STUDIES ON THE AVIAN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION AND FORAGING ECOLOGY IN RELATION TO PHENOLOGICAL CHANGES IN IMPORTANT RABI AND KHARIF CROPS OF PUNJAB
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Date
2010
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Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
Abstract
Changing agricultural practices accompanied by deforestation and pressure of human population
appears to have altered/influenced the avian fauna-farmland interactions/interrelationships and
composition of bird populations. There is a dire need to understand and explore the farmland bird
communities, their abundance and foraging ecology in relation to phenological stages of important
Rabi crops (wheat, mustard, winter maize, sunflower and barley) and Kharif crops (rice, maize,
pearl millet, cotton and groundnut). During the present study, field observations were recorded by
line transect method in selected villages on birds frequenting different crop stages. The bird
community was observed to comprise of 19, 22, 25 and 32 bird species in wheat crop at
preparatory tillage, sowing, seedling and ripening stages respectively; in mustard crop of 15, 19,
23 and 32 bird species, in sunflower crop of 7, 7, 23 and 21 bird species at sowing, seedling,
vegetative and ripening stages respectively. Bird fauna in winter maize and barley crop was
represented by 12, 11 and 18 bird species and 7, 9 and 13 bird species at sowing, seeding and
ripening stages respectively. Bird community characteristics in Kharif crops had revealed that the
species richness in rice as 13, 16 and 29 at transplantation, vegetative and ripening stages; in
maize as 17, 18 and 31, in pearl millet as 20, 25 and 30, in cotton as 11, 13 and 23, in groundnut
as 7, 11 and 20 at sowing, seedling and ripening/maturing stages respectively. An increase in
species diversity (H') was observed during successive phenological stages in mustard, sunflower,
barley, rice, pearl millet and groundnut crops. Bird species similarity coefficient had showed
highly similar bird fauna between preparatory tillage and sowing stage in wheat, between
transplantation and vegetative stage of rice, between vegetative and ripening stages in sunflower,
between sowing and seedling stages of winter maize, barley, maize, pearl millet, cotton and
groundnut crops. The results had indicated diversity in bird community and complexity in food
and foraging guilds with the successive phenological stages of studied crops. Passeriformes were
noticed to increase in per cent abundance from sowing to seedling stage and then showed
decreasing trend at vegetative and ripening stages in sunflower, mustard, rice, maize and pearl
millet crops. Psittaciformes formed the second most abundant bird group at ripening stage of
mustard, winter maize, sunflower and pearl millet crops. A total of 70 bird species were recorded
at different phenological stages of the studied crops. Majority of them have beneficial role in
relation to the studied agricultural crops. The information generated by the present study would
help in the formulation of future perspective of agricultural ornithology in the Punjab state.
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Keywords
economics, biological phenomena, resins, productivity, technological changes, exhibitions, developmental stages, marketing, biological development, selection