jackdaw and raven.

In winter, ordinary buntings gather near the settlements. The development of urban gardens and parks over the past decades is causing an increase in the number and change in the area of ​​​​distribution:

• blackbird and black redstart,
• orioles and hawfinch,
• carduelis, chaffinch and partly rook.

In the most recent years, the wild canary penetrated the cultural landscape of the steppe type from the west, reaching Riga and Kyiv. These birds avoid deaf deserted areas, but go far to the north behind human settlements. Spreading low shrubs growing in clearings attract:

• warblers and warblers,
• lentils and hemp,
• greenfinches and vultures,
• forest skates, etc.

Change and development of the cultural landscape

The development of meadows along the banks of the rivers resulting from forest clearings is associated with the resettlement of some bird species:

1. Meadow minnows, yellow puffins and white wagtails,
2. meadow pipits and field larks,
3. corncrakes and harriers,
4. quails and other birds.

The young pastures of bushes are inhabited by hoopoe, which has become a regular nesting bird in the Moscow region since the 20s of our century. Moved to the north and roller.

Thus, it is clear that the development of the cultural landscape in itself does not cause the depletion of the fauna, but only leads to its change.

Of course, at the same time, species that are associated with the presence of forests are forced to recede, partly disappear, as the area of ​​forests decreases.
First of all, this includes such relatively small birds as. Such is the fate of birds, which, as an object of hunting, are directly persecuted by humans - this

• capercaillie and hazel grouse,
• pheasant and turach,
• swan, etc.

Only one species was completely exterminated in historical times on our territory - a large non-flying cormorant discovered in 1741 on Bering Island, which finally disappeared around the middle of the last century.

Apparently, at the beginning of this century, the Canadian goose disappeared from the Commander and Kuril Islands.

The fact that human activity, by changing and diversifying the natural landscape, contributes to the enrichment of the animal world, is clearly seen when studying the birds of the cultural areas of the North Caucasus. The list of species characteristic of them is very rich:

• white stork and hobby,
• kestrel and hawk tuvik,
• black kite and desert owl,
• owl and hoopoe,
• doves - ordinary, ringed, small,
• black swift and myna starling,
• oriole and greenfinch,
• goldfinch and house sparrow;
• tree sparrow and black-throated sparrow,
• buckwheat finch and black coinage,
• swallows - killer whale and red-belted,
• Asiatic field lark, etc.

Not so strongly associated with the oasis landscape are many other species, such as:

• starling and gall oatmeal,
• Roller and bee-eaters,
• wagtails and bullfinches,
• shrikes and thrushes.

All these species of birds are mainly associated with the fauna of the forest and shrubs, that is, in the conditions of the North Caucasus with the fauna of the riverside tugai, and then with the forest and shrub vegetation of the foothills and mountains.

The appearance of the animal world of birds of various latitudinal zones of Russia

Not all bird species found on the territory of our country can be distributed among the landscape zones indicated above.

In the bird world of Russia there are a significant number of species that are widely distributed, the relationship of which with certain latitudinal conditions is not clearly expressed; this applies especially to aquatic or near-aquatic birds.

Among them are the following:

1. from gulls - herring and common gull, river tern, grebe, grey-cheeked grebe;
2. many types of ducks - mallard, pintail, teal whistle, shoveler;
3. from copepods - a great cormorant;
4. some waders, such as snipe;
5. from the ankles - gray and red herons, bittern;
6. from predatory - real falcon, derbnik, kestrel, white-tailed eagle, osprey;
7. from owls - an eagle owl, a house owl, an ordinary nightjar;
8. many passerines - raven, jackdaw, starling, white and yellow wagtail, reed bunting, field lark, gray shrike, warbler grasshopper and talovka, warbler, thrush, mistletoe, common wheatear, bluethroat, killer whale and funnel, sand swallow and others.

Of course, the distribution of these birds depends on certain conditions, in particular on the availability of natural or artificial reservoirs for:

• seagulls and ducks,
• terns and waders,
• ospreys and grebes;

if there are reservoirs, these bird species are found in different latitudes.

Other of these species are found on the territory of Russia in a wide variety of conditions. So, for example, the eagle owl nests everywhere, except for the tundra - from the northern border of the forest to the south of the Caucasus, keeping in the forests and in the steppe, high in the mountains and in the deserts.

In the same way, the common falcon nests in the tundra, in the forest belt, in the mountains of the Caucasus, avoiding only flat treeless or vertically undissected areas. An ordinary wheatear can be found in the Arctic, and, and in temperate latitudes.

Not being characteristic of a particular latitudinal zone, these widespread bird species, nevertheless, significantly affect the appearance of the animal world of birds in certain areas of our country, since in different parts of it they are often represented by local subspecies forms.

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People have lived in cities for thousands of years. Human settlements have long been accompanied by wild animals that ate food waste.

Since then, this relationship has not changed at all.

And in our time, the sprawling cities are replenished with new freeloaders - wild animals that find shelter and their ecological niche on the streets of cities.

Animal protection organization

Urban vegetation in many states is protected by specially adopted laws. A list of suburban forests and parks has been compiled, on the territory of which construction work should be carried out, except for hospitals and agricultural buildings located in the green area.

Fauna of cities: "restless nature".

But construction organizations are trying in every possible way to violate the adopted laws, because it is so tempting to build houses in the middle of the forest, and then profitably sell them to buyers. Developers are not interested in environmental protection at all. Such plots of land must be made protected and turned into oases for rest and peace, where various animals adapted to the conditions of the urban environment could live.

