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Types of Animals

by Alexander Sohm last modified 2007-01-08 13:15

Because of the variety of habitats, the Silbertal is an interesting place for wild animals to live.  Hoofed game like the red deer, roe deer, chamois and ibex have developed good populations over the past few decades.  All four species of Grouse live here, namely the Wood Grouse, the Black Grouse, the Hazel Grouse and the Snow Grouse.  Birds of prey like the Goshawk, the Buzzard, the Sparrow Hawk, the Falcon, the Golden Eagle and even the Bearded Vulture when it is passing through, feel well in the Silbertal.

Here, around the forest school, different types of woodpeckers feel at home.  There are 10 different species of woodpeckers in Austria, 9 of which are at home in Vorarlberg.  These are the Great Spotted Woodpecker, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, the Middle Spotted Woodpecker, the White-backed Woodpecker, the Green Woodpecker, the Grey-headed Woodpecker, the Black Woodpecker, the Three-toed Woodpecker and the Wryneck.

The Three-toed Woodpecker is the only woodpecker with a yellow crest and it prefers forests like the ones here around the forest schoolhouse, which are coniferous forests on the upper forest level which is older and is rich in biotope wood.  If you take a close look at the tree that serves as the corner post for the fence around the forest school building, you will see small, horizontally lined up holes in the bark.  These are typical eating tracks of the Three-toed Woodpecker.  The animal protein food like larva, pupa, different types of beetles that hatch in the bark of trees, Jewel Beetles and Wood Wasps outweigh vegetable foods by far but the extraction of sap from drilling the tree trunks is not of little consequence to the diet of the Three-toed Woodpecker.  Typical are the horizontally running rows of holes.  The woodpecker picks the prey out of each hole, one after the other, but inspects them a number of times.  Some trees can be used as ringed trees for 50, 70, or even 100 years.  Over time, the rings develop into thick coils, an example of which you can see on the path towards Ganzalaeta, there where it is level, on the left side just off the path.



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P06-3 types of animals.mp3
 


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