Squad - Passeriformes
Family - Blackbirds
Genus/Species - Phoenicurus phoenicurus. Common redstart, also known as garden redstart, or coot redstart
Basic data:
DIMENSIONS
Length: 16 cm.
Wingspan: 20-24 cm.
Weight: 14-16
REPRODUCTION
Puberty: in year.
Nesting period: May-July.
Carrying: 2 per year.
Number of eggs: 6-7.
Incubation: 14 days.
Feeding the chicks: 12-15 days.
LIFESTYLE
Habits: redstarts (see photo of birds) sing sitting on the treetops.
Food: insects, berries.
Sounds: sonorous trills, alarming whistling "pew-pew".
Lifespan: 9 years.
RELATED SPECIES
Of the 10 species of redstart, in addition to the common garden redstart, the black redstart is common.
redstart. Video (00:01:44)
The summer home of the common redstart can be in large gardens, at the edge of the forest, or in fields. These birds make nests in the hollows of old trees. Common redstarts most often feed their chicks with insect pests, which is why gardeners and gardeners love them so much.
REPRODUCTION
Pairs of redstarts often persist for several years. Males return to nesting sites earlier than females. They are looking for a place for a nest: usually it is a hollow or a pile of dead wood. Having found a place, they invite females without moving away from the site: after all, they can take the place. There is another way to attract a female - climb into a hollow and stick out your “flaming” tail. The female looks for a male and flies into the hollow. After the appearance of a partner, the male immediately begins mating games. When the female approaches the future nest, the male begins to sing a song and bows his head, showing his white forehead, and spins around his axis. After this, the birds mate and together line the hollow with dry grass, bark and moss. At the final stage, the “children’s room” is insulated with down and wool. The female lays 6-7 eggs and incubates them for two weeks, leaving the nest from time to time to satisfy her hunger. Both birds bring food to the chicks that hatch two weeks later.
The male redstart's responsibilities also include keeping the nest clean during the first days after the chicks hatch. The male carries baby excrement out in his beak. 2 weeks after birth, the chicks learn to fly. However, even when the female incubates the second clutch, the male continues to care for the chicks from the first brood. After the birth of chicks from the second clutch, the older chicks begin an independent life.
WHERE DOES IT LIVE?
In Europe, the redstart lives in light mixed forests, and in Africa and Asia Minor it also inhabits mountain forests. She leaves rocky places and rocks near mountain meadows to a close relative - the black redstart.
In some gardens both species of these birds coexist. Among the redstart's favorite places to live are old parks and alleys, where there are many old hollow trees. In Berlin, redstarts have colonized city parks, gardens and cemeteries. Nowadays, urban populations of redstarts exceed those in suburban forests. At the end of August, redstarts begin to prepare to fly to warm Africa. The winter is spent in countries located south of the Sahara.
WHAT DOES IT EAT?
Redstarts feed on a variety of insects and spiders, which they find on the ground, on tree trunks, branches and leaves. Occasionally, birds catch insects in the air, looking for prey from ambush.
The redstart is in no hurry to eat the caught prey - first it takes it to a safe place. It stuns large insects, such as beetles, in advance by hitting the ground, and tears off the legs of grasshoppers. In addition to caterpillars, ants, small mollusks and centipedes, the bird eats berries and fruits. Small chicks are able to swallow only crushed food, so adult birds first crush the caught insects and only then give them to the chicks.
Gluttonous chicks often bring their parents to complete physical exhaustion, because the birds fly to the nest up to 500 times a day, each time bringing food to the chicks in their beaks.
OBSERVATIONS OF THE REDstart
The redstart often nests near or. She willingly lays eggs in specially prepared nesting houses. The higher its house is located in the garden, the greater the chances of successful breeding of the bird, of course, provided that there is a sufficient amount of food in the area. Gardeners rejoice when these insectivorous birds appear in their gardens. The “friendship” of people with redstarts brings them great benefits. After all, the bird rids gardens of various insect pests: grasshopper beetles, bedbugs, caterpillars, leaf beetles and mosquitoes.
- Redstarts, like redstarts, swing their tails up and down.
- The common redstart can attack its reflection when it sees it, for example, in the glass of a window.
- The male hunts prey in flight, while the female looks for food on the surface of the ground.
- The name of this bird indicates that it has a brightly colored tail. It “burns” because the tail feathers are fiery in color.
- It is in the nest that the redstart most often leaves its eggs. Redstarts care for cuckoo chicks as if they were their own chicks.
CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF THE REDstart. DESCRIPTION
Female: Compared to the male, it is less brightly colored. The tail is bright red, the rest of the plumage is brown.
