You see a starling - you know spring is on the porch. When do the rooks arrive? When does the rook arrive in what month?

E. KONKOVA, biologist.

Demoiselle cranes.

Male Little Flycatcher at the nest.

Male black redstart.

K. Fabricius. "Goldfinch". From the collection of the Royal Art Gallery "Mauritshuis", The Hague.

P. Bruegel. Nest destroyer. From the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

White wagtail.

Crested lark.

Black kite.

Science and life // Illustrations

Science and life // Illustrations

Little owl.

Gray owl.

Science and life // Illustrations

It has long been customary in Rus' to meet birds returning from the south to their native places in early spring. The arrival of birds was considered one of the joyful signs of spring; they were greeted with chants and invocations.

In April, the custom of “letting the birds go free” was observed. Buyers of birds immediately at the market dissolved the cages and released chickadees, red-throated bullfinches, and goldfinches, saying:

You are at will
Fly.
You are free
Live a while
Spring is coming to us
Lead quickly!

March 9 according to the folk calendar - “Bird sweating, finding nests.” On this day, a bird makes a nest, and a migratory bird flies from hot countries to its homeland: “You see a starling - you know spring is at the porch.” A starling singing near the house means good things.

March 17 - "Gerasim the Rookie". People associated the following signs with the rook: “The rook has arrived - the snow will melt in a month”, “The rooks have sat down in their nests - they will settle in three weeks”. In the Novgorod province it was considered a sin to destroy the nests of rooks - the house could burn down.

We greeted the birds by hanging nest boxes, birch bark boxes, and birdhouses.

At the beginning of the 18th century, travelers who came to Moscow noted that until 1715 there were a lot of small songbirds in the city and its suburbs. There were no less of them than mosquitoes. The sonorous chirping of birds touched foreigners. And in 1715, Peter I ordered to catch a huge number of Moscow birds, paying the hunters 1,500 rubles. These birds were relocated to the vicinity of St. Petersburg.

It is believed that the Hindus were the first to make bird houses back in the 1st millennium AD. e. Dried bottle gourds are still hung for the mynah, the Indian starling.

In Europe, the first birdhouses appeared, apparently, at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries. They were made of baked clay, in the shape of a pot or jug, flat on one side. On the convex wall of such a vessel there was a tap hole, and on the opposite, flat wall there was a large hole into which a person’s hand could freely enter. The invention of these birdhouses is attributed to the Flemings. The Germans removed bricks from the masonry of brick houses so that birds could live in the niches.

However, in those days, people hung birdhouses and placed nesting boxes along the banks of rivers not at all for the benefit of birds, but for the sake of their own food (not only eggs, but also grown chicks served as food). True, the barbaric nests were not plundered; only the first clutch of eggs was taken. Over time, people began to attract birds to their homes not for culinary reasons, but for the sake of their beauty and melodious, sonorous singing.

Following the clay ones, wooden birdhouses appeared. It is believed that this is a Russian invention. (IN Western Europe bird houses made from boards were not known until the middle of the 19th century.) Craftsmen made them in the form of a mansion with a gable roof and a carved balcony, decorated them with carved figures, and painted them. Some of these houses have been preserved in the collections of the State Historical Museum in Moscow and the Toy Museum in Zagorsk. They testify to the love with which our ancestors treated birds.

In the mid-19th century, German zoologist Konstantin Gloger proposed making birdhouses of different sizes: not only for starlings, but also for other birds. He was one of the first to draw attention to how important it is to use birds for economic purposes - to protect garden and vegetable plants from insects and mice.

It is known that a starling eats up to 300 worms and slugs per day, a woodpecker eats several hundred bark beetles, and a cuckoo can eat up to 100 hairy caterpillars in an hour. One owl destroys 1000 mice per year, thereby saving a ton of bread. A blackbird feeds five chicks 4,500 invertebrates over 12 days.

When people began to care for and protect birds, a holiday appeared - Bird Day. It was first held in the USA in 1894. The organizer of the holiday was a teacher from Oil City (Pennsylvania) Charles Babcock. He was supported by the popular newspaper "Pittsburgh Telegraph Chronicle". The newspaper staff even organized a special club-museum for bird conservation. Soon Bird Day began to be celebrated as folk holiday in all states of America, as well as in many countries around the world. It has a specific date - April 1st.

In our country, people started talking about the holiday of birds only in 1924. In May, the youth of the Central Biological Station for Young Naturalists, which was located on the territory of Sokolniki Park in Moscow, hung several dozen nest boxes in the suburbs of the capital. And a year later the guys held the first in the country official holiday Bird Day. They hung birdhouses on Sparrow Hills. Many famous writers and artists helped organize the holiday. V.V. Mayakovsky painted posters and dedicated the famous couplet to the birds: “We are waiting for you, comrade Bird, why don’t you fly?” (the poet’s dacha was located not far from the biological station).

