Urban habitat for bird species in major parks of Putrajaya, Malaysia

Abstract

Habitat loss and fragmentation are the key factors in the process of urbanization which seriously impedes the habitat availability and movement of species, leading to a significant decrease in population viability. Hence, park has been recognized as the most significant urban green space for urban wildlife conservation especially the bird species. Particularly, park offers habitat necessities by providing food resources, foraging substrates, and nesting site for birds to survive amidst the urbanization process. However, there is lack of studies on how birds select parks as their habitat. Therefore, this study explored park habitat attributes that influence bird abundance, richness, and diversity in two different scales. Park size and park distance to the mainland were examined within the landscape scale. While habitat structure including habitat complexity, habitat openness, and anthropogenic disturbances were evaluated within the patch scale. Eighteen major parks were selected for the survey, including Metropolitan Park, Urban Park, and Local Park. Observation through point count and transect sampling method recorded 46 bird species, of which 42 were residents and four were migratory birds. Quantitatively, the data were analysed using index analysis, habitat score analysis, statistical analysis, and ArcGIS analysis. Pearson’s correlation test for landscape scale demonstrated that bird abundance, richness, and diversity were not influenced by the park size and park distance from the mainland in total. Only cavity nester was reported to associate with park size positively (P = 0.031, R = 0.999). Its abundance was high in the larger park. Meanwhile, analysis in patch scale showed that the presence of many bird guilds were associated with the habitat structure. Urban avoiders, adapters, and specialist bird increased in the more complex patch but decreased in the less complex patch. Contrary, urban exploiters only increased in more open patch with higher anthropogenic disturbances. Accordingly, main diet guild, frugivores and insectivores were increased in higher complexity level of patch but became lower in the more open patch with a higher level of anthropogenic disturbances. Other than that, the majority of bird guilds reduced in abundance, richness, and diversity in higher anthropogenic disturbances level but not for exploiters and carnivores which increased in higher disturbances level. The overall findings suggest that birds in the urban require parks that meet their basic needs including food materials, foraging substrates, and nesting site. The findings thus contribute to a better understanding of birds’ needs and preferences in a park environment and highlight the importance of such environments in promoting more diverse bird species. Finally, the findings suggest that the park design should consider not only its size (minimum of 8 ha) and connectivity (minimum of 150 m from mainland) but also the local improvements in habitat structure through the increased in vegetation complexity, reduced openness, and reduced anthropogenic disturbances to attract more specialist birds than generalist birds and more avoiders birds than exploiters birds.