When crows start making nests. Common raven. Nesting gray crows

Why are crow nests multi-story? Do they build a new nest every spring? and got the best answer

Answer from Valera world yao[guru]
The colonial type of nesting has certain advantages over the solitary one, mainly in terms of protection from predators. In this case, there is usually no sharp competition for nesting sites. Nesting colonies have existed for many decades. So, rooks use the same nest repeatedly in a slightly modified form. However, observations show that the old nest is used only as the basis of a new one, and the side walls are built anew, and the tray is always re-lined. A significant part of the old nests is taken away by birds and used as building material for new buildings. Although there is no exact data on the duration of use by birds of the same nest in such a nesting colony, it can still be assumed that, subject to annual repairs, it is used by rooks for many years. , after the creation of the family, they settle next to others, forming friendly communities. Together they get food, defend themselves from enemies, setting up sentries who warn the whole society of birds about the danger in time, and provide mutual assistance. And sometimes birds from such communities build nests together, and each one works on building someone else's nest no less diligently than on their own. Crow community life. Common crows, such as village crows, have long been known for their well-organized social behavior. Waking up, dawn breaks a little, one of the main crows flies out into the open, sits on a tall tree and begins to croak. Gradually, from all sides of this area, crows flock to her voice and, with an answering croak, sit down in a flock in the trees. At dawn, their groups go to the field or meadow to search for worms, insects, field mice, etc. Around noon, crows usually rest in the dense branches of a tree. All day, constantly replacing each other, sentries sit high in the trees and carefully examine the surroundings. In case of danger, they raise the alarm with a loud croak, and then the whole group rises into the air. And if it is a predator approaching in the air, the sentries fly up to meet it with a cry. The forward sentry is especially courageous - he leads the pack. Having driven the enemy away, the guards go to their post, and the ravens go to rest.

Answer from Victoria[guru]
The shape and size of the nest. The compact pile nest has a thick base, low edges and a fairly flat tray. The base of the nest consists of relatively thick branches, 15-20 mm in diameter, the upper part consists of thinner branches. The nest is small, given the size of the bird, when it sits on the nest, it is clearly visible. The bird's nest is occupied for a number of years, but, each time renewing it, they gradually increase in size. Nest diameter 320-660 mm, nest height 200-430 mm, tray diameter 170-240 mm, tray depth 85-140 mm.
Masonry features. The clutch usually consists of 4-5 pale green, bluish green or pure green eggs with brownish spots and dots. Egg sizes: (38-42) x (28-32) mm.
Nesting times. The gray crow in the middle lane starts building a nest at the end of March. In mid-April, full clutches are found. Incubation lasts 21 days, and chicks appear in the first half of May. At the age of about five weeks, young birds become flying. The chicks leave the nest in mid-June.
In January-February, they make mating flights, in February they appear at old nests, which crows usually use several times. In March, the nests are repaired. In March-April, the female lays eggs. With the start of laying eggs, the crows begin a full annual molt. The female incubates the eggs. Chicks appear in April, and fledglings are observed in May. The chicks stay with their parents until August and roam to the nesting places, by autumn they migrate south. Hoodie
When we walk in the park or forest, wander along the river, relax on the lawn, we don’t even suspect that we are… being watched. A person, and even more so a group of people, attracts the attention of gray crows everywhere. These birds are observing us not out of idle curiosity. They have long noticed that where people stay for a sufficiently long time, you can often find something edible, for example, the remnants of a meal in the bosom of nature.
And now let's imagine that, walking among the white-trunked birches of the May forest, we suddenly stumbled upon a skillfully hidden nest of a chaffinch. Of course, you want to take a good look at it, touch it - and now the disguise is broken. Soon we will leave, but we will be replaced by a thunderstorm of bird nests - a gray crow. It was not in vain that she kept her distance and spent an hour observing nature lovers. As a reward for patience and attentiveness, the crow will receive a glorious dinner, and the couple of finches will have to come to terms with the loss and start building a new nest.
But no matter how ruthless the robber is in relation to other people's eggs and chicks, she tries to protect her offspring from predators and builds a bowl-nest on tall branched trees. For greater strength, in addition to coarse branches, aluminum wire is often woven into the walls. A tray for warmth and softness is lined with animal hair, sometimes mixed with rags, scraps of newspapers and even polyethylene.
Exactly 21 days, like a chicken, a gray crow hatches crows. And then, out of five or six speckled green eggs, gluttonous chicks are born, and oh, how much trouble our cheat has!

Answer from Victor Alexandrov[guru]
Very often, if the old nest is arranged in a very good place and slightly damaged from the past winter, the crows simply complete it by crouching a certain amount of branches or other building material. If this is done several times, then the nest becomes much larger than the initial size and, if desired, you can even calculate how many repairs the birds have made, that is, how many years they have bred chicks in one place and even assume the size of the clutches in different years (based on the remains of the shell of past years.

