Wild birds of urban parks in Hong Kong

Abstract

Urban parks are regarded as a recreational place for the general public. The diverse biodiversity in the park has been ignored for a long time. Most of the designs of park fit the recreational needs of humans only, such as having paved pathway, sports facilities, and exotic beautiful flora. As the increasing pace of urbanization, urban parks are the final destinations for the wild creatures ironically. Hence, they act as a biodiversity hotspot in the city. It is a pity that our understanding of it is still very limited. Bird is considered the more familiar group for humans. However, wildlife recording is insufficient in urban parks. In order to conserve the biodiversity in urban parks, a bird database is tried to be established for analysis. This study collected bird records from previous academic studies and Hong Kong Bird Watching Society. In addition, online wildlife photography forums were targeted to obtain further wild bird records in urban parks. Field visits were also conducted to collect data in support of the database. The composition of bird communities and relationship with park features were investigated based on the database. Bird species were classified into different groups of residency status, diet, and habitat preference from the database. In the study, species richness was found to be influenced by the presence of uncommon bird species. Thus, parks with greater number of uncommon species, such as passage migrants, winter visitors, insectivores, insectivore-frugivores, and woodland species are higher in species richness. The composition of these groups of species was the highest in Kowloon Park, and thus the corresponding species richness is the best among all studied sites. Simultaneously, certain factors were found to boost species richness in urban parks, which include the area of water body and number of old and valuable trees. Take Kowloon Park as an example, many old and valuable trees were found in the park, and there is a sizable pond. Greater habitat diversity could promote higher bird species richness. Therefore, old trees should be preserved in the existed urban parks, while water body and mature trees should be prioritized for urban park planning. Furthermore, more educational activities are suggested for motivating people to collect wildlife data in urban parks, like citizen science programmes.