In 1927, Bird Day was celebrated throughout Moscow, and since 1928 it began to be celebrated throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of people of different ages took part in the holiday. Up to 15 thousand birdhouses were hung annually. Publishers produced mass editions of popular brochures about birds and the construction of artificial nests.

However, soon, due to the population’s orientation towards the rise agriculture, Bird Day began to be forgotten. Since 1934, the Central Station of Young Naturalists in Moscow began to be called the Station of Young Naturalists and Agricultural Experiencers.

In subsequent decades, attempts were made more than once to revive Bird Day. But if the necessary task is turned into a mandatory event, carried out in accordance with various kinds of directives - and each school was charged with the responsibility of making at least 20 nesting boxes and creating youth assets - nothing good can come of it. Short-term calls for isolated environmental actions designed for one to two years (no more) also yielded little. Such actions are quickly forgotten, and again we have to start all over again.

IN recent years They are trying to revive the holiday again. It involves Federal service forestry, the Russian Bird Conservation Union, Moskompriroda, school forest districts, stations of young naturalists, environmental centers, libraries, kindergartens, families and individual residents of the country. In the spring, enthusiasts hang hundreds of birdhouses and titmice. In winter, a large number of open feeders are set up in parks and forest parks.

Helping birds is not that difficult. It is important to feed birds in cold weather. To do this you need to know their diet. Waxwing - dried berries of rowan, viburnum, elderberry. Great tit - seeds of melon, watermelon, pumpkin, burdock, oats, dried May beetles, trimmings of raw meat and unsalted lard. Small tits - oats, hemp, sunflower, scraps of raw meat and unsalted lard. Bullfinch - rowan berries, viburnum, ash, lilac seeds, horse sorrel brooms, quinoa, weeds and oats. Tap dances - birch, alder seeds, brooms from horse sorrel and quinoa.

And in the spring, care must be taken to ensure that starlings, owls, swifts, wagtails, tits, flycatchers, thrushes and other birds are not left without nesting sites.

Nest houses should be hung in the fall (in winter, some birds and animals spend the night in them), titmouses - in early January. It is best to attach the house to a tree with aluminum wire. The most convenient places for hanging: the outskirts of forest roads, clearings, banks of rivers and lakes, parks and gardens. The placement is one- or two-line, with a distance between neighboring houses from 30 to 50 m and at least 50 m between lines.

Nesting sites in the city must be hung at a higher height than in the forest. Birdhouses are hung at a height of 4-8 m from the ground. Every spring, starlings return to their old apartments, expelling the sparrows that settled in them in winter.

Titmouse and half-lodges are hung at a height of 3-6 m from the ground. They are inhabited by tits, pied flycatchers, redstarts, whirligigs and nuthatches.

To attract waterfowl, the nest box is securely fixed to a tree near a pond at a height of 3-8 m from the ground. Dry sawdust or peat must be placed at the bottom of the box in a layer of up to 10 cm. The entrance should be facing towards the reservoir.

Small and large owls need widespread protection. Optimal dimensions of a nesting box for a tawny owl: bottom - 22x22 cm, distance from the bottom to the entrance - 34-50 cm, size of the entrance - 12x14 cm. Recommended dimensions of a nesting box for an owl: bottom - 28x22 cm, height - 40 cm, diameter of the entrance - 8 cm The optimal distance between nesting sites: for the owl - 500 m, for the gray owl - 400-500 m, for the great owl - 1.5-2 km. The hanging height of the houses is the same - from 4 to 10 m. A layer of sawdust or peat about 10 cm thick is placed on the bottom.

The house for the pied flycatcher is made of dried plank 2-2.5 cm thick; The inside of the boards is not planed. The bottom size is 10x10 cm, the distance from the bottom to the bottom of the taphole is 10-12 cm, the taphole diameter is from 2.8 to 3 cm.

If artificial nests are made according to all the rules, birds willingly settle in them.

The article is illustrated with photographs from the Encyclopedia of Animals of Cyril and Methodius.

LITERATURE

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Houses for birds // Science and Life, 1972, No. 3.

Ermolov A. Folk agricultural wisdom in proverbs, sayings and signs. - St. Petersburg, 1905.

All year round. Russian agricultural calendar. - M., 1991.

Manannikov V. Houses - nesting places for birds // Science and Life, 1980, No. 3.

Feed the birds // Science and Life, 1999, No. 2.

Bird feeders // Science and Life, 1975, No. 1.

Bird's dining room // Science and Life, 1991, No. 1.

Rakhmanov A. Feathered protectors of the harvest // Science and Life, 1989, No. 3.

