DOI: 10.1594/pangaea.896165
title: Bird communities on the study plots of the Kilimanjaro Research Unit (only bird individuals that have been observed below maximum vegetation height)

description: We used audiovisual point counts on eight subplots per plot to record birds in the warm dry season (December to March) and in the cold dry season (July to October). We established circles with a 20-m radius in densely vegetated habitats (savanna and all forest habitats) and 35.5 m × 35.5 m squares at Helichrysum plots, covering the same sampling area in all habitat types. All birds heard or seen in one subplot were counted for 10 min and identified to species level. Point counts started 15 min before sunrise and were completed before 09:00. All 480 point counts (30 plots × 8 subplots × 2 seasons) were conducted by the same observer (Ferger S. W.) to reduce inter-observer variability. This dataset contains (a) only subplots at which birds were observed and (b) no birds that were observed higher than maximum canopy height of the respective subplot in the respective season, which was achieved by combining "Data on bird communities on the study plots of the Kilimanjaro Research Unit including all bird individuals observed during point counts" and "Data on habitat characters and fruit and flower abundance on the study plots of the Kilimanjaro Research Unit". (a) is a simple modification and (b) is a common (and often necessary!) modification of ornithological datasets. Note, however, that this causes three plots to be removed from the dataset, as no birds were observed on those: hel4 in the cold season and hel3 in both seasons. This means that if you e.g. intend to calculate species richness across all plots, you may want to include them manually with a species richness of zero. If you do not know what these modifications mean in terms of suitability of this dataset for your intended analyses, you should definitively contact the data owner and maybe consider the original and complete dataset "Data on bird communities on the study plots of the Kilimanjaro Research Unit including all bird individuals observed during point counts".
description: Point count data of birds for all 60 plots plus 4 sun-coffee-plantations. In contrast to the dataset "SP6_PointCountsBirds" this dataset contains (a) only subplots at which birds were observed and (b) no birds that were observed higher than maximum canopy height of the respective subplot in the respective season, which was achieved by combining "SP6_PointCountsBirds" and "SP6_HabitatCharacters". (a) is a simple modification and (b) is a common (and often necessary!) modification of ornithological datasets. Note, however, that this causes three plots to be removed from the dataset, as no birds were observed on those: hel4 in the cold season and hel3 in both seasons. This means that if you e.g. intend to calculate species richness across all plots, you may want to include them manually with a species richness of zero. If you do not know what these modifications mean in terms of suitability of this dataset for your intended analyses, you should definitively contact the data owner and maybe consider the original and complete dataset "SP6_PointCountsBirds".distance/height =measured with a laser range finder or estimated when measurement was not possible (i.e. in dense vegetation)