Пяро арлана
Выдавец: Беларусь
Памер: 211с.
Мінск 1991
На зимовку (Средиземноморье и ентральная Африка) выпи отправляются, когда птены достигнут десятинедельного возраста. Летят в одиночку. Период отлета сильно растянут. Известны случаи, когда выпи задерживались до полного ледостава.
Большая выпь, как исчезающий у нас вид, заслуживает пристального внимания и охраны, сохранения мест обитания, что довольно сложно на Полесье, где развернуто широкомасштабное осушение.
А теперь еще о двух пернатых, редко гнездящихся в Белоруссии, но обнаруженных нами в устье Лани, на этот раз о хищниках.
Первый из них принадлежит к роду соколов. СОКОЛ-САПСАН — FALCO PEREGRINUS. GM. Если перевести буквально с латыни, получим «сокол- чужестране». Но у нас, хотя и редко, гнездится, и есть предположение, что может быть даже оседлым. В Беловежской пуще, по Рейхенову (в прошлом),— «самый частый вид среди благородных соколов».
Выглядит он так: верх тела темновато-бурый с сизоватым налетом, низ белый или сливочно-белый с темнобурыми продольными и каплевидными пятнами. Голова сверху почти черная, щеки белые, от глаз вниз идут широкие черные полосы — «усы». Маховые темно-бурые с белыми поперечными пятнами. Восковиа желтая, ноги желтые, клюв голубовато-розовый, на коне черный. Радужина коричнево-бурая.
Вес: самы — до 700 г, самки — до 1300 г. Длина крыла до 375 мм, клюва — до 29 мм.
Гнездится возле обширных открытых пространств болот и речных долин на опушке леса, на высоких деревьях,
занимая и перестраивая на свой вкус гнезда других крупных пти. Замечено, нередко поселяется в колониях апель и охотится на них. Откладывает до 4 яи размером 53X^2 мм и весом 42—46 г. Окраска их варьирует от белой до красноватой. Птенов бывает, как правило, меньше, чем яи, они вылупливаются на 28—29 день.
Сапсан добывает пропитание исключительно по-соко- линому: устраивает наблюдательный пункт на вершине высокого дерева и, заметив пролетающую жертву, срывается с места, быстро набирает высоту, взлетает выше добычи, а затем «делает ставку», то есть, приелившись, круто пикирует со скоростью 100 м/сек — 360 км в час — чем не истребитель?
В момент атаки крылья и лапы почти прижаты к корпусу, а длинные острые задние когти направлены вперед — ими наносится разящий удар. Мелкую добычу сапсан схватывает на лету, а с крупной падает на землю.
В старину прирученные соколы высоко енились вельможными охотниками: за одного сокола давали двух лошадей или трех волов.
ОРЛАН-БЕЛОХВОСТ — HALIAEETUS ALBICIL- LA. L.
Местное название «гарол» (Полесье).
Очень большая птиа, бурая, с охристой головой и шеей, белыми или беловатыми перьями надхвостья и белым, слегка клиновидным хвостом. Клюв желтый, восковиа и лапы желтые, когти черные. В парении коны крыльев расставлены наподобие пальев.
Вес: самы — около 4 кг, самки — 5 кг. Размах крыльев 2,2—2,5 м, длина тела до 950 мм, хвоста — до 330 мм.
Встречается очень редко. По рассказам местных жителей в Синкевичском лесничестве, в пойме Припяти, в 1938—1939 годах были добыты четыре орлана. Потому и наша находка там не случайна.
Орлан-белохвост не отличается особым благородством поведения: не брезгует домашними гусями, отставшими и ослабевшими аистами, птенами голенастых, даже снулой рыбой. Но этот типичный житель болотных и речных просторов по размерам и весу среди наших пернатых хищников уступает лишь немного беркуту. Он настолько редок, что даже просто увидеть его — большая удача. Особенно теперь, когда в результате мелиораии Полесья резко сократился «птичий рай».
Вадим Клакокий
A good chance helped me discover a prodigious colony of gray herons at a spot where the Lan flows into the Pripet. That is an out-of-the-way corner of the province, an impassable spot formerly known only to a few old-timers from the village of Sinkevichi and the town of David-Goro- dok. They told me about the colony. Although I did not take a particular interest in gray herons — these birds are common here and the Pripet Polesye abounds with them — I made my way through the thickets in search of their relative, the great white heron which is a rarity.
This remarkable beauty whose showy loose-webbed plumes used to be worn as aigrettes in old times by noble dames and chevaliers has been but shantily described in Belorussian arnithological literature. V. N. Shnitnikov is reported to have observed it in 1901 on the banks of the Pina in the company of eight gray herons. It is common knowledge that the great white heron will often nest together with its gray cousins. In search of the nest of this ballet-dancer of a bird (and this is the metaphor that is generally used to describe it by anyone who has happened to watch its graceful taking off and landing) I had to force my way through the Lan' marshes and the thick growth of osier and nettles intertvined with hops' climbing up and twining like lianas. I was also hoping to find he nest of the little white heron about which welle-nigh nothing is known in Belorussia. Yet, they managed to procure
one specimen somehow, near Pinsk in 1936, and the stuffed bird is kept in the Pinsk museum.