Highvoltage 16.03.2010 - 19:19

Spring is coming and the crows are preparing for an important period of their existence, for reproduction, i.e. nesting. During this period, the behavior of our "favorite" birds is very different from usual.
At first I decided for myself to update my knowledge about this life cycle of the gray crow, and then figured out that it would be nice to remind the comrades what was what.

Nesting gray crow.

Nesting places. In nesting time, the crow is associated with woody vegetation and nests in forests (near the edges), groves, gardens, and also in cities.

Nest location.
Nests are more common on coniferous trees, less often on deciduous trees, not very high from the ground. Nest building material. The nest is built from dry boughs, laid in a fork in the large branches of a tree. The tray is lined with wool, bast, rags, feathers, etc.

There is evidence in the literature that gray crows occupy the same nest for several years, each time reconstructing it. However, in Moscow and in the immediate Moscow region, crows rarely occupy old nests, more often they build new ones every year, which is apparently due to their frequent disturbance and destruction of nests by people. The same reasons explain the high altitude of nests in cities. In poorly developed and rarely visited areas, crow nests are usually located at a height of 2.5 to 6 m from the ground. But in cities, crows nest at much higher altitudes and in more inaccessible places. So, in the city of Moscow, all discovered nests were at a height of 4 to 21 m, and most of them were at a height of 10 to 15 m; in Ivanovo, the average nest height was 18 m; in Cherepovets, about 13 m.

When nesting gray crows, the distance between residential nests is very important. In slightly altered landscapes, this distance for most residential nests is 80–200 m. In such settlements, communication between neighboring pairs is maintained, which is important for the collective protection of the nest from predators. In the city, this uniform distribution of nests is significantly disturbed. In urban parks, nests are located at a distance of 60-80 m from each other, and in residential areas - in separate groups, and the distance between these groups can be several hundred meters. The decisive moment for the location of the nest in a certain area is the availability of food in an amount sufficient for adult birds during the period of building the nest and laying eggs. From April 15 to May 6, 2001, we carried out absolute counts of nests of the hooded crow in the northeastern, southeastern, and southwestern parts of Moscow. In total, about 12 square meters were surveyed. km of the urban area, where 505 nests were noted, of which 322 were residential. The nesting density of crows averaged 60 pairs per square meter. km.

The shape and size of the nest.
The compact pile nest has a thick base, low edges and a fairly flat tray. The base of the nest consists of relatively thick branches, 15-20 mm in diameter, the upper part consists of thinner branches. The nest is small, given the size of the bird, when it sits on the nest, it is clearly visible. The bird's nest is occupied for a number of years, but, each time renewing it, they gradually increase in size. Nest diameter 320-660 mm, nest height 200-430 mm, tray diameter 170-240 mm, tray depth 85-140 mm.

Masonry features.
The clutch usually consists of 4-5 pale green, bluish green or pure green eggs with brownish spots and dots. Egg sizes: (38-42) x (28-32) mm.

In landscapes heavily altered by humans, birds are experiencing an increase in fertility: the appearance of additional clutches and an increase in the number of eggs and chicks that successfully complete their development. If in poorly developed landscapes the average number of eggs in a full clutch is on average 3.4-4.0 eggs, then in strongly and completely transformed conditions it increases to 4.2-4.7. The number of hatched chicks in heavily modified landscapes also turns out to be somewhat larger on average (3.8) than in slightly modified forest landscapes (3.2-3.5). The existence of a certain trend towards increased fertility in urbanized populations of gray crows is also confirmed by the number of chicks that have flown out of the nests.

Nesting times.
They gather for nesting in early spring, the nest is built at the end of March by both parents, the female lays eggs in mid-April. Incubation - 21 days, the female incubates, the male feeds the incubating female. The type of incubation is mixed, at the beginning of oviposition, the eggs are heated several times a day, starting from the middle of oviposition, heating becomes constant. Chicks become flying by 5 weeks. The chicks leave the nest in mid-June. In summer, the chicks are with their parents. During nesting and walking chicks, crows are aggressive and can attack closely approached animals and even humans. Profound changes that have taken place in the ecology of urbanized birds are evidenced by the lengthening of the reproductive period noted in urban crows. The usual time for building nests in slightly modified forest landscapes in the middle zone of the European part of Russia is the last week of March-early April. But the mild temperature conditions of the big city provide earlier snow melting, here leaves on the trees bloom 2-3 weeks earlier, mouse-like rodents and invertebrates that are part of the diet of birds become active earlier. In this regard, urban birds begin to nest earlier. Fully built nests of crows in Moscow were noted in the second half of March, and at the end of this month, that is, one and a half to two weeks earlier than in natural landscapes, full clutches are already found in the city. In the 20th of April, chicks appear in the nests of city crows, and at the end of May, fledglings.

