Unique bird diversity in an Ethiopian church forest

Today, most of Ethiopia’s church forests are small forest patches surrounded by a degraded and anthropogenically modified landscape, mostly arable land. Nevertheless, these forest islands may still provide valuable habitats for typical forest species. It remains questionable whether these habitat remnants provide sufficient resources for forest species to successfully reproduce and persist in the long run. In this study, we assessed bird species based on point-counts in and around Tara Gedam Church Forest in northern Ethiopia. We observed birds in typical natural evergreen Afromontane forest (forest interior and forest edge) and in anthropogenic habitats, the semi-natural shrublands, agricultural land, and Eucalyptus tree plantations. We assigned ecological and behavioural characteristics to each of the bird species observed. Our results point to a specific bird community restricted to the forest interior and characterized by forest generalists and forest specialist birds. Along the forest edge, a mix of forest generalists and species of the open landscape can be found, creating mixed communities with high species overlap. The highest number of species was observed at the forest edge and in semi-natural shrubland, where both, open-land and forest species were found. On the other hand, the total number of species in the forest interior was comparatively low, with insectivorous and frugivorous typical forest species. Our results underline the fact that even small forest remnants are important for the conservation of forest species, which do not evade surrogate forest habitats.