Local and landscape effects on bird assemblages of grasslands in the Hungarian Great Plain
Abstract
Recently, major declines of farmland bird populations have been reported in relation to changes in agricultural practices. We made our investigations on extensively and intensively grazed pastures in three regions of Hungarian Great Plain. Our aims were to test the influence of grazing intensity, a landscape factor and regions on birds, besides on two ecological groups of bird species (grassland and non-grassland birds) and as well as on skylark. We showed that intensive grazing has negative impact on grassland birds’ species richness and territory number, while on non-grassland species no effect was found. Only a marginal landscape effect was found on the territory number of birds. We showed the effect of all three investigated elements on skylark. Finally, we have to emphasise that similar studies should take landscape perspective into account.
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