Urban Avifaunal Diversity in Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), Assam, India

The diversity of bird species in the city is one of the indicators of the health of that ecosystem. Towns have been developing rapidly in District Headquarter towns of BTR. The avian community and especially the bird diversity have been the subject of interest for many researchers. The diversity and distribution of birds in urban areas of the BTR towns has not been studied yet. We surveyed District Headquarter towns of BTR — Kokrajhar, Kajalgaon, Mushalpur, Tamulpur and Udalguri from April 2022 to June 2024 to know the avifaunal diversity and seasonal occurrence of bird species in different urban habitats. The point count method was used which involved counting the individuals of each bird species for 5 minutes within a 30 metre radius inside a 500×500 square metre grid map. Grids were selected using stratified random sampling based on habitat proportions. Ninety-four bird species belonging to forty-four families and 74 genus were recorded. We recorded highest bird species (37) in the sub-urban areas. The overall Shannon-Wiener diversity index of urban birds in BTR District Headquarter towns was 3.84. There were significant differences in avifaunal diversity among five districts headquarter towns across all the seasons. However, seasonal bird diversity showed no significant differences across land-use zones in each district, except in the residential areas of Kajalgaon and Udalguri.

@article{eliza2026,
  author  = {Eliza Basumatary1, Dipika Chetry1, Pranjit Kumar Sarma2, Sandeep Das3, Jatin Sarmah3, and Hillol Jyoti Singha4*},
  title   = {{Urban Avifaunal Diversity in Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), Assam, India}},
  journal = {Journal of Bioresearch},
  year    = {2026},
  volume  = {5},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {52-66},
  doi     = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17466802},
}