Cities are the whole crowds of stray dogs, cats and other feathered-tailed "beasts".

In the past, green spaces were usually not indicated on city plans, although they create excellent conditions for a healthy lifestyle for people and are necessary for the habitat of animals in urban megacities. Ideal for creating such zones as close to natural conditions as possible - parks, rivers, abandoned highways. Particularly interesting in this regard are suburban parks, in which, unlike central parks, the territory smoothly passes into the natural landscape surrounding the city with fields, copses, forests, in which new inhabitants from the animal world can settle.

Air and water pollution is one of the important problems of living in the city, which affects not only humans, but also animals. Emissions of harmful substances into the environment must be sharply limited; these measures would undoubtedly improve the living conditions of people and animals in the city. Constant traffic, noise, bright lighting, closed space have a negative impact on living organisms.

In cities, the noise does not subside for a minute and there is constant movement, there are few places natural for animals to live. Nevertheless, there are extreme people who, with the constant movement of crowds of people and urban transport, are able not only to simply survive, but to give birth. The warm urban climate attracts many animals, and garbage dumps with an abundance of food waste make it possible to feed. all year round, especially without straining in search of food. But in order for our smaller brothers to feel at home, tolerance and good will of a person are needed.

Animals in the city

Cities, growing more and more, capture more and more new areas of the natural environment, which leads to a violation of the natural landscape. But such changes for some animals do not play any role at all, and they perfectly adapt to new living conditions.

Masses of animals rush to the city dumps, attracted by the smell of leftover food, fly in, crows, sparrows, gulls, rats simply climb into garbage cans, and foxes timidly pick up food waste. Visiting landfills has become a common activity for wild animals. Badgers do this in England, raccoons in North America, and possums in Australia. The number of rats is equal to the population of the city, about 500 rodents live on one kilometer of the sewer. In connection with this circumstance, a joke appeared that every passer-by in the city is only 3 meters away from the first one that comes across.

Location

If at the beginning of the twentieth century the urban population accounted for about 14% of the total population of the planet, then in our time this figure has increased several times and is approaching 50%. People are constantly migrating in search of work and better conditions residence. In this regard, in the cities there is a rapid construction of new houses, shops, household institutions. New paved roads are being laid, railway stations and airfields are opening, diversion channels and garbage dumps are growing.

Involuntarily, people take away their ancestral territories from animals. Animals simply do not have a place nearby in big city, although in some settlements there are islands of the natural landscape in the form of parks and gardens. They are inhabited by animals that have managed to adapt to urban conditions.

The number of wild animals would be much higher if it were not for the constant poisoning of living organisms by waste from households and industrial enterprises. Inhabitants of the wild nature die not only from direct poisoning by hazardous substances contained in the waste, but many of them lose the ability to reproduce due to the impact of man-made substances on living organisms. Suburban cemeteries have been chosen by many animals as a place of permanent settlement; these are real natural oases in the urban desert. Under the crowns of trees and among the grass, shy animals feel protected and lead a natural lifestyle.

climate change

Environmental pollution is another negative factor that does not play in favor of animals.

Plants absorb the sun's rays, and brick, asphalt, concrete and dirty air reflect them intensively. Metal and glass are characterized by high reflectivity. As a result of a large accumulation of vehicles, a cloud of smog often hangs over the city. In winter, the city is warmer and huge flocks of birds spend the night under the roofs of houses, in attics, hiding in underground passages. Pigeons and house mice have become accustomed to such an extent that they breed here throughout the year, and sparrows have become permanent residents of the city. Some North American birds nest exclusively in cities.

Living conditions differ from natural ones, and this affects the habitation of living organisms in the urban environment. Plants here bloom earlier than in countryside because the climate in the city is warmer. Rain also falls more often in the city than in the surrounding areas, however, after precipitation, the water quickly flows down the drains into the rivers. In cities, asphalt dries up immediately after rain and, consequently, the air has increased dryness. Plants that need excess moisture - ferns and mosses, grow in cities near water bodies.

pollution

City air is saturated with soot and soot, and this feature differs from rural air. The same soot settles on the lungs of city dwellers. The harmful effect of polluted air on plants has been established by observing that dust and soot settle on the leaves and cause blockage of the stomata on the leaves of plants and prevent the penetration of sunlight.

In the city, the growth of green spaces slows down, while the same species growing in the bosom of nature have a lush crown and shiny leaves. Lichens on trees, absorbing water saturated with acid from rainfall in a polluted city, turn yellow and shed their leaves from exposure to sulfur dioxide contained in poisonous rainfall.

Dangerous sewage from households and industrial enterprises that enter the rivers, they cause severe pollution with organic substances, which provoke the rapid growth of green algae and duckweed plants. Other plants cannot develop due to lack of oxygen. Together with rain and snow, oil waste, salts of heavy metals and other harmful impurities enter the soil. Along the food chains, they pass into the bodies of earthworms, and then into the organisms of birds that feed on them.

Nature is the decoration of the city, and not a heavy burden for it, as some believe!

