DISTRIBUTION AND DYNAMICS OF BIRDS IN A RURAL SUB-MEDITERRANEAN LANDSCAPE

The richness and abundance of birds in a sub-Mediterranean rural landscape (north Italy, Massa Carrara Province) were investigated across two spatial scales (10 km x 10 km and 5 km x 5 km), two functional scales (land use mosaic and ecotope) and two temporal scales (annual and seasonal). Information on birds collected using the line transect method was compared with some landscape attributes (altitude, orientation, patch size, distance from cultivations). Distribution, abundance and seasonal turnover of birds were described efficiently by land use cover and ecotopes, but altitude, orientation, patch size and neighboring patch types were also important. Pure crop areas and crops mixed within woodlands and farming villages were the areas preferred by birds especially out of the breeding period, although woodlands supported more stable birds assemblages over the year. The multiscalar approach proposed was an efficient strategy to investigate these bird assemblages living in a patchy rural mosaic in which resources were made seasonally available by agricultural practices. The recent landscape change due to abandonment of agriculture in most of the sub-Mediterranean mountainous rural areas and the consequent woodland encroachment were expected to produce impoverishment of both diversity and abundance of resident and migratory birds.