Abstract
Hedges and forest edges play a major role in providing nesting sites, food resources and shelter for birds in agricul tural landscapes of western and central Europe. We investigated the response of farmland vs. woodland birds at two degrees of isolation of hedges from forest and to vegetation structure. We surveyed 200 m long sections of six forest edges, six hedges connected to forests and six isolated hedges. Species richness and abundance of farmland birds were higher in hedges than in forest edges, species richness and abundance of woodland birds were lower in hedges than in the forest edges. Species richness and abundance of both groups did not differ between connected and isolated hedges. Width and height of hedges and edges did not affect the species richness and abundance of either farmland or woodland birds. Furthermore, bird community composition differed between habitat types (hedge vs. forest edge) and also between hedge isolation levels (hedges connected to forest vs. isolated hedges). Based on our results, we emphasize the importance of hedges in conserving farmland birds and encourage policy makers to support hedge creation and maintenance with landscape-wide management strategies supporting a diverse hedge structure. Both connected and isolated hedges play an important role as they harbour different bird communities.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Báldi, A. and P. Batáry. 2011. Spatial heterogeneity and farmland birds: different perspectives in Western and Eastern Europe. Ibis 153:875–876.
Barkow, A. 2002. Die ökologische Bedeutung von Hecken für Vögel. J. Ornithol. 143:383–385.
Bas, Y., M. Renard and F. Jiguet. 2009. Nesting strategy predicts farmland bird response to agricultural intensity. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 134:143–147.
Batáry, P. and A. Báldi. 2004. Evidence of an edge effect on avian nest success. Conserv. Biol. 18:389–400.
Batáry, P., J. Fischer, A. Báldi, T.O. Crist and T. Tscharntke. 2011. Does habitat heterogeneity increase farmland biodiversity? Front. Ecol. Environ. 9:152–153.
Batáry, P., T Matthiesen and T. Tscharntke. 2010. Landscape-moderated importance of hedges in conserving farmland bird diver-sity of organic vs. conventional croplands and grasslands. Biol. Conserv. 143:2020–2027.
Baudry, J., R.G.H. Bunce and F. Burel. 2000. Hedgerows: An international perspective on their origin, function and management. J. Environ. Manage. 60:7–22.
Bennett, A.F., S.A. Hinsley, P.E. Bellamy, R.D. Swetman and R. MacNally. 2004. Do regional gradients in land-use influence richness, composition and turnover of bird assemblages in small woods? Biol. Conserv. 119:191–206.
Berg, Å. and T. Pärt. 1994. Abundance of breeding farmland birds on arable and set-aside fields at forest edges.Ecography 17:147–152.
Bibby, J.C., D.N. Burgess and A.D. Hill. 1992. Bird Census Techniques. Academic Press, London.
Bradbury, R.B., A. Kyrkos, A.J. Morris, S.C. Clark, A.J. Perkins and J.D. Wilson. 2000. Habitat associations and breeding success of yellowhammers on lowland farmland. J. Appl. Ecol. 37:789–805.
Chamberlain, D.E., B.J. Hatchwell and C.M. Perrins. 1995. Spaced out nests and predators: an experiment to test the effects of habitat structure. J. Avian Biol. 26:346–349.
Concepción, E.D. and M. Díaz. 2010. Relative effects of field- and landscape-scale intensification on farmland bird diversity in Mediterranean dry cereal croplands. Asp. Appl. Biol. 100:245–252.
Cramp, S. 1992. The birds of the Western Palearctic. Vol. VI. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Davies, Z.G. and A.S. Pullin. 2007. Are hedgerows effective corridors between fragments of woodland habitat? An evidence-based approach. Landscape Ecol. 22:333–351.
Díaz, M., R. Carbonell, T. Santos and J.L. Tellería. 1998. Effects of pine plantations on bird communities of the Spanish plateaux: biogeography, landscape and vegetation effects. J. Appl. Ecol. 35:562–574.
Donald, P.F., R.E. Green and M.F. Heath. 2001. Agricultural intensification and the collapse of Europe’s farmland bird populations. Proc. Roy. Soc. B 268:25–29.
Elle, O. 2003. Quantification of the integrative effect of ecotones as exemplified by the habitat choice of Blackcap and Whitethroat (Sylvia atricapilla and S. communis, Sylviidae). J. Ornithol. 144:271–283.
Fahrig, L. 2003. Effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 34:487–515.
Filippi-Codaccioni, O., V. Devictor, Y. Bas and R. Julliard. 2010. Toward more concern for specialisation and less for species diversity in conserving farmland biodiversity. Biol. Conserv. 143:1493–1500.
Frank, B. and C. Battisti. 2005. Area effect on bird communities, guilds and species in a highly fragmented forest landscape of central Italy. Ital. J. Zool. 72:297–304.
Fuller, R.J., D.E. Chamberlain, N.H.K. Burton and S.J. Gough. 2001. Distributions of birds in lowland agricultural landscapes of England and Wales: How distinctive are bird communities of hedgerows and woodland? Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 84:79–92.
Gaston, K.J. 2010. Valuing common species. Science 327:154–155.