In the ecological pyramid, which reflects the relationship between plants and animals, the concentration of harmful substances increases from the bottom to the top, which leads to the death of animal birds that feed on poisoned plants. Some species of insects have developed adaptations to life in conditions of environmental pollution. A characteristic example is the birch moth moth, which forms two forms - the light-colored moth and the dark-colored moth. In industrial areas polluted coal dust, the dark color of insects is not noticeable against the background of the environment and it better masks butterflies on birch trunks dark from coal. In biology, this fitness is called industrial melanism.

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Lesson topic: "Birds of cultural landscapes."

Tasks: to supplement, clarify, and expand students' knowledge of the birds of cities and towns, gives an idea of ​​the adaptability of birds to living conditions near human habitation; contributes to the development of children's cognitive interest in nature and its study, environmental education and upbringing of students.

Equipment: sets of drawings or didactic material depicting birds, a player, plastics with recordings of bird voices, tables.

Lesson plan:

Organizing time.

1. Create student working groups

2. Introductory speech of the teacher

Detachment of passerines birds covers a huge number of species and a large number of families. More than half of the bird species inhabiting the earth belong to this order. Passerines are birds of medium and small size. Their beaks are of various shapes. Wings can be long or short and blunt. Most are associated with woody vegetation.

They are characterized by the device of carefully made nests, which are built on trees, on the ground, in minks, human buildings.

The bird is diverse (plant seeds, insects). The vast majority of useful birds.

3. Distribution of tasks. Each group chooses an envelope containing tasks, texts describing the birds of one of the studied families, illustrations or didactic materials.

Tasks.

Read the text given to you.

Review the drawings.

Answer questions to reinforce.

Make conclusions about the adaptability of birds to the environment.

Prepare feature report appearance and biology of the most common birds of this family using tables.

Formulate a conclusion about the common features of birds of this family.

Questions for consolidation.

What are the common features of birds of this family?

What do these birds eat, and what are the structural features of their beak?

What are the nesting characteristics of birds of this family?

What role do these birds play in nature?

Learning new material.

1. Independent work (10 minutes): studying the appearance and biology of the family 1) weaver, 2) crow, 3) tit, 4) starling, 5) wagtail, 6) swallow

Weaving family. (Slide 5.6)

Combine quite diverse in appearance birds. Most species lead an arboreal lifestyle.

Their physique is dense, the head is round, the neck is short, the beak is conical in shape. The wings of most species are short and rounded. On the ground they move by jumping. They like to bathe in dust or sand. Stay in flocks, some even during the nesting period.

house sparrow- one of the most widely famous birds. Its weight is 23-25 ​​g, it is distinguished by a brown-brown color and a gray “cap”. The male has a black throat and chest, the female is all brownish-gray.

House sparrows are sedentary birds, adapted to live near human habitation. In winter, they are often found on the streets, near garbage cans, in garbage dumps. You can often hear their soft chirping: “A little alive, a little alive!”

In the spring, they begin to scream loudly and often, as if “Alive! Alive! Alive!

Sparrows nest under the roofs of wooden buildings, in the crevices of the skin. In winter, they feed mainly on grain feed, they can visit feeders. In the spring they eat insect pests. For only one brood, birds collect 500-700 insects.

field sparrow- somewhat smaller in size than the brownie, it also differs in the brown crown, black spots on the white cheeks and two light stripes on the wing.

It nests in a natural environment - along the edges of groves and parks.

The tree sparrow is somewhat more insectivorous. In winter, it is of great benefit by pecking at weed seeds.

crow family.(Slides 7,8,9,10,11,12)

This family includes the largest representatives of the order of passerine birds. They are characterized by a dense physique, strong legs, a large conical beak; the plumage is black or variegated, many with a metallic sheen.

Rook- a large bird, its plumage is black. A nomadic bird, reminiscent of itself "gra-a, gra-a", from which the name comes.

Jackdaw- a settled bird, of medium size, black, with a gray "kerchief" on its head. In winter, they often feed with crows in flocks, and in spring the birds break into pairs and make their nests in hollow trees, in the ventilation openings of buildings. Birds give themselves away with the characteristic call of "gal-ka, gal-ka." The jackdaw is an omnivorous bird, often feeding on garbage heaps.

Magpie- a medium-sized bird with a bright black and white color: the head, neck, upper chest, tail and wings are black with a metallic sheen, the abdomen and large spots on the shoulders are white.

It flies heavily, often flapping its wings.

A scream is a loud, sharp chirping. Nests are built on trees, more often on a birch, they look like a ball, consisting of dry twigs and branches. Inside it is a bowl smeared with clay. It feeds on forty insect worms, does not disdain a small frog.

swallow family.(Slide 13.14)

Short and wide, especially at the base of the beak, a large mouth slit, narrow and very long wings, a wide chest and at the same time a graceful physique, short and weak legs, unsuitable for moving on the ground, and finally, a forked tail - a sign by which it is easy to distinguish representatives this family from other birds.

barn swallow, or killer whale, as it is popularly called, has a forked tail, in which the extreme feathers - pigtails are long and thin. The top of the body is black-blue, the ventral side is white, the forehead and throat are rusty-brown.

This is a typical migratory bird, it appears with us in the first days of May and chirps.

Swallows are not very good flyers, they usually hover not far from the nest. The barn swallow's nest is an open cup attached sideways to the wall of a wooden building. The nest is molded from lumps of clay moistened with saliva and straw, inside there is a soft bedding on which the chicks hatch from the eggs. For them, swallows catch small insects in the air and feed the chicks up to 600 times a day.

