ИСТИНА

Biology and behavior traits of suboscines are known much scarce than those of oscines and the most part of researches have been provided from the New World. There are only Pittidae and Eurylaimidae are representatives of suboscines in South-East Asia, however many aspects of breeding biology and behavior of these families remain unknown. In 2010-2013 we collected data on biology and behavior of blue-winged pitta (Pitta moluccensis), bar-bellied pitta (P. elliotii) and blue-rumped pitta (P. soror) inhabited lowland monsoon forests of the Cat Tien National Park (southern Vietnam). We studied 13, 12 and 5 nests of P. moluccensis, P. elliotii and P. soror, respectively. More than 590 hours of video-data on breeding biology are collected for 7 nests of three species. Various biology features of these species were described with special attention to nest predation pressure and to the role of vocalizations in bird’s communications. The most complete description of vocal repertoire and its functional meaning was obtained. For the first time the short-distance vocalizations, nestlings begging calls and fledglings chirps were described. The unique data was collected during observations and video-registration: choosing place and building a nest, characteristics of clutches, brooding, feeding of young, nestling’s ontogeny, parental investment and etc. We revealed effect of nest predation to breeding success of pittas and described diversity of animal species which destroyed nests of these species. From 26 nests of three species with known outcome 9 were under our intensive observation and 17 nests we didn’t disturb, only by one nest from each sample was successful. As the level of nest predation was extremely high in both cases, we concluded that our work didn’t affect to this factor. Thus, we suppose that breeding strategy of pittas consists in reiterated nesting during breeding season and, probably, long life of adults.