Male: the back is ash-gray, the chest, belly, sides and tail are rusty-red, the throat and cheeks are black. The bright red tail and white forehead play an important role during the performance of the ritual dance.
Eggs: the clutch contains 6-7 bluish eggs, sometimes covered with brown spots.
- Nesting sites
- Wintering places
WHERE DOES IT LIVE?
The redstart breeds everywhere in Europe, with the exception of Ireland, as well as in northern Africa, Siberia and Asia Minor. Winters in Western and Eastern Africa.
PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION
In most parts of its European range, redstart populations are declining. The reason may be prolonged drought in redstart wintering areas.
Bird calls - Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus). Video (00:00:59)
Common redstart. Brateevo. Maryino. Video (00:00:24)
The common redstart is not numerous in Moscow. For the winter it flies to Africa and South Arabia. In Brateevo and Maryino they see her very rarely and not far from housing.
In summer, redstart nests were observed in vacant lots near Verkhnie Polya Street.
Once, during a warm winter, several common redstarts were seen in the same wastelands.
Redstart. Video (00:01:45)
The redstart is a very beautiful songbird with a bright orange breast, contrasting black and white plumage on the head and an orange tail. I arrived in the city in early May. Sits high in the trees and sings. From time to time it flies from one branch to another. May 2014.
Hello, friends!
For a naturalist biologist, winter is a pause to process the avalanche of spring and summer impressions and systematize observations. Today I was sorting out my archives and notes, planning what I could talk about in the blog, what should be clarified in the next season of observations. And I really wanted spring and blessed summer to come!Therefore, who is talking about what, and I will talk about the warm and fluffy, and infinitely cute - about the chicks from the Bukhtarma Reservoir.
Where is the phoenix bird found?
Do you know what a phoenix bird looks like? The imagination pictures something close to a firebird. Phoenixes are found in legends and fairy tales, they have no place in real life. But let's not rush to conclusions. A living and real phoenix can be found in our forests, parks and gardens.Carl Linnaeus christened it in 1758 redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus, What does phoenix tail mean?
Redstarts are small slender birds from the order Passeriformes, relatives of flycatchers and thrushes. About 10 cm in size, sometimes up to 15 cm. A distinctive feature of the bird is its red tail. The redstart shakes it like a wagtail, but faster, with pauses, so it seems that it has a flame instead of a tail. A bird that constantly lights up and does not burn out is the property of a real phoenix.
At the end of April, redstarts return from Africa to our parks, gardens, forests to their old nesting places and sing their song. But the most popular nesting sites for redstarts are sparse pine forests with shrubby undergrowth.
The males arrive first. They return to their former nesting sites and look for new niches for nests. Redstarts are cavity nesters and raise their chicks in covered nests. They are located in hollows, voids, under the roof, in rotten stumps.
Redstarts are territorial birds with nesting distances. A pair's range is determined by the distance over which the male's song can be heard. About 200 - 300 meters in diameter. Males jealously monitor boundaries and can even attack their own reflection.
Family secrets of redstart
Redstarts have permanent pairs, but sometimes the phenomenon of bigamy in males is noted. The male becomes a bigamist. It's time to write a script for a soap opera.
If there are nesting places on the male’s territory, and the territory is rich in food, the female, who is left without a pair, settles on the edge of his territory. Usually, this happens when the first female has just laid eggs in her nest and begins to incubate them.
At the same time, the male rarely takes on the responsibility of feeding the chicks of the second wife, along with the main pair. Dad only feeds the second brood a little, or even pretends that he has nothing to do with it, and the children are not his.More often, the second female is forced to feed the offspring alone.Thus, the female from a permanent pair is a priority for the male.
I suppose the amount of help from the male to the second female depends on the number of eggs laid by the first female. If there are many chicks from the first wife, then the male gives his all there, and if there are few chicks, then the male’s care also falls to the offspring from the second female.
By the end of May, 4-9 bright blue eggs appear in the nest, about 17-19 mm in length and 13-14 mm in width. The female incubates the clutch. The male replaces his wife for about 15 minutes, when she flies out to feed, and sometimes feeds his girlfriend.
After two weeks, blind and deaf chicks hatch from the eggs. Their parents feed them together, making up to 500 flights a day. After another two weeks, the chicks leave the nest and become... The parents feed them for another week, and then the chicks begin adulthood. And the ancestors make a second clutch during the summer, in early to mid-July.
Last year I was lucky enough to get into the pine forest during the week when the baby redstarts had already left the nest, but they had only just begun to comprehend the science of flight.
