A brown-headed gait is a bird from the titmouse family. In Russia, it is also known by the name "puff" because of the manner of fluffing feathers very strongly in extremely cold weather. Inhabits zones of coniferous forests of Asia and Europe. Unlike other types of tits, it prefers to settle in remote places, but often shows curiosity for a person.
Brown-headed gait: appearance description
The bird has a small dense body, up to 14 cm in length and weighing 9-14 g, a short neck and plumage of a grayish-brown color. The top of a rather large head and nape is a dull black shade. Most of the back, medium and small wings, shoulders, nadhvoste and lower back are brownish-gray. Cheeks are white-gray. An ocher shade is observed on the sides of the neck. On the front of the throat there is the so-called shirt shirt - a large black spot. The beak has a dark brown color. The bottom of the bird is dirty white with a slight ocher tinge on its sides, legs and feet are dark gray.
In the field, a brown-headed gadget can easily be confused with a black-headed one. The difference between the two is that the puffer has a matte rather than a shiny black cap and a grayish longitudinal strip on the secondary fly wings. The most striking distinguishing feature of these birds can be called their singing.
Habitat
The brown-headed gaiter is found in the forest zones of Eurasia, starting from the east of Great Britain and the central regions of France, and ending with the Pacific coast and the Japanese islands. In the north, lives in areas of woody vegetation, as well as the Scandinavian and Finnish forest tundra. It is found in the south in the steppes.
A brown-headed gadget is prone to live in flat coniferous, mountain, and mixed forests, in which pine, larch, spruce grow, and river floodplains and wetlands are located. In Siberia, it settles in dark coniferous taiga with sphagnum bogs, willows and alder thickets.
In Europe, it mainly lives among the shrubby vegetation of floodplain forests, at the edges and groves. In mountainous areas it is found at an altitude of 2000 m to 2745 m, for example, on the Tien Shan. Outside of the breeding season, the bird tends to rise significantly higher. For example, in Tibet puff was spotted at an altitude of 3960 m above sea level.
Lifestyle
Birds of this species nest in April and May. Mostly sedentary people live in hollows, which are located in stumps and dead trees at a short distance from the ground. The brown-headed gaiter, like woodpeckers, prefers to hollow out its dwelling in decayed decayed wood. The hollow depth is about 20 cm, and the diameter is 6-8 cm.
Puffers are engaged in arranging the nest in pairs that they find for themselves in the fall. In the first year of life, males look for females in the nearest territory (no more than five kilometers). If they fail to do this, they fly away to distant areas of the forest.
On the arrangement of the nest in the chubby on average it takes one to two weeks. For this, birds use branches, tree bark, bark, wool and feathers. Nests of puffers differ from the dwellings of other species of gaits in that they do not carry moss in their house. A tit - a brown-headed gadget - likes to make hiding places with plant seeds, but most often forgets about the location of the treasure.
Food
Puffers feed on various small invertebrates and larvae. Thus, gaiters are of great benefit to the forest ecosystem, since they regulate the number of insects. In addition, they feed on the fruits and seeds of plants.
In summer, the diet of an adult gadget is divided equally between food of animal and plant origin. In winter, they feed mainly on the seeds of juniper, pine and spruce. Chicks are fed by spiders, caterpillars of butterflies with the addition of vegetable feed. Adult puffers eat earthworms, bees, weevils, flies, mosquitoes, ants, ticks, and even snails.
From plant foods, cereals such as wheat, corn, oats and barley are included in their diet. From berries, nuts prefer cranberries, mountain ash, lingonberries, blueberries and cotoneaster. Visits bird feeders rarely.
Breeding
This season coincides with the time of arrangement of nests. Puffers find a mate in the first year of life and remain together until one of them dies. The life expectancy of brown-headed gaits is no more than nine years.
Courtship of males is accompanied by songs and shaking of wings. Before mating, they defiantly bring the females food. Before laying, birds resume arranging the nest. Thus, at the beginning of hatching, the eggs of the nut are covered with a layer of litter. Clutch usually consists of 5-9 white eggs with reddish-brown specks. Hatching continues for a crescent. At this time, the male gets food for the mother and guards the nest. Sometimes the female flies out of the house for a short time and feeds on her own.
Chicks hatch asynchronously for two to three days. At first, they are covered with a rare fluff of brownish-gray color, the beak cavity has a brownish-yellow hue. The female and male feed the cubs together. On average, they bring production 250-300 times a day. At night and on cool days, the brown-headed gadget inseparably sits in the hollow, heating its offspring. The chicks begin to fly a little after 17–20 days after birth, however, they still remain dependent on their parents, as they are not able to independently obtain food. In mid-July, bird families huddle together in nomadic flocks, in which, in addition to tits, you can meet pika, kings and nuthatch.
Singing
The vocal repertoire of a brown-headed gadget does not have such a variety as, for example, a black-headed one. Two types of songs are classified: demonstrative (used to attract a pair) and territorial (marks a nesting site). The first type consists of a series of measured soft-sounding whistles "you ... you ..." or "tii ... tii ...". A brown-headed gadget (photo below) performs this song at the same height or raises the tone from time to time. Puffers sing all year round, but most often this happens in spring and in the second half of summer.
The territorial whistle in comparison with the demonstrative one is much quieter and resembles a gurgling trill with an intermittent squeak. It is more often performed by males than females. Also, many ornithologists highlight the "babbling" song. A frequently encountered call includes the chi-chi high sounds typical of the tit family, behind which you can almost always hear the rattling and coarser “jee ... jee ...”.