Waterfowl is not a scientific term, but rather an amateur one. According to him, the birds are united by a common name, based on their common way of life. This is the same if you combine the common term "sea animals" with whales, jellyfish and fish, which, according to generally accepted scientific classification, belong to different taxonomic groups.
Waterfowl are birds that can float on the surface of the water. Thus, not all birds that lead an aquatic lifestyle and forage in water bodies are waterfowl. A vivid confirmation of this is cranes and storks. They get food mainly in shallow water - in swamps or in the coastal strip of lakes. They do not need to master the art of staying on the water, as they grab food with a long beak. Therefore, they do not have a peculiarity in the structure of the legs, characteristic of waterfowl - membranes between the fingers, which play the role of flippers.
Another distinctive feature that waterfowl have is dense plumage and the presence of a special sebaceous gland, the secretwhich should lubricate the feathers, preventing them from getting wet.
Waterfowl are either predators or omnivores. There are no "strict vegetarians" among them. Each species "specializes" in its food, so different waterfowl quite easily share one swamp, lake or sea surface area, occupying a specific ecological niche.
Seagulls, for example, grab fish from the surface of the water, cormorants dive for it to depth from a flight height, and diving ducks dive from the surface of the water. Some species only submerge their heads in the water to get food.
And it all depends on the length of the neck. The swan is able to grab food from a fairly significant depth, and the duck, which is not related to diving, from much less. And everyone is full, and no one has a claim to anyone.
In Russia, the region where waterfowl has always been in huge numbers is the Arctic, the Far East and the territories adjacent to them. Indigenous peoples of the north, adhering to the traditional way of life, harvested literally thousands of such birds during the hunting season. Then they were smoked, s alted, frozen on glaciers and ate their meat during the long polar winter.
The modern north, according to northerners, has become much poorer in this regard, and the situation has changed in about 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 for factor.
Yes and determinehow much the population has decreased is not possible. Although the birds, in the opinion of the northerners, have become smaller, their number is still so large that it is difficult to count. That is, "less" is subjective and evaluative, and in numbers no one can determine how this "less" looks.
Floodplains of large rivers are also home to many waterfowl, although in smaller numbers than in the North. And if on the rivers of sparsely populated Siberia birds expanse, then in the European part of the country, where the population density is much higher, their numbers are directly affected by the human factor in the form of banal hunting, including poaching.
Man-made disasters are also of great importance, and simply human economic activity, which often destroys places where waterfowl traditionally live. Photos of seagulls dying from an oil spill and other similar “charms” have long become commonplace at environmental photo exhibitions. Alas…
