Yellow mockers

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Yellow mockers
Yellow Mockers (Hippolais icterina)

Yellow Mockers ( Hippolais icterina )

Systematics
Order : Passerines (Passeriformes)
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri)
Superfamily : Sylvioidea
Family : Reed warbler (Acrocephalidae)
Genre : Mockers ( Hippolais )
Type : Yellow mockers
Scientific name
Hippolais icterina
( Vieillot , 1817)
Yellow Mockers ( Hippolais icterina )

The yellow mocker ( Hippolais icterina ) is a songbird from the reed warbler family (Acrocephalidae). This mocker inhabits parts of the western and central Palearctic from northeast France, Switzerland and southwest Scandinavia to the east as far as the northwestern foreland of the Altai . The yellow mocker inhabits a wide range of habitats with loose trees and higher bushes, in Central Europe among other things alluvial forests and damp mixed deciduous forests, but also field trees, cemeteries and natural parks. The species migrates long distances and winters in tropical Central and South Africa.

The population is considered to be slightly declining, especially in the west of the area in Central Europe, where competition with the increasing and spreading Orpheus mocker is suspected to be one of the reasons . Worldwide, however, the IUCN classifies the yellow mocker as safe (“least concern”) due to its large distribution area and the very high total population.

description

Yellow mockers are quite small, slender songbirds with a rather large head, quite powerful beak, long wings and a relatively short tail. Compared to other mockers, they are quite strikingly colored with a brownish olive-green upper and a light yellow underside in the fresh plumage, but apart from that, like all mockers, they do not show any striking drawings. The sexes do not differ in terms of size and color.

With a body length of 12.0 to 13.5 cm and a weight of 11 to 19 g, the species is significantly smaller than a house sparrow and only about half as heavy. In adult birds, the entire upper side of the trunk, as well as the neck and head, are monochrome brownish olive green. The rein region, the short over-eye stripe and the eye area are pale yellow. The middle arm covers are dark brown, the large arm covers olive brown. The wings are blackish brown, the hand wings and the umbrella feathers have narrow, the arm wings have wider yellowish hems on the outer flags and yellowish tips. The control feathers are dark brown and have a very narrow, lighter brown border. The entire underside of the fuselage, the under wing coverts and the under tail coverts are light yellow, whereby the more intense yellow coloration is often limited to the throat and front chest. The sides of the chest and flanks show a brownish tinge.

The iris is dark brown. The beak is clearly two-colored; the upper beak is dark brown, the entire lower beak yellowish. The legs are lead gray.

In the youth dress , the upper side is more brown-gray and less olive, the underside is pale yellow with broad brown flanks. The wings, control feathers and the cover feathers on the upper side have a warm brownish border.

The intraspecific variation is very low and no subspecies are recognized.

Possible confusion

The Orpheusspötter , which occurs in western Europe and the western Mediterranean area including Italy, is very similar to the yellow mocker. The distribution areas of these species overlap in northwest France , Belgium , the Netherlands and increasingly also in southwest Germany. The yellow mocker's wings, more precisely the feathers of the hand wings, are longer. With a little experience one can recognize the longer so-called "hand swing projection" on sitting animals. The umbrella feathers of the yellow mocker are also lightly edged and form a lightened field on the wing of the sitting bird, which is missing in the Orpheus mocking. In areas where both species occur, the Orpheusspötter rather inhabits bush vegetation in open landscapes, a biotope that is unusual for yellow mockers. All other European mockers do not have a green-yellow, but a gray-white or brown-white color.

For ornithological beginners, the yellow mocker also resembles various warblers , such as fitis and chiffchaff . However, warblers are smaller and stockier, their beak significantly thinner and shorter.

Vocalizations

The loud, fast and often long-lasting song at the beginning of the breeding season is performed by the males in the area from a control room that is usually well covered in the foliage of bushes or trees. It contains numerous short imitations of other bird songs or calls. Characteristically short, nasal or moaning, repeatedly repeated sounds like “GÍe-GÍe” or “hiäh” as well as melodic, long whistling tones are interwoven. The call of the Hatchery is a melodic, three syllables "ta-ta-LÜÜit" , the warning calls are sharp as "täck" or ranked "ta ta ta ..." .

distribution

The yellow mocker inhabits parts of the western and central Palearctic from the boreal to the temperate zone . In an east-west direction, it spreads from north-east France and Switzerland to the north-western foreland of the Altai . The northern border of the closed distribution runs from southern Scandinavia, about 62 ° N in southern Finland and about 61 ° 30 N on the Pechora , to Tomsk in western Siberia; the southern border from the northern edge of the Alps over the north of the Balkan Peninsula to northeast Bulgaria and then along the east and north coast of the Black Sea over the Crimea , to the area southeast of the Sea of Azov and then at about 52 ° N on the Urals and Volga and about 52–54 ° N in Kazakhstan to the northern edge of the Altai.