But that's a completely different story 😛

As soon as I have information, I will edit the article. If there is something useful and interesting to add, please! 😊

Today I propose to get acquainted with the most synanthropic bird - the gray crow. Absolutely all residents of cities and villages know this bird.

A bit of biology

First, let's talk about systematics. As a separate species, the crow (Corvus cornix L.) was described by C. Linnaeus together with a species close to it - the black crow (Corvus corone L.). Further research found that in the vast areas of contact, black and gray crows form mixed pairs, give full-fledged offspring capable of reproduction. This indicates that the gray and black crows in nature have not yet reached the complete reproductive isolation characteristic of the present species. Therefore, taxonomists combined the black and gray crows into one species - the crow (Corvus corone), giving them the rank of subspecies. Under a single species name, the gray and black crows are included in systematic summaries and large monographs. However, a 2002 study showed that hybrids do not appear in all cases and are inferior in health to purebred birds - a sign of the formation of a new species, its separation from the parent species. Now the scientific name of the gray crow is Corvus cornix (actually just "crow"), and the black crow is Corvus corone.

Gray crow (lat. Corvus cornix) - a species of birds from the genus of crows. Outwardly, the gray crow has a large black beak, their plumage on the head is black, the neck and part of the hind back are ash-gray, the wings are black, but in the sun they acquire reflections of green. Black tail and paws. The underbelly is also grey. The crow's tail is wedge-shaped, with long tail feathers. The bird's beak is powerful and sharp, conical in shape, in some species it has a characteristic high bend. The legs of the crow are thin and long, with four fingers: 1 is turned back, 3 is forward. And a rather graceful body structure. On the ground it moves with wide steps, in case of danger it begins to “jump”. An adult bird weighs from 400 to 700 grams, and the body length is about 50 centimeters, while the wingspan reaches 1 meter. Distributed in Eurasia, where it reaches the Yenisei. A sedentary nomadic species, completely disappears in winter only from the northern periphery of the range.

Crows are omnivorous birds, they feed on insects, chicks and eggs, rodents and lizards, frogs, fish; plant food - the seeds of various plants, as well as the plants themselves, as well as food waste and carrion, which is of great importance for sanitation.

The Hooded Crow starts nesting in March-April (depending on the climate). When crows build nests, they separate from the flock and try to protect the boundaries of their area. In cities, the widespread breakdown into pairs and mating games can be observed already in February. The earliest chicks appear not earlier than April, in one clutch there are 3-6 eggs, less often up to 7-8. As a rule, birds do not use old nests; they make new ones, but not far from the old ones. In the wild, birds breed at a distance of 1-2 km from another pair, in the city this gap is much less. The breeding season is preceded by a current with air games, chases, somersaults in the air. Partners build a new nest every season. The Hooded Crow starts nesting in March-April (depending on the climate). Bird nests are arranged in parks and squares, in the fork of thick tree branches, power line supports, cranes, behind drainpipes. Ravens build nests from dry branches or reeds, fastened with clay and turf, in addition, they often use wire, line the nest with feathers, grass, tow, cotton wool, rags, and synthetics. Near the nest behaves cautiously and imperceptibly. As is known, the limits of clutch volume in birds are a genetically determined trait. In crows, the minimum full clutch is 2 eggs, the maximum is 6, and the average clutch contains 3 to 5 eggs. The female lays 4-6 bluish-green eggs with dark speckles, from the end of March to May.

They are incubated by one female, for 18-19 days, without leaving the nest around the clock, the male feeds her during the incubation period. After 25 days, the chicks hatch and are fed by both parents. Growing chicks need food that is easy to digest and high in calories. The best food for them is the eggs of other birds. Ravens ruthlessly plunder other people's nests to feed their chicks. The chicks fly out around the middle of June, for some time they stay with their parents who feed them. In July, family flocks break up.

By autumn, crows are concentrated in large numbers around landfills, garbage dumps and other sources of food. They reproduce in the 2nd-5th year of life. The maximum accurately known age is 20 years.

Interesting Crow Facts

The crow is a professional scavenger with concentrated stomach acid, high body temperature, and resistance to a vast number of infections. It is from her that a person practically does not have a chance to pick up an infection. Moreover, by exterminating dead birds of other species, as well as the carcasses of mice and rats, crows prevent the spread of many infections.

