News Agency | ILLINOIS

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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Researchers monitored bird diversity in public parks and private backyards in sister cities in Illinois with significantly different development histories and green space management practices. They found that birds depend on both public and private spaces in different seasons and for different reasons. The study linked park management practices focused on conservation and restoration to greater bird diversity and the survival of rarer species.

The new findings are reported in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

The researchers regularly took photos of the birds in 39 public parks and 41 private gardens in Urbana and Champaign, neighboring cities in East Central Illinois.

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“These cities are right next to each other, they touch each other, but they have very different histories,” said Henry Pollock, who led the study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign along with Illinois professor Carena, a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences. Van Riper and former U. of I. professor of evolution, ecology and behavior Mark Hauber. Pollock is now the executive director of the Southern Plains Land Trust in Lamar, Colorado, and Hauber is the executive director of the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York.

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“We wanted to understand how the differences between these two cities affect the birds. We also wanted to see how the structure of bird communities might vary across seasons within the public-private divide,” Pollock said.

Urbana is smaller than Champaign, with a population of about 38,000 versus Champaign’s 88,000. Urbana was founded in 1822 and developed amid an ancient hardwood forest known as the Big Grove. Champagne originated along the railroad in the 1850s.

Urbana has more than twice as much public green space as Champaign and many more trees, with more than 100,000 trees on private lands and thousands more in parks. Champaign has more parks, but they are smaller and focus primarily on providing infrastructure for human recreation. Urbana’s park district places a more explicit emphasis on conservation and habitat restoration.

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Three independent expert observers visited each of the 80 sites several times in summer and winter to conduct visual and auditory surveys, recording each bird species observed. The team also collected physical, climate and ecological data from each site.

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As expected, Urbana had more vegetation and its green spaces were cooler in the summer than Champaign. Urbana parks and backyards also increased bird diversity. Of the 15 bird species that can only be seen in Urbana in summer, the team recorded the belted kingfisher, scarlet tanager, Kentucky warbler, black-headed warbler, spotted woodpecker and yellow-billed cuckoo. In winter, Urbana’s green spaces were home to twelve species not found in Champaign, including the wren, yellow-bellied sapsucker, sharp-shouldered hawk, hermit thrush, swamp sparrow and yellow-rumped warbler.

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In general, public spaces such as parks and preserved prairies harbored a greater diversity of birds in summer and supported ecologically rarer species. Backyards also played an important role in the summer, where some of the bird species could be found in parks. In winter, backyards supported diverse bird communities with levels of diversity comparable to public parks.

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Backyards also supported more birds in winter, the researchers found. This may be due to the fact that backyards provide more shelter, warmth and – if bird feeders were available – food during the winter months.

“Maybe this will allow people to see that there are small but important behaviors that will impact birds and increase bird diversity,” Van Riper said. “This includes things like installing bird feeders, especially in winter when food sources are scarce, planting native vegetation or setting up bird baths.”

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The larger parks seemed essential for bird diversity, with nearby backyards complementing these spaces and providing different types of support.

The contrasts between the birdlife in Champaign and Urbana’s public green spaces were clear, Pollock said.

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“In places where active management has taken place to increase plant diversity and regain some native plant cover, this has had a major impact on bird communities,” he said. “Especially in the public parks in Urbana, rare species and specialist species were much more diverse.”

Hauber was struck by the relationship between city history and management styles and the bird diversity in each city.

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“Finding these consistently significant differences between Urbana and Champaign because of what people themselves have done to the cities is super interesting and relevant to discovering the kind of impact we continue to have on nature,” he said.

Funding for this project was provided by the U. of I. College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences Future Interdisciplinary Research Explorations grant program and the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch grant program.