Voronok: Business style, love of fast food, life on the fly. Why does the city swallow look so much like office plankton? (8 photos)

It just so happened that the concrete jungle that man built for himself became a wonderful home for a great variety of animals. They even occupied the same niches as people in big cities. Pigeons are homeless beggars, crows are arrogant thugs, and our today's heroine, the city swallow (or swallow) is a typical office plankton.





Before the advent of high-rise buildings, city swallows were not urban at all. Their historical homeland is mountains and rocky caves throughout the northern half of the world: Eurasia, North America, Africa. But as soon as the naked primates built human nests, the swallows quickly sensed that this was a great place “to dream and to live.” Our cities became their settlements.



The bird perfectly fit into the frantic rhythm of the metropolis. Her outfit is appropriate - blue-black top, white bottom - an immortal classic of office style. He doesn’t sit in the place of the funnels - he spends 95% of his time in the air. Even the swallow, like other hasty city dwellers, feeds on the go. That is, on the fly.





By the way, their menu is completely fast food. Try to catch up with him! Birds are engaged in a good cause - pest control. They eat flies, mosquitoes, grasshoppers and other flying little things that they can catch.



Having worked in the summer, the swallows fly away on a well-deserved vacation. True, they choose atypical places. Instead of the resorts of Turkey - the southern regions of Africa. Birds work for food, so the funnels get to the south under their own power. The journey is not without casualties - up to 70% of the flock can die during the flight.



The survivors, returning to their homeland, will be able to continue their family line. Swallows approach this matter thoroughly - birds will not reproduce without their own living space. Since the birds have not yet come up with a mortgage (that’s lucky!), the funnels build a hut on their own.



But not for a mortgage! Everything with your own hands!

The ideal place for a family nest will be cornices, roofs and bridges. Birds build under a canopy for a reason: otherwise their structure, created with so much effort, will fall off with the first rain. Yes, the hut will be made of drool and dirt, but what a view! And, most importantly, your own!



In one season, hasty swallows manage to hatch two batches of 4-5 babies in one sitting. True, not each of them will be raised by their own folder. The fact is that swallows practice social monogamy - the couple goes through the difficulties of repairs and parental worries together. But the funnels see nothing wrong with diversifying the gene pool in someone else’s married couple. Thus, according to research by Scottish scientists, 15% of chicks were raised by someone else's father.



City swallows interbreed well with barn swallows.

Genetic paternity tests are not practiced among birds, so all chicks are raised as their own. Two weeks for incubation, three for guardianship and care in the nest. A couple more days for short flight school courses - and now, the little swallows are ready for adult life. Then everything is like with people. Some stay with their parents and help raise their younger brothers and sisters, while others quickly leave the nest and rush to explore the concrete jungle.