In Moscow, at the Rizhsky railway station, half a century ago, biologists noticed that the crows perfectly learned the schedule of suburban trains and learned to fly up to the platform just when the train was approaching the platform. Birds quickly flew into all the vestibules in turn, looking for scraps thrown by the passengers of the last flight. Moreover, sparrows and pigeons living there have learned the habits of crows, and to this day, bird patrols regularly fly over trains.

Ravens hide their prey, taking care that no one sees it. If another bird suddenly witnessed such an action, the prey will be hidden, but only when the unexpected witness disappears.

Female crows are quite picky in choosing a partner and look for certain qualities or traits in them. A good chosen one should be able to provide for a "family" and be smart enough. Males do everything to attract female attention: dead loops, flying upside down, and other aerobatics.

Crows communicate with each other, the crow language is extremely developed, has a rich "vocabulary". It has special sounds for courting the female, addressing the young, gathering, cursing, threatening, alarms, distress. Sometimes several birds make the same sound, in unison. For more volume. In cases where a general fee is declared. The sounds made by crows fit into the range from 0.5 to 4.0 kHz. And here's what is remarkable: in different countries these birds have their own dialects - they do not immediately understand each other.

Crows leave most of their droppings under their nests, which they build in trees (you definitely shouldn’t park your car there). The crow, the only bird, can be taught to use the toilet - precisely because the bird knows how to control this process, tries not to dirty it in its nest, and usually empties its intestines when flying out and flying into it.

Ravens create one pair for life. In the event of a predator approaching, males can sacrifice themselves to save their soulmate and chicks.

There is another oddity in the behavior of birds, whom the crow dies, her comrades arrange a memorial service. Having found the body of a dead bird, for fifteen minutes they fill the space with heartbreaking cries, as if on command, the birds wipe, sit on the branches and mournfully remain silent. Modern researchers cannot explain this phenomenon.

Crows can count. If a crow is given a choice of two feeders with different amounts of food, it will almost always choose the one with more food. For example, 14 beetles were placed in one feeder, and 15 in another. A person could not immediately determine where there were more beetles, but the crows did it with ease. In addition, crows learn to recognize numbers very quickly and subsequently can even determine which number is larger and which is smaller!

Ravens do not just remember their offender, they transmit information to other birds. Surprisingly, even "children" will be hostile against those whom their parents have "cursed".

City crows love games, they are not afraid of dogs and cats. In the forest, birds often play with predators, people have watched the birds chase a fox, a wolf or an otter. In winter, people often watched the birds roll from the icy mountain and church domes. And crows love team games. One of the birds holds some small object in its beak, it can be a stick, a bump or a stone. the crow takes off heavily and passes the “pass” to another player. This continues until the toy is on the ground.

So, crows correctly determine the meaning of traffic lights - at red light they calmly pick up the corpses of animals hit by cars on the road, and at green they fly away. They perfectly distinguish what is in the hands - a person's stick or a gun, they distinguish between a child and an adult, a man and a woman. But it seems that this is not the limit and the crows are capable of more. They can do extraordinary things. Stop, look around, assess the situation. Recall what you have seen before.

In frosts, they sit down for the night, and closely nestle against each other, putting their heads under the wing and fluffing their feathers, which retain heat well.

Gray crows not only speak, but also master exactly the language in which they communicate with them. If a crow begins to imitate a voice, it does it with such intonations that you cannot distinguish the voice of a person you know from the voice of a crow.

The crow, unlike other birds, eats the contents of a stolen egg far from the crime scene and prints it from the blunt end. To transport the stolen bird punches a hole in the egg, inserts the upper part of the beak into the resulting hole, holding the prey from below. And so, with her mouth open, she leaves the scene of the crime.

In addition, crows have excellent memory and high learning ability. According to experts, they have the ability for rational activity, exhibit associative and logical thinking, possess elementary mathematical knowledge (count up to five, distinguish between shape, symmetry, size ratio, three-dimensional bodies and flat figures).

If in any place the nesting population of crows grows too large, the birds themselves reduce the number of offspring. Large overpopulation affects the growth of aggressiveness of crows, and they ruthlessly destroy the nests of their relatives.

When the bird finds dry bread, it will not immediately eat coarse food. The bird will look for a source suitable for any puddle, wait until the crust softens.

The crow dropped a crust of dried bread into the stream, and it disappeared into the pipe, carried away by the fast current. At first, the bird settled down at the entrance to the pipe and peered into the darkness for a long time. Then she confidently went to the opposite end of the pipe, where she waited for the lost prey. That is, the crow was able to correctly predict the course of events and showed the ability to extrapolate.

There were cases when a crow, protecting its offspring, threw small stones at people approaching the nest.

