Dita Hořáková 26. 3. 2025 clock 6 minutes
This February, as every year, the Czech Society of Ornithological Bird of 2025 announced. Who and why this post earned this year? Do you guess? A slender restlessly, hardening tail up and down, swiftly bouncing on slippery stones in rivers. Perhaps we have told you well, and you already know that the bird of 2025 became a mountain conipline.
The public is perhaps less known than the white coniphane, but it is not harmful at all, actually the opposite. After all, one of the goals probably the most popular campaign of the Czech Ornithological Society is to draw attention to interesting bird species living around us and encourage the public to monitor and practical protection.
Together with kingfisher a watersome It is another species heavily bound to watercourses and water surfaces. Insecute interventions in the past – pollution, troughs and banks have been disastrmed in their condition, and in the last decades, fluctuating flows, when long drought periods alternate rapid levels of levels and subsequent floods.
Konipas mountain did not spread to us after 1850, from the south, probably from Switzerland and southern Germany, and gradually descended from the mountains to the middle and lower altitudes. Since then, its area has gradually spread northern and west. Currently, the nesting of the mountain conipulations was recorded high behind the Arctic Circle (Varanger, Norway Peninsula). The size of our population has long been between 20 and 40,000 steam.
Cognition in nature
The mountain conipline is characterized by a slim body, long legs and a long tail, even the longest ever moving up and down, rarely to the sides. In addition, this bird moves not only the tail, but also the entire back of the body. It always has a distinctly yellow -colored lower abdomen, the top and the rear are always gray, as well as the back.
But what will always reliably reveal him are his legs. Not because they have the shortest of all of all of our coni-, but that, unlike the other pink-brown, not black or gray-black. Between the two sexes there are no differences in size, only in color, not yet throughout the year. In the nesting season, the male has a deep black chin, reaching to the throat, separated from the gray with a thick white strip. Also, the female may, like young males, indicated black chin, but a smaller range of AS with a distinct admixture of gray color, but usually its throat is dirty white. The yellow color on the chest is less pronounced in females. The voice speeches of the mountain conipase are relatively simple and monotonous, but well audible. In the noisy environment of flowing waters, it is not possible.
Why does the conippet oscillate?
There are several explanations for this behavior, which is not only a privilege of conipulations. One of them is based on the assumption that birds living on the banks of fast flowing flows make less noticeable. Intensive tail waving is used as a signal in courtship and other manifestations of behavior – it can also perform an important territorial function. When the conipase lands on the ground, it usually vibrates with the tail immediately. This movement then reportedly attracts the attention of the predator in the area and lures it from the hiding place as long as the bird is still alert and can avoid caught. If there is no predator in the area, it begins to feed and at certain intervals moves the tail in case that there is still one. Another hypothesis is that this behavior can disturb sitting insects, which would explain the occasional movements of the tail to the sides.
Environment
Now that you know how you will recognize it in nature, it remains to find out where to go behind. In our country, the center of gravity is the middle and higher positions – hilly and mountain areas that give water flows the necessary slope and character of the riverbed. But it does not avoid the lowlands. In the Polabí and Dolní Povltaví, as in the south of Moravia, there are nesting sites at an altitude of less than 200 meters. There is also a tendency to settle the urban environment, including large cities (you will meet it even in Prague in Divoká Šárka).
In a typical nesting environment, water plays the main role in pure and polluted form. The presence of rocky or gravel riverbed and shores is important. There must also be bank stands with the representation of trees, shrubs and thick herbal vegetation and of course enough suitable nesting points (cavities, semi -semi and slits in rocks, under the cornice, in stone walls, on footbridges and bridges). On the contrary, it avoids the environment with dense bank stands, which with a cun and above the surface. They limit its free movement above the water and along the shores, where they look for food.
Konipas
Arrival from wintering grounds usually takes place in the second half of March. The conim are also faithful to their partners and are repeatedly returning to them. They often even use the same nest. Its construction is mainly due to female, while the male usually only brings a little nesting material. The nest is practically always located as close to the water, normally at a height of about two meters above the ground or above the surface. It is hidden in cavities, niches and cracks of water structures and rocks or on the structures of footbridges and bridges. Where these occasions are missing, the coni -time must make a tangle of roots on the banks, or with the stands of climbing plants on the walls. It nests twice, exceptionally three times a year from April to July with an overlap into the first days of August. The move to wintering grounds usually takes place in September and October.
Is he in danger?
The mountain horses are currently not working with any direct existential threats. It is one of the so -called generalists, ie species that suit a wide range of environments around mainly flowing waters. If they have rocky, gravel or concrete, freely accessible shores, they take gratitude even with straightened watercourse with technical adjustments of the riverbed. However, it can be deprived of the living space of the valley reservoirs or the turbidity of the streams. As a result of climatic changes, which are manifested, inter alia, long periods of heat with minimal precipitation, smaller streams can completely dry.
Another danger is the spread of non -native invasive species that do not have natural enemies in our country. These include, for example, Asian winged, impenetrable shores, as well as the indiscriminate predator of Norwegian, which is a serious threat not only for birds in general, but also for other small fauna – crayfish, amphibians and reptiles.
O Author
Dita Hořáková She studied at the Faculty of Science of Charles University with zoology with a focus on ornithology. He works in the Czech Ornithological Society: www.birdlife.cz
Source: Recipe magazine, birdlife.cz
