Birds along the Bagmati river corridor in urban areas and factors affecting their abundance

Abstract

Bagmati River is considered a potential biodiversity conservation area due to its unique and diversified habitat in urban area. However, little information is available on the bird diversity, their abundance and factor affecting on bird species. We aimed to explore the bird diversity and factors affecting their abundance along the Bagmati River corridor in urban areas of Nepal. This study generated data using a point count method along the Bagmati River corridor between October 2021 and April 2022. We identified 67 bird species belonging to 11 orders and 28 families. Passeriformes and Muscicapidae were the most prevalent orders and families among the birds that were observed. Among the feeding guilds, insectivore birds were recorded as the highest bird species and followed by omnivores, carnivores, frugivores and granivores. The Shannon-Wiener diversity index of bird species was 3.35, while the Pielou's evenness index was 0.796. The bird abundance was increased in presence of tree, near the settlement, nearer to sewage, at low temperatures, increasing distance to water source and road whereas decreased with the distance to open land and at a higher elevation. Bagmati River corridor at urban area is rich in biodiversity as it supports more number of various bird species and their abundance is affected by presence of tree, distance to the water source, road, settlement, open land, sewage, temperature and elevation. Thus, knowledge on the conservation of habitat and minimizing the factors that affect the bird's abundance helps in protecting the status of avian species by developing site specific conservation action plan.