Titmouse family. (Slide 15.16)

This family combines agile, lively birds with a short, straight beak. Their plumage is dense, soft, wings are relatively short. In the coloration of tits, white “cheeks” are typical.

great tit- the largest of all tits, a little more than a sparrow. It differs from other tits by a black longitudinal strip - a “tie” on a yellow-green chest, and a light spot on the back of the head.

In mixed and deciduous forests, her voice is often heard: "Sin-sin-verr." She begins to sing her wedding song in our area at the beginning of February. At this time, at the end of winter, flocks of wandering tits break into pairs. Bird nests are located in tree holes.

Their main food is insects, which the tit eats both in summer and winter. Her winter activities are especially useful for humans, when she pecks eggs of the gypsy moth on the trees. At the same time, tits can eat seeds of various plants, and large ones are crushed, holding them right in their paws. In the summer, tits feed themselves and feed their chicks exclusively on insects. Their broods are very large in one brood grows up to 14-15 chicks. There are usually two broods during the summer.

Starling family.(Slide 17.18)

The birds of this family are densely built, with a short tail and long wings, rather long thin beak and strong hind limbs. Insects feed on fruits and berries.

Starling common appears with us in early spring after the rooks. First, males arrive, occupy a birdhouse and begin to sing. However, if there is no birdhouse, the birds settle in hollows. The females arrive in a few days. From dry grass and plant residues, birds begin to build a nest inside a birdhouse or hollow. Both parents incubate the eggs in turn, and both feed the chicks, bringing them food from gardens and fields up to 320 times a day.

At first, the chicks are helpless, and by the end of the third week they begin to scream loudly, jump up to the entrance hole for food, while helping themselves with their wings, and protrude from the nesting place. After 21-23 days after birth, they leave the nest.

Wagtail family. (Slide 19.20)

Unite small birds the size of a sparrow. The legs of most species are thin and long, with large, slightly curved claws, well adapted to movement on the ground; medium-sized beak is thin and straight.

A typical representative white wagtail. Very dexterously and quickly running on the ground, this bird constantly shakes its tail. The wagtail has a black and white coloration, a black cap, throat and chest stand out.

It keeps alone and in pairs, on the ground, near water bodies, where it eats insects flying over moist soil.

In dachas, household plots, she appears, as if an inspector, after digging the soil, easily runs through the beds, pecks flying insects and, as it were, checks the quality of tillage.

1. Group reports with demonstration of tables, discussion, evaluation of each group (3 minutes).

Formulation of conclusions and their discussion.

Homework: crossword puzzles, riddles, poems, lesson feedback, drawing of a bird on a cozy nest.

There is a widespread and in many cases justified opinion that human activity leads to the impoverishment of the animal world.

It is believed that the fauna of cultural landscapes is more uniform, includes fewer species, i.e., is simpler than the fauna of natural landscapes.

This happens, however, not always. Impoverishment is just a special case, not a law of the cultural landscape. It often happens that in cultural landscapes there are more species of animals than in the original ones. The bird population density (i.e., the number of birds of each species) in the gardens and parks of cities, in sheltered plantations is also often higher.

Knowledge of the regularities of the fauna of cultural landscapes will give us the opportunity to nullify particular cases of depletion of the animal world, as well as cases of mass reproduction in the cultural landscape of harmful animal species.

The fact that the number of, for example, birds in cultural landscapes is often higher than in similar natural landscapes has already been noted by many naturalists. Sometimes an increase in numbers occurs quickly, almost immediately after changes in nature occur. This is especially noticeable in arid (arid) regions, where human activity usually complicates the structure of landscapes and increases their productivity. And the more complex, colorful structure of the terrain attracts more animals.

We can point out here that in the zone of virgin steppes, incomplete plowing of the territory causes a sharp increase in the number of the main (background) birds of the steppe. Such an increase was found for field, black and white-winged larks by 5 times, and for the field pipit even by 30 times. True, if the steppe is completely plowed up, it means that the diversity that arose in the landscape has somewhat weakened, the number is again decreasing, but not to the original. In the white-winged lark, for example, it remains 5 times higher than the original.

A similar phenomenon is observed in other places. In South West Africa, in areas plowed under the cultivation of corn, two types of pipits immediately appear in large numbers, which are rare in the uninhabited part of this country.

It is enough to appear on a caravan trail in the desert, as a significant number of birds immediately concentrate along it. Wells contribute even more to this. Near human settlements and inside them in the desert zone, usually many new species of birds appear, especially if trees are also planted near the buildings.

A similar, although perhaps not to the same extent, is observed in other landscape-geographical zones. The well-known researcher of the animal world of Switzerland, P. Zherudet, reported to the international ornithological congress that the development of the cultural landscape in this country contributed to the resettlement and increase in the number of many species of birds. In Poland, in some cities, the population density of birds is higher than in their natural habitats. Observations and calculations made in Germany show that in cemeteries, in gardens and parks of the industrial regions of the republic, the number of bird species and the density of their population is higher than outside the cities. The same thing happens in Finland.

An exceptionally high bird population density was noted in the cities of the Ferghana Valley. In summer, in some places in Fergana and other cities, up to 60 birds can be counted per hectare of urban area. At the same time, in agricultural land - only 5-6 per the same area, and in natural habitats - only 1.5-2.2.