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Tretyakov V. Feathered helpers in your garden. Nesting houses for birds // Science and Life, 2001, No. 3.

Shaikin V. Winged security // Science and Life, 1997, No. 4.

Updated: 03/11/2015

It was the rooks in Rus' that were always considered the harbingers of spring. These migratory birds are the first to return from the south to central Russia. This usually happens in mid-March, closer to the second half of the month. If you believe the folk calendar, rooks return on March 4 (March 17, new style) - on “Gerasim Rooker”.

As explained by AiF.ru Candidate of Biological Sciences, ornithologist Vadim Olegovich Avdanin, not all rooks fly to winter warm regions, some of them remain to spend the winter in Russia.

“The overwhelming majority of rooks fly south, but some of them still spend the winter with us. Literally in some areas of Moscow, in some places, there are rooks, but basically, in most of the city you will not find them. So, how can you understand that the right rooks have appeared? They appear in unusual places. Just on March 4, we observed rooks near our house in Izmailovo, where there were no rooks in winter. Thus, we can state that the rooks have already arrived,” the expert said.

Where do rooks come from?

Rooks fly to the southwest in October. Birds move in huge schools to Turkmenistan, the Caucasus and beyond. Flocks of these birds fly along the Black Sea coast of Transcaucasia, stretching for kilometers. During their migration, they feed in corn fields. Some birds fly even further - to Africa, Afghanistan and India.

Nowadays, due to global warming and climate change, everything more birds become sedentary and remain for the winter in large cities in central Russia.

Does early spring affect the timing of birds' return?

Alexey Savrasov “The Rooks Have Arrived” (1871). Photo: Public Domain

According to ornithologist Vadim Avdanin, early spring does affect some bird species. “There are birds that winter nearby, and they react very clearly to the progress of spring. Literally, as soon as the ice on the rivers melts, the arrival of ducks begins. The swans are the first to arrive, or rather, they do not fly to us, they fly through us. Rooks and white wagtails appear very early. There is such a sign: a wagtail breaks ice with its tail. That is, its appearance usually coincides with ice drift. And long-distance migrants who winter over long distances fly literally according to the calendar. For example, swifts, which always appear between May 9-15. Sometimes, somehow, they still “find out” that the weather has warmed up early, and their appearance shifts to earlier dates, but the spread in dates is still small,” the expert explained.

What signs are associated with rooks?

Since ancient times, people have been tracking the arrival of rooks and their subsequent behavior, which could be used to predict the weather. Folk signs are associated with rooks: “If the rooks have settled in their nests, then in three weeks you can go out to sow,” “If the rooks fly straight to the old nests, there will be a friendly spring: the hollow water will run away all at once,” “The rook has arrived - in a month there will be snow will do”, “The rooks are playing - for good weather; they fly screaming, sit on their nests and fly again - the weather will change.”

If the rooks arrived earlier than March 4, this was seen as a bad omen, foreshadowing a hungry year. To speed up the onset of heat, on the day of Saints Gerasimov they baked birds called “rooks” from rye sour dough.

This day also had its own prohibitions. The peasants said: “Whoever puts on new bast shoes for Grachevnik will have a creaking neck all day long.”

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Gerasim Grachevnik - March 4 (March 17, new style) in the Russian peasant calendar received the name Gerasim Grachevnik. The day is named in honor of two Christian saints - Gerasim of Jordan and Gerasim of Vologda. It was believed that it was from this day that rooks began to return to their native nests - “Gerasim the rooker brought the rooks.”

There are more than 50 species of migratory birds that leave Russia in the fall and return in the spring.

Climate change and global warming are making adjustments - more and more migratory birds remain to spend the winter in central Russia, becoming sedentary.

Rooks arrive first, along with starlings, while it is still cold and there is no snow, since such cool weather is not suitable for them. They nest in friendly colonies in trees. These birds become attached to their nests and strive to reoccupy them. Having returned to its native nest, the first thing the rook does is repair it - bringing dry branches, twigs, lining the bottom with grass, scraps of animal hair, etc.

They can often be found in fields where plowing is taking place. The males search the loosened larvae for insects and worms to feed the chicks while the female remains in the nest and keeps them warm. These birds take great care of their offspring, even when the chicks grow up.

Folk signs

According to the folk calendar, rooks should be expected at “Gerasim Grachevnik” - March 17 (March 4, new style), but if they arrived earlier, then this was seen bad omen and expected a year of famine. To speed up warming, people baked birds from rye dough. On the day the rooks arrived, they avoided putting on new bast shoes because of superstition, so that there would be no trouble.

Gerasim Grachevnik Day received its name in the Russian peasant calendar in honor of the Christian saints: Gerasim of Vologda and Gerasim of Jordan. They said about March 17 that Gerasim the rook-keeper brought in the rooks.

