Birds’ Flight Initiation Distance in Residential Areas of Beijing Are Lower than in Pristine Environments: Implications for the Conservation of Urban Bird Diversity

(1) Background: With rapid urbanization, birds are facing a variety of challenges. Evaluating bird behaviour changes in response to urbanization can help us understand how make them coexist sustainably with humans. We aimed investigate whether inhabiting residential areas differed their escape and influencing factors. (2) Methods: used the flight initiation distance (FID), horizontal between observer target when it escapes, measure birds. chose 40 urban within 5th ring road Beijing conducted surveys each month for one year. applied Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs) separately evaluate variable FID total species, most common other species. (3) Results: Birds that appear more frequently or as ground foragers, insectivores, omnivores better adapted human interference have shorter FIDs. Individual initial conditions affect FID, environmental characteristics be predictors Tree canopy coverage was found positively while floor area ratio (FAR) is negatively correlated FID. (4) Conclusions: Our results demonstrated been adapting environment, tree canopies provide refuge avoid interference. study focused on FIDs trees under high which has substantial practical implications managers improve habitat quality ensure beings.