Characterizing the habitat requirements of the Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) in moderately urbanized areas

Received 17 July 2014, accepted 20 February 2015 Land-use modifications in central Europe, particularly the sprawl of the urban environments and the intensification of agriculture, have increased since the 1950 and are identified as responsible for the decrease of many bird populations. However, in some cases, moderately urbanized areas can lead to more diversity of birds than perturbed rural areas, and thus can provide an alternative habitat for species such as the Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus). In this study, we assigned the importance of a mixed landscape composition for the territory of Common Redstart based on a compositional analysis (MANOVA). Our results indicate that wooded short-cut lawn constitutes the preferred land cover of the Common Redstart, followed by short-cut lawn and private houses which exhibit the same weight in terms of preference. The proportion of the land cover types within the territories were 30.1% ± 12.4%, 18.9% ± 9.0% and 4.4% ± 2.6% (average ± standard deviation), respectively. Finally, based on ecological requirements, we propose that the Common Redstart could represent a flagship species to promote the conservation of biodiversity in moderately urbanized areas of west-central European cities.