Much has been associated with the arrival of these birds. folk signs. It was believed that a month after their return the snow would melt; that the games of rooks foretell good weather; that the fussy behavior of birds means a change in the weather; that three weeks after the rooks have built their nests, you can sow.

Rooks are widely considered a symbol of prosperity. Many peoples still have signs to this day, according to which these birds bring happiness with them to any place where they decide to settle.

In Rus', rooks have been considered since ancient times as harbingers of spring. Our ancestors believed that the behavior of these birds could predict the weather with high accuracy.

Even the ancient Slavs noticed that rooks usually arrive from wintering about a month before the snow completely melts and sowing work can begin. And by exactly when this happened, you can judge how fine the spring will be, and how successful the whole coming year will be:

rooks arrived on March 17 or earlier- there will be a lean year, but the first berries will soon appear in the forest;

The birds returned later - a warm spring is coming, and in the fall it will be possible to harvest an unusually rich harvest.

Our ancestors believed that great value has the behavior of these birds. Thus, if returning rooks rush to occupy their old nests, the weather will be dry and warm.

It is believed that rooks begin to actively put their homes in order literally a couple of days before the onset of the first thaw. So, if the birds are in no hurry to renew their nests, this is a bad sign: the frosts will probably last for a very long time. for a long time. The restless behavior of birds even promises a sharp change in the weather (most likely for the worse).

The higher the rook builds its nest on the tree, the better the summer is expected.

The group sits huddled together with their beaks towards the wind - towards stormy weather.

An interesting sign: it is believed that if you bake bird-shaped balls from sour rye dough on St. Gerasim’s Day (March 17), you can speed up the onset of warm days.

Since ancient times, it was believed that if rooks settled near a home, the owners would have good luck in all household and family affairs. If the birds suddenly decide to leave their nests, expect trouble. In different countries it was believed that the “flight” of birds could mean:

Sudden financial problems, up to the complete ruin of the family;

The gradual and inevitable death of the entire family (most likely, the family will never have an heir).

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In Rus' it has always been believed that when the rooks arrive, it means spring is coming. They are her messengers. And this happens in the second half of March, namely the 17th day of this month is called “Gerasim Grachevnik” according to the folk calendar.

Several folk signs are associated with these birds. When (directly to their last year’s nests), they immediately begin to repair them. This is a sign that spring should be friendly and warm. And if they remain on the nests for a short time, it means that the cold will still persist.

The rook bird is very similar in appearance to a crow, so many people confuse them. By the way, rooks can often be found in a flock of crows. But they have one characteristic distinguishing feature - an unfeathered ring around the beak. True, young individuals do not have such a ring. The color of the bird's feathers is black, with a metallic blue tint (below is a photo of a rook).

When the rooks arrive, there is not enough food for them yet, so they wander through the thawed patches in search of seeds from last year’s grasses and emerging ground beetles. As soon as plowing begins in the fields, the birds follow the tractor, collecting earthworms.

And with the appearance of May beetles, they begin to gather in groves and forest parks and are engaged in the destruction of harmful insects. They collect them from aspen and birch leaves. These rooks bring tangible benefits, because they rid the forest of the larvae of cockchafers and click beetles, wireworms, turtle bugs and weevils.

But birds also cause some harm (by pecking and sown agricultural seeds in the fields). And in summer time birds can cause significant damage to fields of sunflowers, peas and corn. Yes, and melon fields may suffer, because rooks love to feast on melons and watermelons.

Rooks nest in colonies in trees; such rook colonies can exist for several years. One large tree can contain several dozen nests. The favorite habitats of these birds include linden parks, light birch groves, old gardens or forest edges that are located near fields.

Rooks make their nests at a height of 15 meters from the ground. They place them near the trunk of a tree or in the fork of thick branches. Nests are built from branches of the same trees. The lower part of the nest consists of well-connected thick branches, and the upper part of thin twigs. The bottom is lined with soft grass, scraps of wool or some found rags.

Nesting occurs in April - May, the clutch usually contains from 3 to 5 eggs, they are green in color with brown spots. Only the female incubates the chicks. After 16 - 20 days, the chicks appear; they have no plumage, so the female has to remain in the nest for a long time. All this time, the male feeds first the female, and then the emerging chicks.

After about a week (or a little more), the female begins to fly out and take part in feeding her brood. After a month, the chicks gradually fly out of the nest; their parents continue to feed them for some time.

A colony of rooks can be heard from afar, noise and din are heard throughout the area. Birds do not pay attention to changes in the landscape, even to the fact that their settlements are almost in the center of an overgrown city.

And, despite the fact that these birds make a lot of noise, when the rooks arrive, people’s souls warm. This means that warm days will soon come, nature will begin to awaken, because it was not without reason that people said: “The rooks have pecked at the spring.”