Redstart fledglings
The redstart song includes a main theme and a sub-song. Males constantly improve the sound of their subsong, including ambient sounds and snatches of songs of other bird species. In the Smolensk region, people heard the boastful patter in the redstart song: “I was in St. Petersburg, I was in St. Petersburg. I saw Peter. I saw Peter.”
Listen to the recording with your children. I wonder what words you will hear?
I don’t presume to talk about the song of an adult redstart, but when many years ago For the first time I heard their fledglings murmuring, I was surprised. At first I thought that some crickets were singing in the bushes. Because the calling song of chicks is very reminiscent of the chirping of hoarse and hoarse Orthoptera. Of course, the mystery was immediately resolved when I came closer to the bushes and saw a short red tail among the branches.
At the end of June 2016, I heard familiar gurgling sounds along the route and stopped in search of the source. Not far away I saw three chicks with short red tails and fluff sticking out on their heads. The puffballs have just left the nest.
Perhaps it was the first or second day of their stay on earth. I noted to myself that I saw older redstart chicks nearby. There is a high probability that this is a later brood of the second female. In the video you can hear the chick chirping.
I stood with my camera on the trail, getting closer for a good photo. The kids noticed me, but weren’t too scared. They were hungry. When the chicks were nearby, they began to beg each other for food in a characteristic pose. From a pine tree nearby, a female redstart with a caterpillar in its beak was vigilantly watching me. I embarrassed her, so she didn’t dare to fly up.
And suddenly, about thirty meters away, more voices began to murmur. The redstart darted towards the sound. Another hungry trio of chicks was waiting for her there. A mother with many children has six yellowthroats.
At first, the mother was noticeably nervous from my presence and did not feed either group of chicks. She sat down on a thick branch and examined me carefully, assessing the degree of harmfulness.
Then I began to notice that she left the branch for a couple of minutes and sat down on it again, sticking something with her beak into the cracks of the bark. Yeah! A redstart reserves on a branch. So that when I leave, I can quickly shove the loot into hungry mouths.
It happens that redstarts catch large insects, then they make live canned food out of them, storing them for future use. To immobilize large beetles, they hammer them on the ground, and the legs and wings of locusts and praying mantises are torn off. This supply is vital to ensure the continuous feeding of chicks.
When the bird was convinced that I was not dangerous, it began to feed the distant group of chicks from me. To ensure that both babies got food, I slowly drifted between them, taking pictures.
Every 3-4 minutes, a mother with many children appeared with food in her beak to satiate her offspring. She quickly flew up to the chick and put food into her open mouth. It was impossible to get a good picture of the process.
I was expecting a male to appear. I was interested to know if the other parent is involved in feeding the children. And is she right in the assumption that this is the brood of the second female? So I spent about half an hour next to the kids. I noticed only one female feeding.Leaving my family alone, I moved on my naturalist path towards new adventures.
How to make a house for redstarts
Redstarts are insectivorous birds. Only towards the end of summer are berries added to their diet. The common redstart has another name - garden redstart. Well, if such a bird settles on the site, then insect pests will be in trouble.
Phoenixes can be attracted to your site with small square dwellings. With a side height of 15 cm. Only the top board will be longer (15 by 20 cm) to create a canopy over the entrance. The entrance itself will be 3-4 cm in size.
Tits can also nest in such an artificial nest.You can prepare for spring in winter by making bird houses in advance. Pests in gardens and parks can be controlled using environmentally friendly, biological methods, without poisoning the soil with pesticides.
Many in childhood heard a fairy tale about how a small bird with a flaming tail flew to hungry, freezing people and saved the unfortunate ones by giving them fire. This is a fairy tale about a redstart - one of the most remarkable birds from the passerine order and the flycatcher family.
Young redstart. The most common species is the common redstart, also known as the coot redstart or garden redstart. The bird is famous for its unusually bright tail feathers and an interesting way of twitching its tail, which makes it seem as if its tail is engulfed in a bright flame.
What does a redstart look like?
The size of the “forest phoenix” usually does not exceed 10 - 15 cm, and its body weight is about 19 g. Its modest size is more than compensated for by its bright plumage, so it will not be difficult to spot the bird in the forest and get wonderful photos of the redstart. The back and head of the birds are ash-gray, the abdomen and tail are fiery red, many specimens have a white forehead, which is probably where the name “balt” comes from. The female can be distinguished by the brownish color of her plumage.
The redstart's beak is wide at the base, flattened and slightly elongated, well adapted for catching insects on the fly. The length of the wings reaches 8 cm with a span of about 25 cm. Mobile and active, redstarts are on the move all day, constantly twitching their extraordinary tail, then they freeze for a few seconds and again fly from branch to branch, hunting for insects.
Young redstart after swimming. 
A male redstart sings a song about love. 
