"A similar view most people know only from natural history films shot in Africa. Klubáků flock of birds sitting on the backs of buffaloes and other large animals belong to the local scenery inherently well as hunting lions or elephants at the watering places, "says Dalibor Dostal. Now it resembles Sven seen on milovických pastures.
With the return of large ungulates such as wild horses, bison and aurochs, the birds return and the behavior that many decades or centuries could not apply. A few years ago, Czech experts visited the Dutch National Park Zuid Kennemerland, caught the herons patrol in the vicinity, sometimes even on the backs of local horses and aurochs and hunt insects and small vertebrates startled large animals.
"The birds quickly learn to use the presence of large herbivores. Dutch Magpies earlier bison certainly never met, after stopping at the National Park Zuid Kennemerland, however, quickly discovered that their hair hidden in nutrition ticks. Similarly started already in Milovice first season starlings use horses, "said Miloslav Jirků from the Biology Centre of the Academy of Sciences.
In addition to the birds catching insects on the bodies of ungulates and their surroundings they get their come the birds, who collect droppings from insects. These include the hoopoe, waders, waders and various singers such Pipit or konipasové. "That's symbiosis with horses gives these birds their name," says Miloslav Jirků.
Large ungulates facilitate the birds not only produce food but also nesting. "As part of the food bison and aurochs, in winter and horses are also branches and bark of trees, which they rip and shell. Sometimes breaking branches or tear the bark during scratching. They can result in scar formation, around which although bark heals, scar often remain exposed pad timber, wherein a cavity over time. Such cavities used by some warren birds nesting, "says Miloslav Jirků. Now warren trees in the current landscape of missing, many of these birds can nest using only human and it made booths.
Short grasslands in the plains lowlands, created by grazing of large ungulates are also popular places of wild geese and bernešek. "In such positions, but with us almost not feed, so that geese are present landscape rely on fields with winter crops," says conservationists. With pets according to them mostly similar interplay opeřencům work. "the intensive grazing of livestock that are species-poor, animals usually have nothing to scare away birds and so have no reason to watch or patrol around them," he explains.
Source: Ekolist.cz
