Browsing by Author "Hafte, Guesh"

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    Diversity and Relative Abundance of Birds at Abune-Gebremenfeskdus Church Grove in Adwa, Northern Tigray
    (Addis Ababa University, 2019-09-09) Hafte, Guesh; Wube, Tilaye (PhD)
    This study was aimed at investigating diversity and relative abundance of birds at Abune-Gebremenfeskdus Church Grove in Adwa, Northern Tigray. The study was conducted between September 2018 and March 2019. Point counting method was used to collect the intended data. Accordingly, each hour of data collection was divided into three scanning sessions of 10 minutes duration separated by 10 minutes of pause. The data collection days were subdivided as morning (7:00-10:00hr) and afternoon (15:00-18:00hr). A total of 67 bird species grouped in 12 Orders and 35 Families were recorded. Five species; White-Collared Pigeon (Columba albitorques), White-Billed Starlling (Onychognathus albirostris), Black Winged Love Bird (Agapornis taranta), Wattled Ibis (Bostrychia Carunculata) and Thick Billed Raven (Corvus crassirostris) were endemic to Ethiopia and Eritrea. Passeriformes was the dominant Order with the highest number of Families (n=19) and Species (n=34). Four species were Intra-African migrants, and another four species were Pale-arctic migrants. Eastern Red- Footed Falcon (Falco amurensis) was near threatened; Greater Spotted Eagle (Adults clanga) and Pied Kingfisher (Corythornis) species were endangered. Twenty eight species were recorded only in two seasons (14 species in the wet season and the remaining 14 in the dry season). Based on calculations of ordinal ranks of abundance, five species were categorized as common, 15 as frequent, 25 as uncommon, and 22 as rare. Red cheeked cordon blue (Uraeginthus bengalus) and Red billed fire finch (Lagonosticta senegala) were the most abundant birds with total sightings of 696 and 541 respectively. On the other hand, pied crow (Corvus albus) and White helmet shrike (Prionops plumata) were the least abundant species with respective sightings of three and six. There was slight difference in the diversity and evenness indices between seasons. Accordingly, the wet season had lower than that of dry diversity (H’=2.96 and 3.19); evenness (E=0.79 and 0.81). The overall diversity and evenness indices were 3.49 and 0.83 respectively. The similarity index for the wet and dry seasons was 0.72. It can be conclude that the Grove has good potential for bird watching tourism that can integrate economic gain with biodiversity conservation.