Waterfowl - the term is not scientific, but rather amateur. According to him, birds are united by a common name, based on a common way of life for them. This is the same if we combine the common term “marine animals” of whales, jellyfish and fish, which, according to the generally accepted scientific classification, belong to different taxonomic groups.
Floating birds are birds that can stay on the surface of the water. Thus, not all birds that lead an aquatic lifestyle and get food in water bodies are waterfowl. A vivid confirmation of this - cranes and storks. They get food mainly in shallow water - in swamps or in the coastal strip of lakes. They do not need to learn the art of staying on the water, as they grab the food with a long beak. Therefore, they do not have structural features of the legs, characteristic of waterfowl - membranes between the fingers, which play the role of fins.
Another distinctive feature that waterfowl have is their dense plumage and the presence of a special sebaceous gland, the secret of which is to lubricate the feathers, preventing them from getting wet.
Waterfowl are either predators or omnivores. There are no "strict vegans" among them. Each species "specializes" in its feed, so different waterfowl quite calmly share one swamp, lake or section of the sea surface, occupying a specific ecological niche.
Seagulls, for example, grab fish from the surface of the water, cormorants dive after it to a depth from a flight altitude, and duck ducks dive from the surface of the water. Some species when getting food only immerse their heads in water.
And here it all depends on the length of the neck. A swan is able to grab food from a fairly considerable depth, and a duck that does not belong to dives - from a much smaller one. And everyone is well-fed, and no one is complaining to anyone.
In Russia, the region where waterfowl has always been in large numbers is the Arctic, the Far East and the surrounding territories. Adhering to traditional life, the indigenous peoples of the north during the hunting season procured such birds literally in thousands. Then they were smoked, salted, frozen on the glaciers and ate their meat in the long polar winter.
The modern north, according to the northerners, has become much poorer in this regard, and the situation has changed in the last twenty-five to thirty years. Ornithologists have not yet figured out what is to blame - either uncontrolled hunting, or the destruction of nesting sites, or some other unaccounted factor.
And it is not possible to determine how much the population has decreased. Although birds, in the opinion of the northerners, became smaller, their number is still so large that it is poorly countable. That is, “less” is subjective-evaluative, and in numbers no one can determine how this “less” looks.
Floodplains of large rivers are also places where many waterfowl live, although in smaller quantities than in the North. And if birds are wide on the rivers of sparsely populated Siberia, then in the European part of the country, where the population density is much higher, their number is directly affected by the human factor in the form of banal hunting, including poaching.
Of great importance are man-made disasters, and simply human economic activity, which often destroys places where waterfowls traditionally live. Photos of gulls dying from an oil spill and other similar “charms” have long become commonplace of environmental photo exhibitions. Alas…
