Land use and bird fauna on shores in southern Sweden.

The purpose of this investigation, carried out during May-June in 1966-1968, was to shed some light on the qualitative changes in the breeding bird fauna that result from an alteration of land use along lakes, watercourses and coasts in southern Sweden. Special attention was paid to the Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa), the Redshank (Tringa totanus), the Dunlin (Calidris alpina schinzli) and the Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla f. flava). The type of land use considered is that of cattle pasturage, which is being widely discontinued in the areas studied. Therefore the study areas were chosen to represent a series of different grazing intensities and stages of revegetation. Moreover, the land use factor was isolated from other factors affecting the vegetation. The study showed that few species were common to both grazed and ungrazed areas. The bird fauna was generally more varied in an un-grazed area than in a corresponding grazed one. Only if the ground, after it was abandoned became covered with Phragmites communis (Trin.) was the former avifauna replaced by a less varied one. The paper also discusses some bird species, which during the last hundred years have been affected - positively or negatively - by changes in land use within areas close to the shore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]