There is no exact information about the life span of birds. Such facts can only be interpreted as incomplete or fragmentary. They are based only on information about birds that lived in captivity or ringed individuals. It is rather difficult to reliably establish the age by the appearance and structure of the bird. You can only say whether she is old or young, but you cannot say her exact age.
Birds living in captivity
The data on the age of birds kept in captivity cannot fully reflect the actual picture of the real life expectancy of birds, because they live in conditions very different from their natural habitat. Here, all the problems associated with living are borne by the person. It protects birds from hunger, enemies and cold.
At the same time, in captivity, especially large-sized birds are limited to swimming, flying or running. In addition, the food they eat does not match the food they get in their natural habitat. And the climate in captivity is often very different from the usual climatic conditions. All these factors cause various diseases in birds - tuberculosis, vitamin deficiency, obesity of the heart, which leads to their premature death.
Ringed birds
The data on the lifespan of ringed birds also cannot be considered completely reliable. The caught and ringed bird is released into the wild, but no one knows when it will be caught next to register its age. In addition, birdwatchers do not always come across chicks for ringing. Quite often, these are adults whose age has not been established.
But despite this, with the help of mass ringing, scientists managed to find out the approximate age for several species of birds. It was found that out of 10 thousand banded ducks, only one survives to twenty years. For the most part, commercial bird species die at a young age. Among the common causes of mortality of game birds, the human factor plays an important role.
Official centenarians among birds
Today there is information about the lifespan of about 70 species of birds. It is so reliably known that the African ostrich lived for 40 years, the herring gull for 44 years, the albatross for 46, and the white-tailed eagle for 48 years. The fifth decade of life was exchanged for the royal vulture - 52 years old, the raven - 51 years old, the owl - 53. The gray goose reached its advanced bird years 65 years old, the macaw parrot - 64 years old.
The best known case of bird longevity to ornithologists is the large condor carnivore living in the South American Andes. In 1892 he was brought to the Moscow Zoological Garden when he was old enough. It was registered that the male condor died in 1961, having lived for almost 70 years in the Moscow Zoo, and if we consider that the adult plumage is obtained by predators only by the fourth year of life, then the long-lived condor must have lived for at least 75 years.
