This little bird is very unusual family of finches.It is little more than the size of a sparrow.Females have greenish-gray plumage with yellow spots on the edges of the feathers, and the males - the real dandies: crimson jacket and a gray shirt front.But it is not interested in feathering crossbills - there are more bright birds.From a number of local Pichugov their isolated two factors: parrots beak and nesting period.The children come from them at the end of winter.There have been documented cases when the female was sitting on eggs in severe cold at -35 ° C.Why crossbills hatching in winter?Let's face it.
When the going gets cold days, our forests are empty.The majority of birds is fed to the south.But some still remain: blackbirds, magpies, jackdaws.We think that birds are rescued from the cold.In fact, they fly after his food - lice.Those birds whose food up sleeping under palymi leaf beetles, as well as those that pecking dried acacia pods and seeds cones remain to winter with us.Among these residents have Russian and bird crossbill.
Why crossbills hatching in the winter, because even blackbirds and crows give birth in the spring, when the minutes of the cold?In the wild, animals provide offspring when fully confident in the abundance of food.After all, parents need not only to find food for themselves, but also to rouse the young.And what crossbills feed?Most tasty treat them - seeds of conifers.In February or March cones open, and the seeds are at a glance.Others eager to close no nuts - squirrel sleep in hollows and other birds have not arrived yet.Eat - do not want.Here are a couple of crossbills and begins to build a nest.
for laying female looking for a place among the dense branches of spruce.Fluffy krona, covered with snow, and its safe harbor of the young piercing cold winds.For the construction used only the best insulation materials: moss, lichen, feathers and even animal fur.Therefore birds nest warm and safe.Nestlings do not freeze - because they still warms his warm mother.By the way, their beaks are normal at birth - so it is easier to push his father into greedy throats crushed seeds.When the young shoots will be two months of the nose begins to bend.Brood learn to forage on their own - the good, the seeds from the cones is not all fall out.
However, the question of "why crossbills hatching winter" is not quite correct: the offspring may appear in the summer, especially far from the fields where the ripening sunflowers.But pirate raids on farmland crossbills are not alone, they compete with other birds.But in the period from February to March for their existence expanse.There is only one "but": coniferous fruit every five years.And because Pichugov need to roam.One winter, a lot of them in the suburbs, while the next - hundreds of kilometers away, in Karelia.
our "northern parrots" are divided into several types.Sosnovik - the largest, lives in forests.Elovikov a little smaller, and the smallest - White-winged crossbill.We have already answered the question of why crossbills hatching in winter, but do you know why they are called "holy bird"?Because of their small bodies do not decompose and incorruptible preserved as relics, for 20 years.This phenomenon has a simple explanation.The bird in my lifetime so naklevalas tar from pine trees that even when life has turned into a kind of mummy.
