Falcon biography bird
But to beat the high-speed record of the real Sokol-Sapsan, he still cannot live this amazing bird, in honor of which the fastest train of Russia is named, and that allows it to hold the title of the fastest living creature in the world? Outwardly, Sapsans stand almost nothing. These are large falcons with a wave of wings to c, strong physique, large expressive eyes and black-gray coloring of the upper side of the body.
They are easy to recognize by a characteristic hood with black cheeks and gray wings with black ends. The lower side of the body is light with dark specking, wax and legs are yellow. These birds are magnificent flyers. To overcome several thousand kilometers for them is not a problem, and this allowed them to spread almost throughout the land, with the exception of distant islands and regions with adverse living conditions: in the rain forests, as well as in tropical and arctic deserts, you will not find them.
Like other falcons, these conquerors of heaven hunt mainly on small birds, killing them right in flight. To do this, they sit somewhere at a high point or soar at a high altitude, looking for birds and rodents in the air or on the ground. Noticing the victim, the predator begins the chase, diving on it and accelerating at the same time to a huge speed. When falling into prey, Sapsan presses his legs to the body and collapses on it with all its mass, delivering a terrible blow with sharp curved claws.
You can get away from the Sapsan attack only in two ways - hide in the hole or in a very thick interweaving of branches. If the predator found prey in an open place, it is almost impossible to leave or dodge his attack. He managed to achieve such an incredible maneuverability and speed due to exceptional aerodynamic characteristics: an elongated drop -like body is gently streamlined by air and almost does not meet resistance, and narrow wings in diving are bent closer to the body and work like a rudder, allowing you to instantly change the direction of flight in any direction.
In order to notice and recognize production from a distance of several hundred meters, almost magical vision is necessary. And the Sapsans, like the daytime birds of birds, have such vision. Their eyes are much larger than that of other birds of the same size, while the density of the packaging of visual receptors in the retina is very large and in the area of the central deepening can exceed 40 thousand points per square millimeter.
A flexible mobile pupil complements this system, which perfectly focuses the image on the retina. Thanks to all these improvements, the eyes of the falcon give 8 times more detail than human eyes! But that's not all. In order for the falcon to be able to drive the prey among the trees at great speed and accurately calculate the distance to the target sitting on the ground, its eye should be very accurate, and the focus of vision is very fast.
Like people, the sapsans have the eyes in front, and there is no fundamental difference between us - binocular vision for everyone works on the same principles. But in the speed of processing of visual signals, the Sapsans surpassed everyone. If we can calmly watch a movie at a 24 -frame reproduction rate per second, then the Sapsans stopped noticing the flashing points on the screen only at the frames of the frames per second, overtaking their closest relatives on points!
It is not surprising that they are able to drive at such a speed. Their sex life begins at the age of years, and, uniting with a partner, they retain couples for many years. Cathedrals look very touching: they spend a lot of time nearby, clean each other plumage, and sometimes the male even feeds the female, and they manage to do the latter directly in flight.
They themselves do not build nests, occupy the empty buildings of other birds or settled on impregnable rocks and cliffs, and sometimes apart even on skyscrapers. They carefully protect the territory around the house and aggressively drive other birds, attacking even larger predators. The female lays from 2 to 5 eggs usually 3 and hatches for about a month, and the chicks are fed for days until they learn to get food on their own.
Relations with a person among the Sapsans are ambiguous. The number of these birds is reduced slowly, but due to the fact that there were always few of them, in some countries they are listed in local red books. In some regions of Asia, Sapsans have long been tamed by people and are operated in a falconry. Unfortunately, such popularity for them was harmful because it creates conditions for mass poaching.
If you want to see these birds, watch them in large zoos or even in a natural environment. Fortunately, you don’t have to go far: for example, in Moscow they nesting right on the Moscow State University building and on some other skyscrapers. There you can also see how they hunt the yard pigeons - this is an ideal feed base that never ends. The author of the text: Ivan is a premium.