Thus, it cannot be argued that the fauna of cultural landscapes is necessarily poorer and simpler than the fauna of natural landscapes. There is impoverishment, there is, and moreover often, enrichment. It is especially interesting that the landscape of large cities sometimes turns out to be more populated by the animal world than the cultural landscape of the countryside. However, this is easy to understand. The fields now have a uniform structure: the same field crop over a large area. Constant tillage eliminates the possibility of nesting ground birds. Rodents inhabiting the upper layer of soil also feel difficult under these conditions.

As cultural landscapes develop, the number of animal species that inhabit them does not decrease, but increases. Animals, which were previously regarded as completely alien to cultural landscapes, gradually begin to get used to them and move into them.

Of course, in addition to animals that easily come to terms with the new living conditions created by man and become his real neighbors (common species), there are also species that resolutely avoid this neighborhood: they really need wild nature. Therefore, for many years it was customary to divide animals (in relation to cultural landscapes) into two categories: companions of culture and fugitives from it. It was believed that the vast majority of animal species are "fugitives from culture." Meanwhile, it now appears that there are species that, although they do not follow culture as decisively as some true synanthropes, nevertheless "accept" it and, without weakening their old natural attachments, settle into the cultural landscape quite widely. In addition, there are many animal species that gradually change their attitude towards the cultural landscape over time and, if they do not become its "companion", then at least they do not avoid it.

It has not yet been precisely calculated, but it is quite obvious that the list of animal species that are positively related to the cultural landscape will be very large. It should include not only species closely and widely associated with cultural landscapes, but also those that are found only in some places, or do not live permanently in the cultural landscape, but regularly visit it in search of food and, finally, appear near a person in winter. time.

The widely known "fugitive from culture" - the little bustard is no longer afraid of plowing the steppes. In search of protective places, he leads his brood to lands comma crops. Cases are already known, for example, in Yugoslavia, when the little bustard made a nest in a wheat field. Cautious oystercatchers now sometimes nest in the fields. The great curlews do the same. A fairly large number of facts have already been published in the scientific literature, testifying to many unexpected cases of the connection of animals, especially birds, with cultural landscapes.

Cultural landscapes have been around for a long time. So long coexist with man different types animals. Owls and bats, black rats settled in knight's castles. In the fields there was expanse for gray partridges, hares, and in some countries even rabbits. The so-called pharaoh mouse, or ichneumon, in Northeast Africa has long kept itself in the buildings of man as in its own fiefdom. Another African representative of the civet family, nandipias, has long settled in houses, having a constant source of food there - rats, mice, cockroaches. Gulman monkeys have always been common in the cities of India, and especially in temple buildings.

Over a long period of time, many species of animals have changed their habits around humans, and yet one characteristic feature of the animal world of cultural landscapes should be emphasized here. Despite the age of getting used to man and to the conditions of life created by him, there are no animal species that would be characteristic exclusively of the cultural landscape and have not been found anywhere else.

Thus, the fauna of cultural landscapes is formed at the expense of wild fauna without speciation. In any case, this can be asserted in relation to groups of animals that are better known from this point of view. All species of mammals and birds of cultural landscapes are outsiders. Apparently, they did not need any fundamental changes in their lifestyle, and even more so in their body structure (morphology), in order to survive in the vicinity of a person.

There are, of course, a number of animal and bird species that now live almost exclusively in and thrive in cultivated landscapes. And yet they can all live in natural landscapes, as this is their original homeland.

Nevertheless, of course, one can single out predominantly synanthropic species and species mainly (or exclusively) characteristic of natural landscapes. Therefore, when talking about animals of cultural landscapes, two categories of them are distinguished: absorbed species and reduced ones. For a zoogeographer, for example, such a division is essential.

The listed species come to the given area after the appearance of the landscape characteristic of them there (sometimes immediately, sometimes with a delay - this is another matter).

The selected species enter the cultural landscape in a given area from the surrounding habitats of the cultural landscape. (However, it is not necessary to attach absolute significance to this subdivision: all the species listed in some part of their range were included.)

Let's take, for example, our common house sparrow (this is a native inhabitant of the Old World, for North America a new bird that appeared there in the 19th century). In the Old World, the house sparrow entered the cultural landscape somewhere in a part of its range, and then spread over it. Consequently, in some places it is an absorbed species, and in others - where it settled - reduced. In the New World, it is a bird brought everywhere by the cultural landscape. This is especially evident in South America: the house sparrow entered the local fauna there, settling exclusively in the cultural landscape, where there are European buildings. And for many regions of Siberia, the house sparrow is a reduced bird. The Khanty even call it by its name, which in translation means "a bird sitting on the corner of a Russian hut." The starling spread across the cultural landscape in North America. The native inhabitant of the Canary Islands - the canary finch settled in Europe (and has now reached the cities of the Baltic states, as well as Kyiv, Poltava) as a reduced bird. The ringed dove belongs to the same category in Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic republics.

Linnet and Greenfinch are typically included birds. They settle in copses, various shrubs and from there enter the cultural landscape, nesting even in such a big city as Moscow.

In the future, we should talk about this in more detail, and now let's take a closer look at the process of creating the fauna of a cultural landscape using the example of birds - the most studied group of animals. Let's follow this in parallel with the process of landscape formation.

