Results of the of wintering bird populations monitoring in the region of Nizhnee Prisurye

• Main Authors: Ekaterina S. Preobrazhenskaya, Oleg V. Glushenkov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fund for Support and Development of Protected Areas 2016-05-01
• Series: Nature Conservation Research: Zapovednaâ Nauka
• Subjects: monitoring; numerical abundance; Nizhnee Prisurie; project "Parus" ("Euro-Asian Christmas Count"); wintering bird population
• Online Access: http://ncr-journal.bear-land.org/article/8

The monitoring of wintering bird populations in the region of Nizhnee Prisurie on the territory of Chuvash Republic was carried out in 1989–1990. From 2000 censuses were conducted on the territory of the nature reserve "Prisurskiy" and the National Park "Chavash Varmane". These regular censuses were called project "Parus" by the Menzbir Ornithological Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The last ten years they were also included in the overall-Russian campaign "Euro-Asian Christmas Bird Counts" project from the Russian Birds Conservation Union. During these 20 years there were 44 bird species registered in the studied area. Eleven of them are marked by single or rare. Four species - Regulus regulus, Aegithalos caudatus, Spinus spinus and Carduelis carduelis – increased their abundance from 1990 till the middle 2000-s and then – decreased. Dendrocopos minor showed the opposite trend. The abundance of 13 species in the 1990-s was higher, sometimes significantly, than in the 2000s and 2010s. The reason may be searched in the differences between the censuses areas in 1990s and 2000s. However, the decreasing of the population densities is typical for other forest species, not only in Nizhnee Prisurie, but also in other model territories. In general, during the last 25 years we can see negative trends in the population dynamics of wintering bird species within the East European plain.