An Ecological Survey of the Birds of the Mweka Wildlife College Campus at Kibosho, Tanzania.

Abstract

An ecological survey of the birds of the Campus of the College of African Wildlife Management Mweka at Kibosho, in northern Tanzania is presented. It includes an annotated checklist of birds found within the habitats of the Campus and its milieu. The work is a result of one year of study from August 2004 to August 2005. During movements on foot around the Campus and its milieu birds were observed. This work revealed a record of sixty (60) bird taxa in 30 families. These records are compared with previous work of 1997. The records represent 47.6% and 73.2% of the bird species and families of the 1997 records. Fourteen (23.33% of the observed number) species breed at the Campus, and nine species are documented as pests of either chicken and or crops. Furthermore, the paper shows the composition and diversity of the present bird fauna, of which ten are migratory bird species with specific migratory patterns, and locally extinct species of ecological specialists with narrow and restricted ranges due to multiple factors including infrastructure development that resulted to core habitat loss for avifauna. The existence of an alien species, House Sparrow may pose human health problems by contamination of food supplies with parasites in faecal material. The monitoring of their demographic figure and integration of management measures are recommended. We further recommend that both infrastructure and agriculture developments should take into account conservation policy.

Keywords: Annotated checklist, alien birds, Ethiopian pattern, milieu, taxon