The first penetration of birds into the cultural landscape, of course, dates back to the time when it did not yet exist in the modern sense of the word. There were only "islands", the beginnings of cultural landscapes, the fauna of which was completely influenced by the environment. natural conditions. And now you can see that redstart and gray flycatcher are sitting on the wattle fence, near the forest gatehouse (a corner of the cultural landscape), and on the wattle fence, near the Kazakh wintering, there are wheatear and gall oatmeal. In a hut built in the forest, a wren appears (if only for the sake of an overnight stay), and in the soldiers' tents of Alexander the Great on the passes between Helment and the Indus, village swallows built their nests. All these are “their own”, incorporated species.

Neither a hut, nor even an isolated house in the forest did not lead to any noticeable changes in the surrounding nature. Soldiers' tents were for birds nothing more than a variety of suddenly appeared analogues of their natural nesting places - bright open caves, and birds used them. However, shepherd's buildings in the steppe and foothills already represented some advantage for birds in comparison with their natural habitats. There are always a lot of insects near the herds, and huts, tents, yurts and more solid structures such as wintering grounds provided extensive opportunities for nesting near especially feeding places. Having penetrated into such "islands" within their habitat - in the mountains and foothills - swallows got the opportunity to expand it further into the steppe, where they moved to buildings of other types, thus becoming a typical element of the fauna of the cultural landscape, in one place - absorbed, and in the other - given. Apparently, in a similar way, but through a different “bridge” - stone buildings such as towers, penetration into the cultural landscape and subsequent settlement in it as an already cited species, the black swift, took place.

Of course, the passage of nesting swallows from caves to pastoralists' light structures is only one route for birds to enter cultural landscapes. It is likely that the villages and cities of the foothills of ancient Asia also served as a "bridge" that ensured the transition of some species of birds (swallows and other representatives of the rock complex) to nesting near humans. The chain of villages running from the mountains to the desert areas of the lower reaches of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya served, of course, as a good ecological channel for the penetration of originally mountainous species into the plain already as specific representatives of the cultural landscape (species cited). In the future, some of them spread widely and now, along with the expansion of this landscape, they are settling into new places. However, they retain their natural nesting sites in one place or another. Apparently, the possibilities for further expansion of their ranges are great, but not unlimited. The limit can be set by climatic conditions, as well as competition, resistance from local species.

The formation of the fauna of cultural landscapes can occur in another way. As in the first case, at first, on small "islands" of the cultural landscape, species settle, indifferent to those small changes in the environment that are caused by human structures. At the same time, quantitative enrichment of the fauna is often observed in comparison with "natural" habitats. Thus, for example, when a forest edge with shrubs and food conditions richer for some species arises in place of a dense monotonous forest, a qualitative enrichment of the fauna occurs, i.e., an increase in its species diversity. There is a kind of "contraction" to a small area of ​​some species, which in other conditions live more sparsely. You can walk a long distance through the forest and only at the forest gatehouse meet the white wagtail, redstart nesting there. If a city arises, in some cases the old fauna is destroyed and a small number of specific species appear, such as sparrows and swallows.

However, the opposite process is also observed. As the settlement grows, it may include certain elements of the original biotope (in the form of gardens, parks, tree plantations along the roads and planted cemeteries), and some forest, mainly shrub and edge, animal species remain in it. With further transformation of the landscape and the replacement of all natural habitats with plowed fields, settlements with their gardens remain the only places where animal species that have disappeared in the vicinity of cities can still live. The absorbed species thus become characteristic of the cultural landscape in its separate, defined parts. However, in this case, the use of the landscape to expand the range does not occur, since the range of the species inhabiting the cultural landscape is overlapped by its natural range.

The continued expansion of the cultural landscape area can eventually lead to its coverage of the entire area and the complete displacement of natural habitats. Then the species in its entire range will belong only to the cultural landscape, there are no other places left for it. Thus, being universally incorporated into the cultural landscape, it acquires, by the nature of its placement in landscapes, all the features of the above species. However, it is still impossible to name a single species of animals, at least from terrestrial vertebrates, that has completely lost its original connection with its natural landscapes.

Let us now turn our attention to non-European countries that belong to other faunal regions and, accordingly, have completely different natural-historical conditions for the existence of animals and a different history of faunas.

Some species of animals, which we have qualified for the territory of Europe as included, are transformed there into species characteristic exclusively of the cultural landscape, i.e., reduced (this has already been noted for the house sparrow and starling). Thus, many species of birds in broad-leaved forests and fields (lark, black and song thrushes, common starling, as well as myna, rook, Chinese dove, greenfinch, chaffinch, common bunting, goldfinch, garden bunting, etc.) bred, for example, in New Zealand, as species specific to the cultural landscape given by him. The cultural landscape of the European type spread rapidly in New Zealand, and the local species (with the exception of a very few) did not have time to adapt to it, when a stream of European birds, European and North American mammals, long associated with this landscape, poured into it.

The spread of animals to new territories in many cases occurs in parallel with the spread of the cultural landscape there. This is how the house sparrow spreads, for example, across the territory of northern Eurasia. As the agricultural landscape spreads to the north in Eastern Europe, gray partridges, common hamsters, and hare appear where they did not exist before.

However, it is not uncommon for new species of animals to spread across a cultural landscape that has long been formed over a large area (the same sparrow, as well as the starling in North America). In this case, the species in a short time goes beyond its original range and it may happen that the new "cultural" part of its range will exceed its original "natural" area of ​​distribution by far.

The canary finch is very indicative in this respect. Over the course of about a century, it quickly spread across the "already ready" cultural landscape. At the same time, it first took root in cities and towns, and then moved from cities to their environs. The dispersal of the canary finch across the territory of the Soviet Union is still taking place.

