Are vineyards important habitats for birds at local or landscape scales

In Europe, monitoring indicates that farmland bird populations are declining. Numerous studies at different spatial scales have considered bird ecology in farmland, but viticulture has received little attention. We carried out bird surveys at two spatial scales over two years in western France. We assessed the contribution of vineyards to bird diversity at landscape scale and undertook plot-scale analyses of habitat selection in vineyards and their associated semi-natural habitats. We detected a strong negative relationship between vineyard cover and both abundance and species richness of birds. Only two species responded positively to vineyards: Woodlark Lullula arborea and Skylark Alauda arvensis. Of the 93 species detected at landscape scale, only 16 were frequent users of vine plots. The majority of these species were found to select semi-natural habitats adjacent to grapevines, in particular areas with trees. Only Woodlarks positively selected vineyards as opposed to semi-natural habitats but no consistent selection criteria between different vineyard habitat variables could be detected. Our study shows that, although wine-growing landscapes may be species-rich, fewer species use vineyards themselves, and at low levels of abundance. Planting or maintaining semi-natural woody vegetation are popular management approaches, which our data suggest may encourage generalist species without improving vineyard habitats for open farmland specialists.