Means of communication. The sound signaling of birds is especially diverse. If chickens make 13 different sounds, roosters 15, tits 90, then rooks - 120, and gray crows - up to 300 (!). Most researchers are convinced of the signal nature of these sounds. With their help, birds convey a general emotional and mental state - anxiety, aggressiveness, joy from communication or pleasure when finding food. However, some ornithologists believe that birds have their own language, which is a means of communication, communication to convey certain information.

The gray crow is one of the most synanthropic representatives of corvids, a typical inhabitant of cities. There are both completely sedentary urban populations, and populations nesting in natural landscapes, as well as transitional ones. Many individuals living in forests, rural areas spend the winter in the suburbs and cities.

When feeding on a relatively compact food source (a waste bin, a large piece of hard-to-separate food, etc.), group members are fed in a relatively strict sequence. Filming data of feeding groups make it possible to single out three hierarchical stages (strata). Priority is always on the side of the local adult couple. From the feed, they can displace and expel any other member of the group. Conflicts rarely arise between members of a couple. When feeding one of them, the second waits nearby, maintaining an individual distance and a certain orientation in relation to the partner. In the absence of hosts, priority in feeding passes to some individuals of the second hierarchical level. This usually includes all birds of local origin (including first years) included in the group, as well as part of the immigrants. Within this hierarchical stratum, a linear-type hierarchy is observed, but not as rigid and stable in time as between strata. The third hierarchical stage, as a rule, consists of birds from mobile groups, temporarily feeding as part of a settled group.

Watching these birds, you can see: if a person is just walking down the street, the crows do not seem to notice him and can let him in 2-3 meters. But as soon as he stops and looks at them closely, they immediately bounce 10 meters away.

There is a famous Aesop's fable about how a crow threw stones into a jug to get to the water. Scientists decided to reproduce the events of the fable. Moreover, they did it with different crows four times and got the same results. A crow, a deep container of water in which tasty worms swam, and a pile of pebbles were placed in a cage. Crows just couldn't get worms. The results are amazing - 2 crows managed to find a solution on the second attempt, the rest figured it out the first time. At the same time, they began to throw not just any pebbles, but chose the largest ones. And they threw it exactly until the moment when it was possible to pull the worms out of the rising water.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Leonid Viktorovich Krushinsky, a professor at Moscow University, conducted the most interesting research on the abilities of animals. He proved that different animals act intelligently in a new environment for them, and not just on the basis of unconditioned and conditioned reflexes.

Ravens enjoy a very strange activity called enting. It consists in crushing the ants and rubbing them into the body. When the ants are crushed, formic acid is released, which is absorbed into the crows' skin and seems to give them a very pleasant sensation. Why do they do it? No one knows for sure, but there is no shortage of hypotheses. According to one such hypothesis, enting is a form of ant cooking that renders ravens immune to formic acid. This allows the crows to eat the ants without adverse effects.

Others believe that enting is a learned behavior or instinct that birds can't do anything about. Maybe formic acid is used as a kind of bath oil and has a soothing effect on the skin of birds. At the same time, the enting birds seem to be in a state of complete bliss. Maybe it's actually much simpler. And perhaps crows and other birds cover themselves with squashed ants simply because it gives them pleasure.

Ravens are able to ride on snowy hills, solely for the purpose of entertainment. It is not uncommon to see crows playing with other animals, most often cats and dogs. And in the wild - otters, wolves. In the game, the crow can use sticks, cones, balls and other objects that it finds nearby.

Goals:

To expand children's knowledge about the features of appearance, habits of crows.
Introduce children to the riddle and proverbs about crows.
Dictionary: omnivore, carrion.
Continue to teach children to draw bird eggs in a nest, mix paints on a palette.
Exercise in onomatopoeia, develop the articulatory apparatus of children.
To cultivate curiosity, interest in the birds of the native land, a humane attitude towards them.

Equipment:

Pictures and photographs of a hooded crow, sheets of paper with a painted crow's nest, equipment for painting with watercolors, equipment for playing an audio recording with the voice of a crow.

Crow

Lesson progress:

Guess the riddle:

Raven Riddle

Coloration - greyish,
Habit - thieving,
hoarse screamer -
Famous person.
Who is she?
(Crow)

Here she is - a gray crow. (Show pictures and photos). What words in the riddle made you think of a crow? (Answers of children). The crow "wears a gray vest, but the wings are black."

The crow is an amazing bird. Lives long, longer than humans. Crows are smart birds. They can count to five, distinguish between men and women, easily distinguish between a real sleeper and a person pretending to sleep. Crows also recognize people hostile to them, they distinguish a stick from a gun.
Crows are talkative birds. They can transmit different information to each other. Moreover, a crow from Crimea will not understand a crow from Kyiv, but if they meet and live side by side, they will soon begin to understand each other.