Adult male common redstart: front view. 
Adult male common redstart: rear view. 
An adult male common redstart. 
Juvenile Common Redstart. Where do redstarts live?
The bird's range extends across Europe, Asia and North-West Africa. Redstarts prefer forests and forest-park zones, avoiding sparse areas; they are extremely rare in forest-steppes.
Redstarts winter in the southern part of their range, and with the onset of warm weather they return to European territory. The arrival of birds depends on the weather: in April insects wake up - their main source of food, and then “tongues of flame” - redstarts with their remarkably bright moving tails - begin to appear in forests, gardens and parks between the branches of trees.
Birds occupy their individual areas and at this time you can hear their pure melodious singing. They sing even at night, and by the beginning of July they completely calm down.
Like all flycatchers, redstarts hunt mainly in flight, capturing insects flying by. Birds track live ground food from high places - lower branches, stones, eaves of buildings, and then dive for prey. Therefore, the diet of redstarts is extremely varied and includes insects, arachnids, snails, caterpillars and earthworms.
In addition to protein foods, birds eat plant foods, mainly all kinds of berries from wild and cultivated plants.
A redstart looks closely at the elderberries in flight. 
A redstart picks an elderberry in flight. 
Redstart with elderberry. With the onset of autumn, redstarts go to winter in African countries and the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.
Features of reproduction
In one season, redstarts manage to produce offspring 2 times. The birds begin breeding for the first time in May, choosing a wide variety of shelters for the nest: tree hollows, holes under their roots, they can use voids in wood stacks and even cracks behind the cladding of buildings. Moreover, it is possible to discover a redstart nest purely by chance; from the outside it is usually skillfully camouflaged.
The female lays 5 - 8 rich blue eggs and incubates the clutch for about 15 days. For two weeks after birth, the chicks do not leave the nest and feed at the expense of their parents. In mid-summer, young birds make their first flights, but their parents accompany and feed them for about a week. Then the family breaks up, the young redstarts begin to live independently, and the parents begin the second clutch.
The redstart fed the chick a dragonfly. 
Under favorable conditions, the life expectancy of a redstart is from 7 to 9 years.
Surely you have seen an interesting bird, with a rather unusual plumage. Sitting on a branch, she performed her short, somewhat nasal song. She is the same size as a sparrow, but the color of her plumage is slightly different, and her behavior is different. This is a garden redstart, which can be found in summer cottages, gardens, forests, city parks and even in fields.
Males and females are somewhat different from each other. The plumage of the male is gray-brown, with the exception of the chest, which is painted in dark red tones, and the front of the head, which is completely black. But the bird’s tail is bright red. Hence the name - redstart. The color of the female is more modest, with the exception of the tail, which remains bright red. The chicks are also colored like the female. The average weight of an adult bird is 17 grams. The male is slightly larger than the female.
The redstart is a migratory bird. With the onset of cold weather, it flies to warmer regions, and in the spring it returns to its nesting sites. First, the males appear, looking for a convenient place to build a nest, and vigilantly guarding it from rivals. With the arrival of females, pairs are created. From this moment on, both future parents are involved in protecting the nest. The height of the mating season occurs in the first days of May. Sitting on the treetops, males perform their mating song. You can hear it from early morning until late evening, until the beginning of July.
Empty hollows with a wide entrance hole, or other natural voids (cracks in urban buildings, recesses in trees, niches in rotten stumps, places under slate, attics, voids in the ground, cracks under roots, etc.) are used as nests. Birds do not disdain the artificial structures that humans build for them. In this case, the nest can be located both on the ground and at a decent height, up to 10 meters. The inside of the nest is covered with dry moss, feathers, and pieces of birch bark, and the outside is covered with dry grass and small branches. If this is a hollow, then the role of litter is played by wooden dust. Eggs are laid on it. Nest construction is the prerogative of the female. The male does not take part in this matter.
The female's clutch consists of five to seven eggs. They are very small, weighing only two grams. Eggs are laid once a year, in early June. The female incubates them for two weeks. Both parents feed the hatched chicks. Birds feed on: small insects, butterflies, sawfly beetles, larvae, caterpillars, spiders, berries. Growing chicks need plenty of food. Their parents, during the day, can make up to 390 flights to buy food for their babies. The highest feeding intensity is observed in the morning and evening hours.
For the first few days, only the male feeds the offspring. At this time, the female does not leave the nest and warms the almost naked chicks. On the third or fourth day, both parents carry the food. Young redstarts become independent on the 15th day. They begin to fly and leave their parents. True, over the next week, they can still use their services.
With the onset of autumn cold weather, bird migration begins. In September you won't see them anymore.