A bird that hatching chicks in winter

I once wrote about the fact that birds are not afraid of cold if they have enough food. Birds have very fast metabolism, especially small species. That's why all their life activities during the winter off-season are aimed at getting food to survive in harsh conditions and start breeding in spring.

The breeding strategy of insect eaters is to "guess" the moment when chicks appear when there is a lot of food around; that is, their hatching coincides with the period of release of insects and other invertebrates from wintering grounds. Therefore, the first insect-eating birds start to lay eggs in April (e.g., tits; tits are also sedentary). But not all birds eat insects. Accordingly, they also feed their chicks with plant food rather than animals, so they can breed throughout the harvest season. There are several species of birds that breed in winter. In this article we will talk about ticks.

Tickles are a family of birds from the Vyurkov family (a vast family that also includes finches, snowbirds, lentils, etc.). There are 5 types of ticks. A well-known feature of these birds is their unusual beak with intersecting tips - an ideal tool for obtaining seeds from spruce and pine cones. In addition, the beak is used to move around in branches, like parrots. The most common species is the spruce-crest, or common klest

Human ticks are common in Eurasia and North America. They settle in mixed or, more often, coniferous forests, both plain and mountainous. The size of these birds is slightly larger than sparrows. Males have bright orange-red colouring of head, chest, belly and back, in some places with brownish patches, females - greenish-gray. Wings and tail of both sexes are dark brown.

As mentioned above, the ticks eat mainly spruce cone seeds but can also eat seeds of other plants, including deciduous ones. In spring and summer, they also eat insects, but in small amounts. Adherence to the coniferous harvest determines the timing of crosses' reproduction: most of the cones ripens in March, so the birds start breeding in February (and sometimes in January and even in December). The nest is located high in the crowns, built by a female. The walls of the nest are made of dry twigs and weeds with addition of moss and lichen. The tray is lined with feathers and fluff.

Female usually lays 3-4 eggs and incubates laying 12-14 days. High fat content in coniferous seeds (about 30% in spruce seeds) probably helps chicks not to freeze at low temperatures. K.A. Vorobyov observed small chicks being fed by ticks at minus 10°С, while in the morning the temperature dropped to -22°С.

If the harvest is rich, the ticks may multiply twice in a season, if not, they may not multiply at all. Because of this, their numbers are subject to strong fluctuations: in some parts of the range, ticks appear only under favorable forage conditions. In extra-breeding seasons ticks migrate in flocks, often far beyond the breeding range.