Gates, J.E. and L.W. Gysel. 1978. Avian nest dispersion and fledging success in field-forest ecotones. Ecology 59:871–883.
Gilbert-Norton, L., R. Wilson, J.R. Stevens and K.H. Beard. 2010. A meta-analytic review of corridor effectiveness. Conserv. Biol. 24:660–668.
Gregory, R.D., A. van Strien, P. Vorisek, A.W.G. Meyling, D.G. Noble, R.P.B. Foppen and D.W. Gibbons. 2005. Developing indicators for European birds. Philos. T. Roy. Soc. B 360:269–288.
Gregory, R.D., P. Vorisek, A. van Strien, A.W.G. Meyling, F. Jiguet, L. Fornasari, J. Reif, P. Chylarecki and I.J. Burfield. 2007. Population trends of widespread woodland birds in Europe. Ibis 149:78–97.
Green, R.E., P.E. Osborne and E.J. Sears. 1994. The distribution of passerine birds in hedgerows during the breeding season in relation to characteristics of the hedgerow and adjacent farmland. J. Appl. Ecol. 31:677–692.
Herlin, I.L.S. and G.L.A. Fry. 2000. Dispersal of woody plants in forest edges and hedgerows in a Southern Swedish agricultural area: the role of site and landscape structure. Landscape Ecol. 15:229–242.
Hinsley, S.A. and P.E. Bellamy. 2000. The influence of hedge structure, management and landscape context on the value of hedgerows to birds: A review. J. Environ. Manage. 60:33–49.
Hothorn, T., F. Bretz and P. Westfall. 2008. Simultaneous inference in general parametric models. Biometrical J. 50:346–363.
Krebs, J.R. 1971. Territory and breeding in the Great Tit, Parus major L. Ecology 52:2–22.
Legendre, P. and E.D. Gallagher. 2001. Ecologically meaningful transformation for ordination of species data. Oecologia 129:271–280.
Lindenmayer, D.B. and J. Fischer. 2006. Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change: An Ecological and Conservation Synthesis. Island Press, Washington.
McCollin, D. 1998. Forest edges and habitat selection in birds: a functional approach. Ecography 21:247–260.
Oksanen, J., F.G. Blanchet, R. Kindt, P. Legendre, P.R. Minchin, B. O’Hara, G.L. Simpson, P. Sólymos, M.H.H. Stevens and H. Wagner. 2010. The vegan package: community ecology package. R package version 2.0-2. URL: http://cran.R-pro-ject.org/package=vegan
Perkins, A.J., M.J. Whittingham, A.J. Morris and R.B. Bradbury. 2002. Use of field margins by foraging yellowhammers Em-beriza citrinella. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 93:413–420.
Peterson, A.P. 2002. Zoonomen Nomenclatural data. URL:http://www.zoonomen.net
Pinheiro, J., D. Bates, S. DebRoy, D. Sarkar and the R Core team. 2011. The nlme package: linear and nonlinear mixed effects models. R package version 3.1–102. URL: http://cran.r-pro-ject.org/src/contrib/Descriptions/nlme.html
Pollard, E., M.D. Hooper and N.W. Moore. 1974. Hedges. William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, London.
Puckett, H.L., J.R. Brandle, R.J. Johnson and E.E. Blankenship. 2009. Avian foraging patterns in crop field edges adjacent to woody habitat. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 131:9–15.
R Development Core Team. 2011. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. Version 2.13.2. Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL: http://www.R-project.org
Sanderson, F.J., A. Kloch, K. Sachanowicz and P.F. Donald. 2009. Predicting the effects of agricultural change on farmland bird populations in Poland. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 129:37–42.
Seybold, S. 2009. Flora von Deutschland und angrenzender Länder. Quelle and Meyer, Heidelberg & Wiesbaden.
Siriwardena, G. M., N. A. Calbrade and J.A. Vickery. 2008. Farmland birds and late winter food: does seed supply fail to meet demand? Ibis 150:585–595.
Sparks, T.H., T. Parish and S.A. Hinsley. 1996 Breeding birds in field boundaries in an agricultural landscape. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 60: 1–8.
Tucker, G.M. and M.F. Heath. 1994. Birds in Europe: Their Conservation Status. BirdLife, Cambridge.
Villard, M.-A., M.K. Trzcinski and G. Merriam. 1999. Fragmentation effects on forest birds: relative influence of woodland cover and configuration on landscape occupancy. Conserv. Biol. 13:774–783.
Walker, M.P., J.W. Dover, S.A. Hinsley and T.H. Sparks. 2005. Birds and green lanes: Breeding season bird abundance, territories and species richness. Biol. Conserv. 126:540–547.
Whittingham, M.J., J.R. Krebs, R.D. Swetnam, R.M. Thewlis, J.D. Wilson and R.P. Freckleton. 2009. Habitat associations of British breeding farmland birds. Bird Study 56:43–52.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
About this article
Cite this article
Batáry, P., Kovács-Hostyánszki, A., Fischer, C. et al. Contrasting effect of isolation of hedges from forests on farmland vs. woodland birds. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 13, 155–161 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.13.2012.2.4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.13.2012.2.4