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Abstract The aim of present study was to estimate population dynamics of house sparrow and house crow in district Sargodha, Pakistan. This study was conducted from November, 2010 to March, 2011. Population comparison of house sparrows with sex differentiation and house crows without sex differentiation were conducted in rural (98 Chak N' and Morre 125 Chak Shaheenabad) and urban (Cheema colony and Awan colony) areas. During this study period, a total 5617 from rural and 3929 birds from urban sampling sites were counted. A statistically significant difference was observed between both populations. In rural areas 2998 house sparrows (1433 male and 1565 female), while 1873 sparrows (848 male and 1025 female were observed from urban study points and significant difference was observed between house sparrows population. Throughout the study period, from rural check points 2619 house crows, while 2056 crows were observed from urban study areas.
The present study is very useful in prediction of population dynamics of bird's spp. in other ecological regions of Pakistan.
Key words: House sparrow, house crow, population dynamics.
INTRODUCTION Birds ranked on basis of many criteria and can be defined as selecting indicator taxa". On a local scale, patterns of bird distribution may not always match well the distribution patterns of other taxa (Pearson, 1995). In terrestrial habitats birds are responsible to work as important component of biodiversity (especially in well-vegetated areas) than in either freshwater or marine habitats. It has been widely reported that birds are highly valuable (even though imperfect) indicator of endemism patterns and species richness in a given ecosystem, which ultimately helped the scientist to gauge the ecological deterioration (Bibby et al., 1992; Burgess et al., 2002). Birds inhabiting our surrounding environment also played an important role indicating the environmental pollution in different ecosystems (Balmori, 2003).
According to Lack (1966) and Lawton (1996) it has been known since long, especially from studies of passerines (Curnutt et al., 1996; SAther et al., 2003) and game birds (Cattadori and Hudson, 1999; Williams et al., 2003) that variation in population dynamics occurs within the distribution range of bird species. However, the mechanisms behind these variation are poorly investigated (Brown et al., 1995; Lawton, 1996). Similarly common species are house sparrow and house crow (Corvus splendens); that is an...