Know your farm friendly birds

摘要

Although birds cannot completely remove the problems of pest infestation, still they can help in keeping insect populations at stable and balanced level, benefiting both the farmers and the environment. Birds are an integral component of agriculturaland forest ecosystems. Birds inhabit diverse habitats having different feeding habits viz. omnivorous, insectivorous and rodentivorous etc. Agricultural habitat provides different types of foods i.e. grains, insects, invertebrates, rodents, other food and nesting materials to the bird species. With the increase in human population there has been proportional increase in the conversion of forest area into agriculture area. In the recent years, crop intensification has resulted in habitat destruction andover dominance of some species (mostly grainivorous) in the bird community. Agricultural intensification having many aspects like mechanization, increasing use of pesticides and fertilizers and has been generally considered to be the main cause of declines in farmland birds in India and around the globe. In Europe, bird monitoring schemes have highlighted that 45% of the birds species have declined across 20 European countries over a 26 year period with farm land birds being the worst hit. Habitat destruction is the main threat leading to bird population decline in India and other Asian countries.