Birds of a Severely Hurricane-Damaged Atlantic Coast Rain Forest in Nicaragua

Abstract

On 22 October 1988 Hurricane Joan severely damaged 500,000 ha of lowland tropical rain forest in southeastern Nicaragua near Bluefields. An expedition in February 1989 detected virtually no birds in formerly forested sites, although standing trunks that had been snapped were resprouting and the forest appeared to be recovering. In March 1990 I observed birds along rivers and at a secondary forest site and surveyed and mist-netted birds at three sites reported to be largely mature forest before they were damaged by the hurricane. I recorded a total of 161 species throughout the hurricane-damaged region. In seven days at the regenerating forest sites, I recorded 113 species of birds, a species richness comparable to undamaged lowland forest I visited six months later near the Rio Santa Cruz, Nicaragua. Mist net capture rates at the damaged sites suggested overall bird abundance similar to that of a comparable lowland rain forest at La Selva, Costa Rica, but the typical habitats of mist-netted frugivores differed significantly between the two areas: the hurricane-damaged sites had proportionately fewer captures of species typical of the forest interior. Most of the birds encountered in the hurricane-damaged forest were species typical of forest edge, forest canopy, and second-growth habitats; only 19 species were birds typical of the forest interior, and only two were exclusively so. Woodcreepers, forest antbirds, and furnariids, families characteristic of lowland rain forest, were notably absent or under-represented. Overall forest structure appeared to be important in determining the species composition of the reappearing bird community.