No less indicative is the ringed dove. Apparently, it has been incorporated into the cultural landscape somewhere in Asia Minor, has long been characteristic of the cultural landscape of the Balkan Peninsula, with the exception, however, of Greece, in recent decades it has spread across the territory of Central Europe and is now common for cities near the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, southern Sweden and southeastern England. In these places it is a specific bird of the cultural (urban) landscape.

Dispersal across an “already ready” cultural landscape also occurs, of course, in cases of introduction (penetration of a species into completely new places for it). A vivid example, in addition to the already indicated distribution of the starling and house sparrow in North America, is also the distribution of the Colorado potato beetle and white butterfly in Europe.

However, there is another type of settlement of animal species, in fact, without expanding the range, but only with its "compaction". Something similar is observed in the jay in the cities of Europe (it now breeds in Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg, London and other cities of the mainland). In this case, the jay is introduced into cities without expanding its range. This phenomenon is sometimes called intra-areal settlement.

Let us compare the bird fauna of the cultural landscapes of the Palearctic and Ethiopian regions from the point of view that interests us.

Widespread settlement and agricultural development of the steppe landscape of South-West Africa has taken place over the past three to five decades. However, it was not accompanied by the appearance of new bird species there. As a result, the resulting cultural landscape has its birds, characteristic of the Ethiopian region, absorbed by this landscape here, on the spot.

While in Central Asia (Palearctic) in the villages there are many nests of the black-breasted sparrow, the nest of the hobby, tyuvik, black kite, Bukhara tit, etc., in the gardens of South-West Africa there are many nests of three species of weavers; where there is open water, the Cape wagtail immediately appears, and in the presence of higher trees, the ground thrush nests. The differences are fairly obvious.

As for the species nesting directly on buildings and, therefore, showing the greatest degree of sipanthropism, then, replacing our swallows, urban and rural, in South-West Africa, the rocky swallow settles as an especially frequent city bird, here a nest can be found in outbuildings a small mother-of-pearl-breasted swallow; on the verandas of the houses - the nest of the striped swallow. Instead of our redstarts, the South African cercomela nests in the buildings, instead of the house sparrow, the Damara, the “mountain wheatear” is often found, and the barn owl can be called as a common species with the cultural landscape of Western Europe. It should be noted, however, that the barn owl is a cosmopolitan species.

Other types of birds - in the cultural landscape of Sudan. In the villages there, the sparrow weaver is common and, along with the house sparrow (a species common to Sudan with Europe), there is also molithesis and gray. It should be noted that the last two species of sparrows are also known in South-West Africa, but their nesting in the villages was not recorded there. Common in Sudan with South-West Africa (but not with the Palearctic) white and Cape crows. Of the starlings in the settlements of Sudan, two types of bronze ones can be found. There, as, indeed, throughout the Ethiopian region, a small swift nests. There is also the just-named small dove. It is interesting, however, that the ringed turtle dove (albeit a special subspecies, which is distinguished by some ornithologists as a separate independent species) does not nest in the cities and towns of Sudan. Mousebirds are common in the cities of Kenya and Tanzania. This is a special order of birds, characteristic only of the Ethiopian region.

If we make a comparison with the fauna of the cultural landscapes of the Indomalayan zoogeographic region, then in the gardens of India and Burma one can see species of shrubs and bulbuls (two families of passerine birds, covering a large number of species, of which only a few are known in the Palearctic, in the USSR - two). In southern Asia, in constant proximity to man, there is a black drongo, a Philippine and Madras weaver, two types of munia, and some sunflowers. One of the most common birds of the cultural landscape there is the common lane. (However, it should be noted that before the eyes of the modern generation of ornithologists, the myna has widely settled in Central Asia and is now known in the north up to Chimkent.) In addition to the named myna, the black-headed myna is also found in South Asia and in Thailand - crested; as a specific bird of the cities of Sri Lanka, the eared starling can also be called. Our Palearctic crow in the cities of South Asia is replaced by a special kind of crow. This is a real city bird, resembling a jackdaw.

In Indochina, one can see nesting colonies of Asiatic cormorants in tree cities (for example, in Hanoi), and white-winged herons also nest there. Spotted owls keep in the buildings, marelipus cuckoos live in gardens and parks, original magpies of the Kitta genus live in Hanoi all year round.

With regard to the Australian bird fauna, it is in a somewhat special position, since there is a rather large number of species brought by the cultural landscape from another zoogeographical area, mainly from the countries of the Malay Archipelago. This is quite understandable, given that the cultural landscape of Australia is a young geographical formation. It began to emerge at a time when intercontinental ties were already quite intense. Some types of cultural landscape were brought there directly by man, while others moved in without his direct help. In addition, due to the youthfulness of cultural landscapes, the local species included in them simply did not have time to “fix” their positions and counteract the appearance of newcomers, which was observed, for example, in South Africa.

Indigenous inhabitants (endemics) of Australia usually give way in the cultural landscape to their "older" brothers who came from other zoogeographic regions. So, the zebra turtledove is being forced out of the cities of Australia by the Chinese turtledove. Muscat finches that accidentally came to this mainland successfully displace local finches, in cities, in particular, zebra finches.

