Calamornis heudei

The Chinese Parrotbill is a rare bird species in China with 2 subspecies.

The Chinese Parrotbill is a bird with great research value. It is known as the "panda among birds" and is a globally near-threatened species. In fact, the Chinese Parrotbill was not really known to the world until 1872. Before that, it was "unknown" in the reeds along the eastern coast of China, and it did not even have a local name. In 1872, French missionary and famous naturalist Armand David (Chinese name "Tan Weidao") gave the bird a scientific name based on a specimen collected from a reed by a lake in Jiangsu (including Jiangsu Province and Shanghai). Its Latin name is "Paradoxornis heude". The Chinese name "Chinese Parrotbill" has a more historical origin. "Zhendan" is the ancient name of China. According to records, ancient India called the land of China "Zhendan". Naming a small bird in this way is very Chinese, showing mystery and antiquity. According to relevant data, the Chinese Parrotbill has a history of 450 million years on Earth. It is a living fossil among birds and is a bird with great research value.

In terms of classification, the Chinese Parrotbill belongs to the Paradoxornithidae family of the Passeriformes order of birds. It was previously classified as the Paradoxornis genus, but has been classified as Calamornis since 2020. It is a monotypic species.

The size of the Chinese Parrotbill shows obvious seasonal changes. In the breeding season, it is dominated by single birds and smaller clusters, while in the non-breeding season, it is dominated by larger clusters. When humans approach, the presence or absence of sentinel behavior and warning calls in different seasons and different cluster sizes shows extremely significant differences. Variance component estimation shows that the difference in the performance of warning behavior is mainly caused by cluster size.

The Chinese hwamei is also a happy elf. Its calls are rapid and coherent, very pleasant to the ear. When they are happy, they will spread their wings and sing, but the force is not strong, but the frequency of flapping wings is relatively high, flapping wings and singing softly.

When humans approach, Chinese hwamei individuals or clusters will respond by escaping, sentinel behavior and warning calls, or a combination of these behaviors. Sentinel behavior and warning calls often appear together. When humans approach, the proportion of individuals and clusters that show sentinel behavior and warning calls shows obvious monthly changes. In the breeding season, the average proportion of sentinel behavior and warning calls is much lower than that in the non-breeding season. The proportion of clusters that show sentinel behavior and warning calls increases with the increase of cluster size.

The Chinese parrotbill often uses its pink and yellow claws to firmly hook the reed stalks, just like a little soldier holding a steel gun standing on a branch and looking around. Once they find a bug, they will knock the reed stalks with their hard beaks like a woodpecker, making a crisp sound, and pull out the bugs hidden in the reed skin and eat them. In order to find food, they often jump between the reed stalks. Interestingly, if they accidentally reach the top of the reed, because the top of the reed is very thin and cannot bear its weight, they will be pressed to the ground. They will jump again and jump to other reeds to find food. Sometimes they will also steal bugs from spider webs and get something for nothing.

The Chinese parrotbill feeds on insects in summer and berries in winter. The Chinese hwamei is small and lively. It keeps making short "chirps" from its mouth. After staying on the branches for a while, it flies away like a gust of wind and rarely moves on the ground. They eat insects and also peck at seeds.

The nest of the Chinese hwamei is very hidden, which is not easy for enemies to detect and even more difficult to approach. They start building nests in April every year, and males and females build nests together. They will tear the reed leaves with their hard beaks, use the fibers in the leaves as building materials, wrap the fibers around 2-5 reeds, and then circle them into a nest. Each nest lays 2-5 eggs, of which 2-4 chicks can be hatched. The time for feeding the newborns is about 9-11 days, which is shared by males and females. When the chicks just leave the nest, they cannot fly and must climb and jump with the help of dense reed stalks. The chicks will not actively forage for food yet. After leaving the nest, they must be fed by their parents for more than ten days. After that, they will change from parents handing food to parents searching for food and chicks pecking for food. During this period, the male bird mainly delivers food and searches for food, and the female bird follows, and the roles of the "two" are completely reversed.

Listed in the "Red List of Endangered Species of the World Conservation Union" (IUCN) 2016 ver 3.1-Near Threatened (NT).

Listed in the second level of China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021).

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Distributed in Russia, Lake Kangka in the Primorsky Krai of Mongolia, and Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hebei in China, it is common in suitable local habitats.
It mainly inhabits reeds in rivers, riverbanks, lake swamps, river mouth sandbars and coastal beach reeds. In winter, because reeds are harvested in large quantities, some wander to nearby ditches and grasses to move and forage. The habitat is limited to the reed fields (palivanovi) in the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River and Liaoning, and the reed fields (heudei) in the Yangtze River Basin and the coastal areas of Jiangsu. Most of the habitat has been destroyed due to the reclamation of arable land.

The male and female Chinese bushbill have similar plumage. The forehead, top of the head, nape and back of the neck are blue-gray or gray with ochre. The sides of the head and ear feathers are grayish white, with a long and wide black eyebrow pattern running from above the eye through the side of the head, above the ear feathers and all the way to the sides of the back of the neck, which is very eye-catching. The upper back is ochre with light gray coarse stripes (nominative subspecies) or the back is light grape color, sometimes with black vertical stripes, and the shoulders, lower back and waist are generally yellow ochre or light ochre. The wing coverts are ochre-brown chestnut, the flight feathers are mainly brown or black-brown, the outer edge of the primary flight feathers is light white or brown-yellow, the secondary flight feathers gradually change from brown to black-brown with white outer edges and brown-white inner edges and end spots, or the central black-brown is edged wit