Crows nest high on acacias, poplars, cypresses. They like to settle on hawthorns. Why do you think? (Answers of children). The hawthorn, though not tall, is prickly. And this is a sure defense against enemies. Crows build a nest from thick branches, lined with moss and wool inside. And if they come across human garbage - cotton wool, rags, threads - they also use it.

Crows are very happy about the onset of spring: spread their tails, twitch their wings and hoarsely yell. Then the crows have weddings. At first, the bride and groom walk beside each other, puffed up hostilely with half-fluffed wings and beaks ready for battle. And so a day or two. Then the crow steps back and offers its head, and the raven begins to gently touch the feathers on its head with its beak.
The eggs of gray crows are blue-green, painted with dark spots. There are 3-5 of them in the nest.

Let's draw them. On the leaves you have already drawn a nest. You only need to draw the eggs. How many eggs can you draw in a crow's nest? What color will you paint them? How to get the required color? What colors should be mixed? What color will we paint the spots on the eggs? (Answers of children, performance of work).

While the female is sitting on the eggs, the male feeds her, protects her, and in case of danger, the parents carry their children to a safe place in their beaks. At first, the chicks are naked, ugly, "not talkative". The voice of crows is not very pleasant for our hearing. But this is for us, but for their mother crow, as in the Russian proverb: "There is no better singer for a crow than a native little crow." How do you understand this proverb? (Answers of children).

Let's try to "talk" in crow language - croak. (Onomatopoeia).

Imagine you are walking through the woods and suddenly a chick is on the path. He runs away from you by jumping on the ground. Poor thing! He can't fly yet. After all, it will disappear, someone will eat it! Is it necessary to "rescue" the poor chick? What to do? Why do you think so? (Answers of children).

Don't touch the chick. He will not disappear if you do not catch him and take him away from his native places. They do not yet know how to fly, but they know how to hide so that no predator can see them. And parents find them, feed them and save them. They even talk. They call the chicks, and the kids respond to them with special sounds that are inaudible to humans, but understandable to birds.

It's time to play.

Crow's nest game.

Children are divided into teams (3-5 people each) - the inhabitants of the crow's nest (large hoop). Under the words of the poem, the children run around, waving their arms with “wings” and saying “kar-kar-kar” at the end of each stanza. On the command "night" the children take their places. The “nest” that occupies its hoop first wins.

Here under the green tree
Ravens jump merrily:
Kar-kar-kar!
All day they screamed
The boys weren't allowed to sleep.
Kar-kar-kar!
Only at night they fall silent
Fall asleep in their nests:
Kar-kar-kar!

What do crows eat? Why are they called "omnivores"? Think about how the word "omnivore" was formed? (Answers of children).
Crows eat rodents, snails, caterpillars, beetles, lizards. With pleasure they eat grains, potatoes, nuts, berries. Often they rob in gardens, devouring cherries, cherries, figs, pears, apples, mulberries, nuts, grapes. In addition, crows eat garbage left by people and carrion. Carrion is called the remains of dead, fallen animals, birds, insects. That is, destroying garbage and carrion, crows, as it were, clean up, put things in order. That is why they are called paramedics.

Crows are very voracious birds. And they rob not only in the gardens. Nesting songbirds suffer greatly from them. In one sitting, the crow eats all the chicks. If crows find eggs in the nest, they will punch a hole with their beak and drink it.

Crows also attack adult birds. They overtake a dove in flight, for example, they grab it with their paws and hit it on the head with their beak. Woe to young hares. Ravens kill them with one blow of their powerful beak.

And who is the enemy of the crows themselves? These are owls, martens, weasels, birds of prey.

Questions:

1. What does a gray crow look like?
2. Why are ravens considered smart birds?
3. Why are ravens considered talkative birds?
4. How long do ravens live?
5. How do crows welcome spring?
6. How are crow weddings?
7. Where do crows nest? How is the nest made?
8. How many eggs are there in a crow's nest?
9. How do their parents take care of them?
10. How are crows born?
11. How do their parents take care of them?
12. What do crows eat?
13. Why are they called orderlies?
14. What are the enemies of crows?
15. How do ravens rob?
16. Is it necessary to raise a chick that has fallen out of the nest? Why?

Hoodie- a common and well-known bird. It is easily distinguished from other related species by its two-tone coloration. Her head, throat, wings and tail are black, and the rest of the plumage is gray. The bird is quite large: body length 45-51 cm, weight 500-700 g.

The Hooded Crow is a thriving species with more and more of them year after year. As a result, their habits also change. Previously, almost most crows built a new nest every spring. Now they use many nests for several years in a row. And a couple from a couple, especially in cities, began to nest much closer.

