Agricultural landscapes as habitat for birds in central Chile

Understanding the role of agroecosystemsas habitat for wildlife is crucial for long-term conservation planning, as different crop stratification and landscape elements can influence bird communities, which are also affected by seasonality. The goal of our study was to determine how agricultural landscapes varying in land covercharacteristics affect bird richness and abundance. Bird surveys were conducted at 110 locations within agricultural landscapes in central Chile. The surveyed areas were characterized by land coverat two scales (50 and 500 m radii) through direct observation and photo-interpretation, during winter and spring seasons. Generalized Linear Mixed Modelswere used to evaluate the effects of different agricultural land coverson bird species and communities. Our results show that birds were more abundant during winter, in particular for insectivorousand granivorous birds, and that bird species richness was significantly increased due to cover provided by hedgerows at the plot scale. We found that abundance of some bird species in agroecosystemsin central Chile was higher in winter than in spring, and that overall bird richness was favored by structural diversity including non-crop structures such as hedgerows, which thus may be relevant for improving bird conservationmanagement in temperate agroecosystems. Our results suggest that native vegetation proximity and area may affect seasonal changes in bird communities at larger scales, relationships which warrant further study.