Breeding bird community of a primeval temperate forest (Bialowieza National Park, Poland) at the beginning of the 21st century

The 2000-2004 results of the mapping technique censuses carried out in permanent plots situated in three types of old-growth primeval BNP stands (ash-alder riverine, oak-hornbeam, mixed coniferous) are presented and compared with data gathered in the same plots in the late 1990s. These data supplement earlier observations in the BNP and extend the long-term set of data on the breeding bird numbers there to a 30-year uninterrupted series (1975-2004). Most community parameters, such as the composition of breeding avifauna, the species richness, and the make-up and cumulative share of dominants, have remained basically unchanged. The overall bird density has increased by 8-20% in different plots; in 2001 it reached the highest level within the 30-year study period. The increase was due to parallel increases in numbers of several species, widely differing in their nesting sites, food requirements and migratory habits - during this period 14 of the 26 most numerous species attained their highest numbers in the 30-year study period. Since numbers increased simultaneously in all the plots, the density differences across habitats remained the same, from the highest densities in riverine stands at the forest edge (up to 149 p/10 ha), through oak-hornbeam stands, to the lowest densities in the coniferous stands (54-56 p/10 ha). In most cases the numerical increases could not be attributed to changes in local environmental factors, such as food resources, or to detectable changes in habitat structure. The apparent lack of a relationship between the changes in bird numbers and the local situation suggests that factors acting on a larger scale (beyond the study area) could have been involved. Despite the directional changes in bird abundance observed in the Bialowie a Forest, its breeding bird assemblage, when compared with the amplitude of changes recorded over the same period in other areas and habitats, stands out as an example of remarkable stability.