Waterfowl - not a scientific term, but rather an amateur.According to it the common name of poultry are combined, based on the total for their lifestyle.It's the same when you combine the generic term "marine animals" whales, jellyfish and fish, which, according to the generally accepted scientific classification belong to different taxonomic groups.
waterfowl are considered birds that are able to stay on the surface of the water.Thus, not all birds, the leading lifestyle and water to forage in ponds belong to the waterfowl.A bright confirmation of this - the cranes and storks.The food they get mainly in shallow waters - in the marshes or lakefront.They do not need to master the art of float, as the food they grab long beak.Therefore, they have no structural features of the foot, which is characteristic for waterfowl - webbed, which act as flippers.
Another distinctive feature of which are waterfowl - dense plumage and having special sebaceous glands, which secret must be lubricated feathers, preventing them from getting wet.
Waterfowl - or predators or omnivores."Vegans" is not among them.Each type of "specialized" in his stern, so different waterfowl quite safely share the same swamp, lake or a portion of the surface of the sea, occupying the ecological niche of the species.
Seagull, for example, grabbing fish from the water surface, cormorants dive for her depth with altitude, and duck-dives dive from the surface of the water.Some types when obtaining food just immersed in water head.And here it all depends on the length of the neck.Lebed is able to grasp food with quite a considerable depth, and a duck that does not belong to the dives - with much less.And all are fed, and no one to no one claimed.
The Russian region where the waterfowl have always had in large quantities, is the Arctic, the Far East and adjacent territories.Stick to the traditional way of life of indigenous peoples in the hunting season stocking of literally thousands of birds.Then they smoked, salted, frozen in glaciers and ate their meat in the long polar winter.
modern north, according to the northerners, became much poorer in this respect, the situation has changed about the past twenty-five - thirty years.What's to blame - whether uncontrolled hunting, or the destruction of nesting sites, or some other factor unaccounted - ornithologists have not yet figured out.Yes and determine whether decreased livestock, it is not possible.Although birds, in the opinion of the northerners, there are fewer, their number is still so great that little incalculable.That is "less" is a subjective evaluation, but in numbers no one can determine how it is "less" looks.
floodplains of major rivers are also the places where dwells a lot of waterfowl, although in smaller quantities than in the North.And if the rivers sparsely populated expanse of Siberia to the birds, in the European part of the country, where the population density is much higher, their number directly affects the human factor as a banal hunting, including poaching.
are of great importance, and man-made disasters, and just human activities, which often destroys the place where traditionally live waterfowl.Photos from the oil spill dying gulls and other such "amenities" has long become commonplace environmental exhibitions.Alas ...
