Birds sing praises of old-growth trees.Many bird species are quite attached to their old-growth forest neighborhoods, say researchers who examined bird communities in the Great Smoky Mountains Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Appalachian system, on the N.C.–Tenn. border; highest range E of the Mississippi and one of the oldest uplands on earth. The mountains are named for the smokelike haze that envelops them. National Park's mature stands and its second-growth forests. The mature forests house birds with a wider variety of habitat preferences. Also, species are more evenly divided throughout the old stands, says Ted Simons Ted Simon is a British journalist born in Germany. He wrote for the English newspapers Daily Mail, The Observer and The Times. In late 1973, Simon began traveling around the world on a Triumph Tiger 500cc motorcycle. of North Carolina State University History
The researchers counted nine fewer bird species in the old-growth areas than in forests that had gone a round with loggers in the last 50 to 100 years. But in some cases, a species had only one representative in the younger forests. Also, the edges of new stands are more apt to have visitors, such as crows, from nearby "disturbed areas" (human neighborhoods). Some of the birds that stick to old-growth forests include black-throated blue warblers The Black-throated Blue Warbler, Dendroica caerulescens, is a small songbird of the New World warbler family. Adult males have white underparts with black throat, face and flanks; the upperparts are deep blue; immature males are similar with upperparts more , Blackburnian warblers, and the solitary vireo vireo, small, migratory songbird of the New World. Some species nest in the United States, but the majority are tropical. Vireos (also called greenlets) range from 4 to 6 1/2 in. (10.2–16. . Hooded warblers, oven birds, and red-eyed vireos, among others, prefer the open spaces of logged forests. The researchers also discovered that the huge snowstorm in March 1993 reduced the numbers of a few second-growth species. Simons and his colleagues presented their data to the National Park Service in January |
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