Understory bird community in a surrounded area of Itatiala National Park, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Understory bird community in a surrounded area of Itatiaia National Park, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This study was conduced in a second growth woodland close to Itatiaia National Park (22 degrees 30'S e 44 degrees 30'W), Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, and aimed to describe the understory bird community living in this area. We sampled three different vegetation types, reforestation, wood and orchard, through 19 field trips between 1984 and 1999. Birds were sampled by mist-netting and bird-banding, using from 15 to 3112 x 2 36 mm mesh mistnets, and we also collected information on morphological (total, wing, bill, tail and tarsus length), and biological data (sex, age, reproduction and molt). After 5,621.79 net hours, we got 553 captures and 71 recaptures (12.8%); 417 individuals were banded and 65 hummingbirds were not, due to the absence of specific rings. The studied Community was represented by 77 species and 18 families, showing a diversity index of H' = -1.59 and curve of new species tending to stabilization. The most well-represented families were Emberizidae (n = 21; 27.27%), and Tyrannidae (n = 15; 19.48%); the species with highest number of capture were Turdus leucomelas Vieillot, 1818 (n = 40; 9.59%) and Turdus rufiventris Vielliot, 1818 (n = 36; 8.63%). Six of the sampled species (7.8%) are endemic to Atlantic forest. In the rainy season we sampled 68 species, and in the dry season, 42; and the captures were correlated with rainfall (rS = -0.68; p = 0.05). The breeding season occurred from October to March, and also was correlated with the beginning of the rainy season (rS = -0.70; p = 0.05).