Blue Dove - description, habitat, interesting facts

The length of the body of sizar is about 35 centimeters, their mass varies from 200 to 400 grams, depending on the place of residence and quality of life.

Appearance Description

It is very easy to distinguish a sizar from a clintukh close to it in appearance if you know that the first one, unlike a fellow, has orange eyes, a black beak and a white spot on the lower back, but it is not always encountered. Therefore, this is not the most reliable sign.

Sisareas are classified as sedentary birds, they are always tied to certain territories in which they spend most of their lives.

Most often, pigeons live in colonies, which can consist of up to 1000 individuals.And the general population around the world has long crossed the milestone of one million representatives of the species. And with the onset of cold weather, the population is greatly reduced, and in the summer comes to the original number.

There are several types of cooing pigeons:

• nesting;
• cooing, pointing to the courtship;
• danger warning;
• cooing during feeding.

Color and plumage of sizar

The most common color in pigeons is gray. But there is still a lot of other colors. For example, some urban pigeons have very dark or almost black colors, rarely can be found individuals with coffee color plumage. Birds that a person breeds can be brown or completely white, sometimes their beak color is pink and eyes are dark rather than orange like those of ordinary sisaris. Those who live on the outskirts of cities or in the countryside, you can find a “wild” color, that is, when there are several black stripes on the wings, as well as a dark strip on the gray tail.

Habitat

The behavior of pigeons varies depending on whether they are wild or live in cities.

Wild sisaris often wander, though not over long distances, because of the search for food, but the urban ones are tied to one place and do not fly away for several kilometers, and they always return to their place of life. Another difference is that urban pigeons love to spend time sitting in the trees when wild and rural pigeons never do that.

Lifestyle

Pigeons are most often active only during the day, but city sisaris can move at night, because the streets in the city are usually illuminated at night. For most of the day, the sizaris are busy searching for food or relaxing. And during the mating season or feeding the chicks in search of food begins to go even more time.

Sisari sleep at night, ruffled. The female with the chicks is sleeping in the nest when the male lives close to them.

City sisaris are less active than wild. And thanks to frequent open and warm places, they can multiply throughout the year, and then the number of their clutches reaches 9.But wild pigeons can make no more than 4 broods per year.

Breeding sisar

The male takes care of the female, cooing loudly. A pair of pigeons are cleaning each other feathers, and in contact with their beaks, imitating kisses. The mating season of pigeons occurs at any time of the year, because it (the mating season) depends only on the place of residence of the couple.

When the male finds a mate, he starts to save her from rivals, when they appear, he takes the female to a secluded place so that they are not found. If the opponent is from a different pack, the male behaves more aggressively, attacks the alien.

The couple begins to prepare a place for future offspring. They will build a nest together. The female folds it, and the male brings twigs, etc.

The female lays the first eggs approximately three weeks after mating. And the difference between them is 2 days. Pigeons hatch their eggs for about 20 days, both of the parents make it the female and the male in turn. Chicks hatch not at the same time, but with a difference in how many hours. At birth, they do not have feathers at all, so I cannot warm myself.

Nutrition

Most of the diet of pigeons is vegetable food. Sisaris also eat insects and worms. And in the cold, when it is difficult to find food, they begin to eat anything, even carrion. Pigeons are looking for food and eat it in flocks, so sometimes around the place of feeding you can see over 100 individuals. And the largest flocks are collected during the grain crops. At one meal pigeons can eat 40 grams, their daily rate of food is 60 grams of food of plant origin.

Natural enemies of gray pigeons

The main enemies are often the birds, for example, hawks, they love to eat pigeon meat. Especially they become dangerous when feeding chicks, because, if both parents had been away from their children, predators could attack unarmed chicks.

Of birds, goshawks are dangerous, they also like to eat sisaris, and in a day one such bird family can eat up to 7 pigeons. This is talking about the danger to wild pigeons. But the peregrine falcon threatens only urban pigeons, in the modern world they feed their chicks with pigeon meat.

Another danger in the city - the crows, they usually kill the weakest and oldest in the pack.

For wild pigeons, such predators are dangerous: ferrets, snakes. It happens that lizards steal and eat eggs.

Pigeon breeding man

The man derived a huge number of new species of pigeons, in which not only the color of plumage differs, but also their physical qualities. Currently there are more than 800 breeds, of which 300 are domestic breeds.

There are several types of pigeons bred destinations:

1. Meat. They are bred in order to continue to eat. Their peculiarity lies in their great weight, as compared with their counterparts in the city.
2. Sports or postal. Their main feature is that they can fly long distances without stopping for a short time. Previously, they were used only as postal ones, but since 1820 there appeared competitions between pigeons - then they got the name sports.
3. Decorative. They are bred in order to then participate with them in international exhibitions.

Cultivation of pigeons occurs in special buildings - dovecotes.

The influence of pigeons on human life

Of course, the appearance of human settlements strongly influenced the lives of these birds. They became addicted to man. Pigeons travel pro and c by humans, so they appeared on almost all continents. And the birds themselves, in turn, have on people both positive and negative effects.

Negative influence:

1. Pigeons are natural distributors of diseases, they spread bird flu or ornithosis, but directly from pigeons a person rarely becomes infected.
2. Sizari degrade the appearance of the streets, leaving his litter. It can be found everywhere on the roads, monuments, cars, cornices, windows, fences, and sometimes on the people themselves.

Positive sides:

1. Sisari well destroy garbage on the streets, eating or moving into their nests.
2. The weather is determined by pigeons, they just feel good changes in atmospheric pressure.
3. They began to be used as postal (due to the speed of movement), however, now they have not been used for so long.

Pigeon abilities

1. Memory. They have an excellent memory, so they can memorize and distinguish more than 700 different objects from each other, and feel the difference between light and dark with skin!
2. Hearing. Pigeons hear the infrasound, and it helps them in navigation when they are in flight, as well as they can feel the approach / beginning of natural disasters.
3. Vision pigeons. Everyone probably noticed that when walking the gray-gray constantly pump their head, they do it for a reason. This is due to the structure of the birds' visual apparatus, and thanks to such an action as shaking his head, pigeons begin to see much better.
4. Navigation. Pigeons are perfectly oriented in space due to some abilities. The first is that they have a “built-in compass” with the help of it, they are guided by the sun. The second is that they have a good memory for the terrain, therefore, flying somewhere, they remember the landscape relief, and then return home without any problems. Besides the fact that they usually easily return to their native locality, it is worth noting how they do it. Pigeons have the ability of homing - the skill lies in the fact that pigeons can fly over great distances, returning home, as well as remain in the air for a long time.

Interesting Facts

1. Pigeons can fly up to 3 thousand kilometers, and their speed develops up to 150 km / h.Because of this, they began to be used to send letters over long distances in a relatively short flight time. That is, for pigeon mail.
2. Couples can sit up to 16 chicks per year. Moreover, they are able to provide their “child” with about 8 kilograms of good meat.
3. If you somehow deprive the sizar of sight, for example, blindfolded, then he will stop shaking his head, because, usually, pigeons are thus oriented in space.
4. Much more often in the symbolism or legends can be found mention of pigeons than other birds.
5. The pigeon is one of the first birds tamed by man.

Video: rock dove (Columba livia)