The last weekend of January is the Days of Great Winter Bird Counting.
The purpose of these days is not only to draw public attention to the wonderful interesting world of birds. Conducting days of great bird counting helps to determine the species composition of the avifauna of a region by involving a large number of observers. These are the days when professional ornithologists and all nature lovers of all ages come together, because it is not difficult to record the species and the number of birds seen during the day.
We also invite all our visitors to join the Great Winter Bird Count. Of course, we do not mean watching the birds of the zoo collection. But many of you will be surprised when you learn how many interesting species of birds can be found in Mykolaiv, including in green plantings in the territory of Mykolaiv Zoo.
Of course, the first to fall into the field of view of the observer are the numerous representatives of Corvidae - magpies, rooks, gray crows. But in the zoo you can sometimes hear and even see such a careful rare bird as a raven. And some years ago during the invasion widely described by ornithologists in Mykolaiv the Eurasian nutcracker was noticed.
Not everyone knows that even such common synanthropic birds as sparrows represented by two species in the zoo territory - house sparrow and Eurasian tree sparrow. And titmice in our zoo are not only the great tits, often in the greenery there can be found the Eurasian blue tit. And in thickets of a reed on coasts of the rivers around Mykolaiv it is possible to meet a beautiful bearded reedling.
Among branches of coniferous trees in Mykolaiv Zoo it is possible to see the smallest birds of Ukraine - the kinglet, which body weight is only 5 g. Not much bigger, the other representative of an avifauna, which also can be met in the territory of the zoo – the Eurasian wren. Often found in the zoo such a beautiful bird as the European robin. And if you look closely at the trunks of trees, you can see a small colorful bird - typical treecreepers.
Especially interesting bird watching in our southern region can be carried out on frosty snowy days. During this period, true thrushes and waxwings fly to the zoo. And in very strong long frosts even beautiful Eurasian bullfinches happened in Mykolaiv.
We hope that you are interested in bird watching and will be able to join the Days of Great Winter Bird Counting.
We remind you that at any time the collected data can be entered into the International database of ornithological observations bit.ly/2RnaVEx.