Signs of mating behavior of crows appear as early as February. Males, occupying nesting sites, often fly to the same tree and sit on its top for a long time. And on gray cloudy days, sometimes you notice how a crow for some reason climbs into an old nest and does not crawl out for a long time.

In the thaw, birds start spring games in the air, chasing each other, and, as in an air battle, demonstrate aerobatics, sharply diving down or steeply entering a tailspin. And then suddenly one of the crows starts to play with the bone - raises it in its paws high above the ground, throws it down and tries to pick it up on the fly.

Nesting gray crows

From the third decade of March, crows begin to repair old and build new nests. On a site previously chosen by the male, the female looks for a suitable fork in the upper part of the crown, less often aside from the trunk on a thick bough. The beginning of construction is the most difficult moment. Often a branch brought and placed in a fork is not kept in it, and while the bird flies after the next one, it falls down. This may be repeated several times. But then a second one fell on the first branch, then another one. Now the branches, clinging to each other, no longer fall down.

From now on, the work on building the nest goes faster. Crows continue to climb trees and look for dry branches. Noticing a suitable one, the bird grabs it with its beak at the base and tries to break it off or unscrew it, and if it succeeds, it drags it into the nest in its beak. At the very end of March, one can see crows roaming the yards and front gardens and collecting tow, bast, tufts of wool and even small rags for lining the nest. Approximately 10 days after the start of construction, the nest is ready.

In early April, passing by a tree, you suddenly notice a black crow's tail sticking out of the nest. This means that at least 3 eggs have already appeared in the nest and the female sat down to incubate them. In total, crows have 4-7 eggs in a clutch. They are greenish or grayish-blue in color with dark brownish-gray spots and stains. The size of the eggs is about 41.35 × 29.2 mm, weight 28.2 g. The female incubates the clutch alone, and the male brings her food and guards the nest. When, after 17 days of incubation, chicks hatch in the nest, the female does not take out the egg shells broken in two from the nest. In any case, I have never found the halves of the shells of their eggs lying on the side of the nests of corvids. But under the very nests sometimes I saw pieces of a badly destroyed shell.

Traces of the gray crow

Right paw print of a gray crow

The crow leaves footprints of its paws everywhere and at any time of the year. In summer they can be seen on the shore of any reservoir or even near a puddle, in winter - on the snow in every village or city yard. By the way, it is much easier to see the tracks of crows near human habitation than far from it.

Crow tracks are easy to distinguish from those of other corvids, except for. Both crow and rook print sizes are so similar that it is very difficult to tell the difference. And only a trained eye or control measurements of individual elements of the print will help to understand whose footprint is in front of us, a rook or a raven. With the same length of the sole, measured from the end of the claw of the middle finger to the end of the claw of the back, you can see that the claws on these fingers are longer in the rook than in the crow, the sole without claws is shorter, the fingers are slightly thinner, the central callus, from which all 4 fingers, a little narrower.

Because of this, the print of the rook's paws seems more elegant. And the lateral fingers on the paws of the rook are 2-4 mm shorter than the crow's. When walking, the rook sets aside the outer finger a little more. The step of the crow is on average a little wider. Most of its steps are slightly longer than 15 cm, in a rook up to 15 cm. For comparison, the table shows the relative dimensions of the supporting surface of the paws and fingers of birds from the genus of crows.

bird species	Print size, cm	Length of fingers with claws and claws separately (in brackets), cm
		1st (rear)	2nd (internal)	3rd (middle)	4th (external)
Crow	10.5×4 12.5×6	4,7 (1,8)	5,5 (1,1) 4,5 (1)	6,9 (1,6) 5,8 (1,4)	5,1 (1) 4,5 (1)
Hoodie	8.3×4.2	3,4 (1,3)	4,1 (0,9)	5,0 (1)	4 (0,9)
Rook	8.3×3.8	3,6 (1,6)	3,9 (1,0)	4.9 (1,2)	3,5 (0,8)

Gray crow food

The crow is an omnivorous bird. It is enough to disassemble her pellets and see what they consist of in order to understand how wide the range of her food is. And you can find pellets near perches - under poles, at the top of a stack of straw, near the remains of a pecked vole or in other places of the meal. The pellets have an uneven oval shape.

Crow pellets with different contents: a - with bird cherry seeds and oat particles; b - with oats and small particles of the chitinous cover of beetles (ground beetles); c - with berries of overwintered cranberries, egg shells and particles of chitinous cover (a large stone is visible - gastrolith); d - with large particles of beetle chitin - a large water-lover; e - with wool and small bones of voles; c - with pulp and pits of cherries

When eating rodents, the back end of the pellet can be refined due to the long hair. The size of the pellets is (3.5-4.4) x (1.5-2) cm. Often in one pellet you see fragments of a wide variety of food: chitinous parts of insects, shells of mollusk shells, grains of cultivated cereals, shells of bird eggs, seeds of bird cherry fruits or cherries. Sometimes it consists of homogeneous residues. In the spring, in the lower reaches of the Volga, I found pellets consisting of large fragments of large water lovers during the mass summer of these beetles. In the autumn-winter period, the pellets often consist of the bones and hair of small rodents. In this case, they resemble the pellets of small birds of prey.

