The winter bird species and their abundance in Lombardy, Northern Italy

• Published in: Annales zoologici fennici Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 291 - 295
• Main Authors: Fedrigo, Alessandra, Fornasari, Lorenzo, Bonaventura, Oriana, Vigorita, Vittorio, Massa, Renato
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Finnish Zoological Publishing Board, formed by the Finnish Academy of Sciences, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica and Societas Biologica Fennica Vanamo 01-01-1989
• Subjects: Aves; Aviculture; Bird songs; Birds; Farmlands; Heathlands; Highlands; Lowlands; The community level; Wetlands; Wildlife habitats; Woodlands
• ISSN: 0003-455X; 1797-2450

To assess the importance of the region south of the Alps for wintering birds, we made bird counts in Lombardy, Northern Italy, from 1983/84 to 1986/87 using (1) line transects in homogeneous habitats performed in the first half of December and in the first half of January and (2) point counts randomly performed in the entire administrative region, from November 15th to the end of February. The habitats studied by means of line transects were (a) lowland farmland, (b) lowland broad-leaved woodland, (c) lowland heathland, (d) lowland wetland, (e) hill broad-leaved woodland, (f) mountain mixed woodland. For the point counts, the locations of the stations and hence the types of habitats were defined randomly. There were no significant differences either in the number of species or in the indices of abundance, between December and January. Conversely, there was a gradient both in the number of species and in the index of abundance, from the mountain mixed woodland, with the lowest values, to the lowland wetland and farmland, with the highest. When the through-winter trends of single bird species were analyzed, no changes, decreases or even increases in numbers were observed, suggesting a number of different wintering strategies.