The nest would be a real find because it is the most conclusive proof of the fact that Belorussia is part of the natural habitat of this species.
Until the nest is found the sceptics have all reasons to state that this is a bird of passage. It may have strayed from the flock, lost its way or broken down when flying against a strong wind or during a snowstorm or a sudden spell of frost.
It was just the finding ot the nesting-places that made it possible for me to prove (to the surprise of my colleagues) that the Pripet Polesye is actually the natural habitat of certain birds, unexpected in our parts, speaking properly, their homeland. Take the steppe plover, for one. Here is a miracle for you! This sonthern visitor of the order sandpipers, an aboriginal of the steppes and semi-deserts, breeds in the flood-lands of the Pripet. Coming from the same natural habitat are the ringed plover, Terek sandpiper, greylag, night heron, curlew, Siberian pectoral sandpiper, oystercatcher. And the native Polesye habitat of the ruff and reeve has been substantiated not by a single case but en masse. On the other hand, the long-tailed jaeger has been noted as a migratory bird, which is only natural for a indigenous inhabitant of the tundra.
Finally, I have found the nesting-place of the great white heron and I have convinced my co-workers that this exotic beauty sometimes prefers the middle reaches of the Pripet to the lower reaches of the Volga and the Danube, it builds its sanctuaries and hanches out its youngsters in our parts.
Gray herons usually have the habit of settling in colonies. Throughout centuries, the primeval instinct of survival in the midst of beasts and birds of prey has taught them collective vigilance and caution. Man has made a contribution of his own: the heron is good game and one sure shot will provide a square dinner for a small family.
Lucky were our ancestors whose hunting grounds included beavers' and herons' colonies. However, the right to posses them was contended for by individual tribes, communities and appanage principalities.
The sadder pages of ancient times brim over with cases of tragic destiny of people who died in the fight for fighting grounds, including the gray herons' nesting-places. Feudal lords shed human blood striving merely to indulge their own fancy for falconry in which the heron was hunted as game.
It is difficult to find a falcon's nest for the purpose of getting a fledgeling to be used for this sport. Consequently, the price of falcons was exorbitant and falconry was within the reach of members of royal families alone or wealthy people. Thus falconry came to be the pursuit of all kinds of nouveaux riches. Even today they are ready to pay through the nose for the thrill of trying out the white gyrfalcon which, much smaller than the heron as it is, also plunges down upon its prey!..
In the past centuries we have fooled away the greater part of the falconry rules and training technique of hunting birds. Today, the enthusiasts are trying hand to restore this sport. Their efforts support "falconry art", this revelry of both human spirit and body.
While in the south, wintering on the lower reaches of the major rivers and on their reed-covered flats, the herons build their colonies in the reed-beds, in our parts these are built on trees oaks, russy-willows, birches and even fir- trees. A colony made up of 50 to 60 nests is regarded as large and 100 to 150 nests built in ore spot are taken by ornithologists as nothing short of a miracle.
Imagine my wonderment when in the Lansky thicket I came across no less than 600 nests within a rather small patch of land. I counted 50 nests inside one tree crown alone! I tried to estimate the size of the whole population. If each nest held two adult birds and, on the average, four nestlings, plus the overall number of fledgelings and aged bachelors, the population of this heron megalopolis would come up to some five thousand or so. Holding back my emotions, I looked the nests over and over again — some of them might be unoccupied. Indeed, there were some dwellings with their windows boarded up in the midst of the crowded blocks of this densely populated township. But that hardly affected the overall statistics.
The most remarkable aspect of the situation lay not in the unique character of this heronry but in the fact that the world of science was utterly ignorant of it. Over the past four or five centuries our civilization has been centred around nothing else but discovering various phenomena and facts overseas, which since the beginning of time have been common knowledge to the aboriginal population. So it has never occurred to the Polesye peasant that he should tell anyone about the birds that "were of no use" as he has been beset with problems like how to make hay or provide his household with firewood. Pragmatically, the heronry
is of no interest whatsoever. Are the herons any good as game to hunt? No. It is hardly probable that a good hunter will care to put blubber-smelling heron into his fowling bag, while the neighbourhood just teems with wild ducks, elks, wild boars, roe and fish. True, beyond this area, where the Lan’ flows into the Pripet, the population do not shrink from game like that. Well, every land is bound to have customs of ist own!.. There is good reason why the colony settled in no other place but this. Sinkevichi is at a stone’s throw, a short cut of ten — fifteen kilometres or so, but those are regular backwoods! The sure sign of this is the fact that black storks have settled there, side by side with the herons. This solitary remote spot is noted for a remarkable diversity of fauna. There are beavers, otters, musk-rats — these aren't often seen to mix. The feathered world holds sway over this place: the Pripet is a Garden of Eden for birds the Lan' banks are its most delectable spot.
КНІГІ ОНЛАЙН