habitat

The yellow mocker inhabits a broad spectrum of habitats with loose trees and higher bushes, preferably multi-layered deciduous trees with a low degree of cover of the upper layer. In Central Europe, the species populates, among other things, alluvial forests and damp mixed deciduous forests, but also field trees, hedges, cemeteries and natural parks.

nutrition

In Central Europe during the breeding season, the food consists primarily of insects, less often of spiders and rarely of small snails . Fruits are apparently only consumed in exceptional cases. In a study of the nestling food of four breeding pairs in Burgundy, 87.4% of the food animals were insects, 9% arachnids, 3.2% snails and 0.45% pinnipeds (Julidae). Among the insects, flies dominated with 22.5%, followed by aphids with 16.3%, mosquitoes with 14.1% and beetles with 12.3%.

The foraging takes place in all layers of the vegetation, but mainly at heights between 2 and 8 meters. In the treetops, yellow mockers hunt mainly in the outer area. Prey is usually read from the vegetation in flight, while sitting or hopping, is less often captured in the air and is only rarely caught in the air from a hide.

Yellow Mocker's Nest

Reproduction

Scrim ( Museum Wiesbaden Collection )

Yellow mockers lead a monogamous brood or seasonal marriage. The nest is built in trees and shrubs of all kinds in the center or in the edge area of ​​the dense branches and leaves. It is usually erected on a branch and then supported by fine twigs that are woven into the nest wall, or hung in a small branch whisk. In Central Europe, the nests are usually erected at a height of 1 to 4 m, rarely higher or on the ground in dense vegetation. The neat, bowl-shaped nest with smooth walls on the outside and inside is mainly built by the female mostly from stalks and other fine vegetable material; wool threads, pieces of paper and the like are often used. In the outer wall area, coarser materials such as pieces of bark, partially decomposed leaves or coarse hair can also be used. The nest walls are solidified by externally applied adhesive or elastic materials such as cobwebs, cocoons, woolen hair and the like. Fine plant fibers, animal hair or feathers are used to line the actual nest hollow. The nests have an outer diameter of 60 to 90 mm and a height of 50 to 120 mm.

The oviposition takes place variably depending on the geographical location, in Central Europe as an exception as early as April 30th, usually from mid-May and with a peak in late May to mid-June. The last clutch is started at the end of July. Second broods are very rare in Central Europe. The clutch consists of 3 to 7, mostly 4 to 5 eggs, which are loosely dotted black or dark brown on a light or dark pink background. The breeding season lasts 12 to 14 days, the incubation is carried out exclusively by the female. Feed both parents. The young birds leave the nest between 13.5 and 15.5 days and are then led and fed by their parents for another 8 to 11 days. Sexual maturity is reached at the end of the first year of life.

hikes

The species is long-distance migrant . The migration of Central and Northern European birds takes place in late July to mid-September with a peak in early August. Findings in October are already very rare in Central Europe. The world population of the yellow mocker overwinters in tropical central and southern Africa south of the Sahara , leaving out the deserts and tropical rainforests . The winter quarters extend from the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the east to Rwanda and Tanzania , to the south via Malawi and Zambia to Namibia , Botswana and the Transvaal . The species overwinters mainly in the thorn savannah and in acacia forests . The first homecomers in Central Europe are, as an exception, observed in early or mid-April, but normally only in early to mid-May. The home migration peaks in May and ends in mid-June.

Existence and endangerment

There is no reliable information about the world population , BirdLife International gives a rough estimate of 10 to 30 million individuals. The population is considered to be slightly declining, especially in the west of the area in Central Europe, where competition with the increasing and spreading Orpheus mocker is suspected to be one of the reasons . Worldwide, however, the IUCN classifies the yellow mocker as safe (“least concern”) due to its large distribution area and the very high total population.

swell

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: p. 570
  2. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: p. 568
  3. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: pp. 571-577
  4. ^ Lars Svensson, Peter J. Grant, Killian Mullarney, Dan Zetterström: Der neue Kosmos Vogelführer . Kosmos, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-440-07720-9 : p. 300
  5. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: pp. 578-579
  6. ↑ Martin Flade: The breeding bird communities of Central and Northern Germany - Basics for the use of ornithological data in landscape planning . IHW-Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-930167-00-X , p. 550
  7. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: pp. 599-601
  8. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: p. 598
  9. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: pp. 591-592
  10. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: pp. 592-593
  11. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: pp. 593-599
  12. ↑ Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas, Volume 12 / I, Passeriformes (3rd part): Sylviidae. Aula, Wiesbaden 1991: pp. 584-588 and 590
  13. ↑ The Yellow Mocker at BirdLife International . Retrieved July 22, 2011.

Web links

Other web links

Commons : Yellow Mockers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files