Nevertheless, in the gardens of Australia it nests next to houses and can even be met sitting on the windowsill of the endemic of this mainland - the satin bower bird. She sometimes steals decorations for her current pad through the window. In the gardens of Western Australia, the large Gouldian white-eye is found in abundance. As they say, she replaces the house sparrow there. Other species of sunbirds, weavers and honeysuckers, the local forest “swallow” (artamus), endemic species of parrots, pigeons, etc. can also be named. Thus, the Australian zoogeographic region also has a certain number of birds of its own in the cultural landscape. In the cities of Australia, as already noted, there are their own mammals, such as kuzu and even sometimes the platypus.

For clarity, one can compare in more detail the bird fauna of the Palearctic, Ethiopia, and South Asia in relation to the bird species most associated with human settlements - swifts and swallows. Here the following is observed. In the cities of the USSR, black and white-belted swifts are common, and both species nest in natural conditions. There is no black swift in the Ethiopian region and South Asia, and the white-belted swift only partially covers the Indomalayan region with its range. But in the cities of South Asia, a small swift is common (it can also be found in the southernmost parts of the Palearctic). It also breeds outside cultivated landscapes. For Africa and South Asia, the palm swift should also be named as a bird of cultural landscapes. In the Philippines, he lives in the villages, and in northern Thailand - exclusively near a person. The latter is explained by the fact that the palm swift nests on coconut palms, which are cultivated there by man and belong exclusively to the cultural landscape in Thailand (therefore, here the palm swift is already a given bird). It is especially curious that in Burma, in the provinces of Chin and Kachin, where the named palm trees are rare, the swift has changed its habits and builds nests in rural houses or in tunnels, i.e., directly near a person. Also in West Africa (Republic of Zaire), where palm trees are rare, the palm swift, according to observers, lays eggs and hatches chicks among the palm leaves that cover the roof of buildings.

It is curious that the white-belted swift, common for human settlements in the Palearctic, is not found in cities in the part of its range belonging to the Indomalayan region. It has some relation to man (to his structures) only in Burma, where thousands of pairs nest in viaducts in the Shan province.

Palaearctic swallows nesting on buildings include barn swallow or killer whale, red-rumped and city swallow or funnel swallow. In addition, near a person, but only as an exception in buildings, the sand martin makes nests, near bridges and occasionally along ditches - the barn martin entering from the south into the Palearctic. But it should be considered as belonging to the cultural landscapes mainly of the Indomalayan fauna. In Africa, in dwellings of a predominantly native type, the Ethiopian swallow, the Abyssinian, nests, in the western parts of the mainland - also the Gambian and rocky (other than the past) swallows. In South West Africa, the previously named mother-of-pearl and striped martins are included in the cultural landscape. In East Africa, Angolan and white-throated swallows can be found nesting under roofs.

However, this is not a complete list of African swallows that are associated with buildings. But even those named are enough to understand that even in the synanthropic fauna, geographical differences are quite clearly manifested in cases where the cultural landscape is of great antiquity, as, for example, in South Asia and Africa. In the event of a recent emergence of this landscape, its fauna may be dominated by the listed species and, moreover, sometimes dispersed from other zoogeographic regions, which is observed in the cultural landscapes of Australia and especially in the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand.

Regarding such pronounced synanthropes as swallows, a few more words should be said. A large number of of their species belongs to the Paleogean dry land. And there you can observe a full range of species, moving from nesting without any connection with humans, to species that only occasionally nest on buildings or inside them, then equally using both the cultural and natural landscape, and, finally, to almost exclusively nesting on buildings and inside them. At the same time, it is curious that they all belong to the cultural landscape only in those areas that are covered by their natural ranges. Thus, the swallows of the Paleogean land, apparently, do not have real listed species. Consequently, there is no significant expansion of the area with the help of the cultural landscape. It is possible to speak, apparently, only about local reduction and about inter-realistic settlement in the cultural landscape within the original natural area. The Filamentous and Red-rumped Swallows, as well as the Lesser Swift, are distributed to some extent in the Palaearctic apart from the Paleogean land, but they have not been brought there by humans: this is their natural range. Only in some details of the distribution of the red-rumped swallow can one see that the cultural landscape contributes to the expansion of its range. Apparently, only one barn swallow (killer whale) really expanded many times (in the direction to the north) its range as a bird brought there by the cultural landscape.

In Eurasia, many species of birds specific to the cultural landscape spread to the north only over this landscape. However, there is one interesting exception: the city swallow - such a pronounced synanthrope - in the north of Yakutia nests without any connection with human buildings in the coastal cliffs of the Anabar River at 72 ° N. sh. The same was noted recently for the Indigirka River. Here are the northernmost places of distribution of this species of birds. They live there without the "help" of man.

Without further increasing the number of examples, it can be said in relation to birds associated with human buildings that their fauna in different zoogeographic regions is a derivative of the fauna of their zoogeographic region, and the fact that some species belong to more than one region is explained primarily by the position of their natural range. , originally located in two or more faunal areas. Even the listed species, which spread along with the cultural landscape over considerable distances, usually stop at the borders of their “own” zoogeographic region.

At the same time, one should not forget that the cultural landscapes of the same name in different geographical zones, and even more so the continents belonging to different zoogeographic regions, are often similar only in appearance. In fact, there are different types of settlements, different crops, ways of cultivating the land and climatic conditions are not the same. Therefore, against the background of a large number of species specific to a given area, species common to several geographical zones, and even more so to faunal regions, fade into the background.

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