Bird Species Diversity in the Royal Forest Reserve in Eggua Southwestern Nigeria

الملخص

The 350-hectare privately-owned Royal Forest Reserve, Eggua in Southwestern Nigeria is
under threat from anthropogenic activities. The abundance and diversity of avian species should be
known so as to create the awareness on the need for conservation of the forest reserve. This study was
carried out to assess the abundance and diversity of birds in the reserve. The reserve was divided into
two blocks based on land use type. The point count method was used to collect data on bird species
diversity in five counting stations per block for six months at three months in the dry season
(November, February, and March) and three months in the wet season (June, August, and
September) in 2015.There were 483 individual birds spread across 64 different species and 27
families. The dominant family was Ploceidae, comprising 8bird species, followed by Accipitridae and
Pycnonotidae with 7and 6 bird species respectively. The relative abundance of bird species was
higher in the woodland block (0.26 and 0.22) than in forest block (0.15 and 0.13) in both seasons of
the year. The diversity index showed that bird species were more diverse in the dry season (3.89)
than the wet season (3.81) in the study area.