Crow droppings are most often a semi-liquid white blot about 3 cm across. Looks almost the same as rook droppings.

Wherever the crow is, and whatever it does, it is always preoccupied with obtaining food and uses every opportunity for this. In spring and early summer, birds often destroy the nests of both small and game birds. Looking for nests in a forest zone or a city park, the crow sits in the crown of a tree and hides there, carefully watching what is happening around.

Noticing a sparrow or other bird darting into the hollow, she hurries there and unceremoniously launches her beak into the hollow. According to the behavior of birds, it finds nests located both on branches and on the ground. In floodplains and along the shores of lakes, crows often use the unwitting services of fishermen or tourists. Sitting on the top of a tree, they vigilantly follow the boat moving through the water. As soon as a grebe or a coot leaves the nest when the boat approaches, the predators immediately take off and rush to it.

In vain does a coot or a moorhen raise an alarming cry. The crow is already carrying an egg in its beak. She can steal eggs from the nests of cormorants, herons and spoonbills if people appear in the nesting colony and disturbed birds leave the nest at least for a while. Only the eggs of the swan turned out to be intact when I drove the crow from the nest, which had been there for quite some time.

The crow takes the stolen eggs to a secluded place and pecks there, punching a large round hole with fairly even edges in the side of the shell. On small islands or spits, one can find many such shells with a characteristic hole in the side. These are the remains of the eggs of cormorants, loaves, herons, waders, ducks and coots drunk by the crow (the eggs of the latter often predominate).

Crows and small chicks are dragged, on occasion they catch small birds or attack sick or weak wild and domestic birds. I watched how a crow, sitting on a stone pedestal of a fountain, looked for a long time at a sparrow bathing in shallow water. And when the sparrow's feathers got wet, she fell off the ground and. not allowing the bird to come to its senses, she grabbed it, brought it to its former place, immediately plucked it and ate it. In Moscow, crows often attack young or sick Sisar pigeons and peck them. Sometimes the birds work together. In the Pechoro-Ilychsky Reserve, a couple of crows attacked a nutcracker and, having killed it, began to pluck it.

In small birds caught or found dead, crows pluck out some of the small and all large feathers and eat the whole bird, without a trace. In large birds, like the pigeon, only small feathers are plucked from the chest or back and only the muscles are pecked, leaving the skeleton, wings and tail intact. The head is often eaten.

Flying out to feed from towns and cities, crows often roam along the sides of highways and pick up animals, birds, and insects crushed or knocked down by cars. In late autumn, especially in years rich in rodents, they fly out to meadows and arable lands and hunt mouse-like rodents, more often voles. At this time, they can be seen sitting near mouse holes.

Here the vole jumped out of the hole, and the crow immediately rushed at her. A few blows with its beak - and the dead animal is already hanging in the beak of a predator flying away with prey. On a stump, a log, or simply on a bunch of straw, a crow eats its prey, and a few scraps of skins, a stomach, and scraps of the intestines of a rodent remain at the place of the meal.

Crow is strong and brave. She easily kills a large gray vole and can overcome a water rat. After killing a rat, she does not tear off her skin, which is stronger than that of a gray vole, but turns it inside out and eats away the muscles. The skin is torn in many places. But the gray crow does not dare to attack the more aggressive and strong gray rat, which the raven kills without difficulty.

If she is lucky enough to find a dead rat, she treats it in the same way as with a water rat, but only the strong skin of a rat is slightly damaged. A crow is a scavenger, but it is difficult for her to peck at the skin of even a cat that has fallen under a car, not to mention a larger animal. She can peck only in places of damage or injury to the skin. Having found large carrion, magpies and crows make noise, attracting the attention of stronger predators. And when foxes or dogs gnaw through the skin of a dead animal, after them something will go to the birds.

In summer, crows eat a lot of insects - beetles, locusts, butterfly caterpillars. Once I saw how a crow, having found a large thick hawk caterpillar, crushed it in its beak for a long time and finally swallowed it whole. Along the banks of reservoirs, these birds pick up dead fish and deftly grab fish fry. Toothless and barley are pulled out of shallow water and, breaking shells, eat mollusks. They catch and eat frogs and toads (the latter eat only the insides). Sometimes they also learn new types of food. Twice I have seen ravens pluck and swallow whole ash fruit.