Passer domesticus Š Quique Marcelo
BIRDS IN URBAN HABITATS
BIRDS IN URBAN HABITATS Although the overall population of the bird species found in our cities is huge, some of them show worrying population declines.
U
rban habitats exhibit a huge environmental variability in terms of their vegetation cover, typology of buildings, extent, altitude, presence of rivers or coasts, etc.Thus, not only neighbouring towns, but also adjacent neighbourhoods in the same city, may differ greatly in the bird community they host, depending on the abundance and maturity of gardens, the age and density of buildings, the prevailing human activities and many other variables.
These habitats usually host a superabundance of a few species, so well-adapted to breed in buildings that they have virtually disappeared from other less artificial habitats. The clearest examples are the House Sparrow, the Rock Dove (in its domestic variety), the Common Swift or the House Martin, which reach urban densities that are truly exceptional in the overall context of the Iberian bird fauna. Thanks to the common bird monitoring programme carried out by SEO/BirdLife, information is available on 7 species that are particularly related to urban environments, out of the 142 recorded species.
Trends in the populations of common birds associated with urban habitats, 1998-2009.
There are large areas within Spain with very few towns, while in the outskirts of the big cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville, the density of these population centres is much greater.
54 BIRDS CONSERVATION STATUS IN SPAIN 2010
To summarise the overall trend of these seven species, their urban populations appear to be stable over the 12year period (only an average annual decline of -0.5% with respect to 1998), although there have been marked fluctuations during this period.
