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Long-tailed Tits and Common Firecrests Were Detected More Often Where More Time Had Passed Since Fire

Long-tailed tit perched on a branch
Research · Ecology

Long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus) and common firecrests (Regulus ignicapilla) were detected more often in northern Greek pine forest where more time had passed since wildfire. Eurasian hobbies (Falco subbuteo) and hooded crows (Corvus corone cornix) showed the opposite pattern. These were the only four species for which the analysis supported a clear directional relationship with years since fire.

The researchers compared four Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) stands on the Sithonia Peninsula: one had remained unburned for at least 40 years, while the others had burned in 2001, 2009 and 2018. Eleven autonomous recorders sampled bird sounds across four seasons from March 2022 to January 2023. BirdNET was used to identify calls, with a subset checked by experts.

Season mattered more than fire history for the bird community overall

Forty-three bird species were detected. Season explained more of the overall variation in bird-community composition than fire history, but the stands also differed in which species contributed most strongly to their acoustic communities. The long-unburned stand was characterised by woodland species including European robin, goldcrest, long-tailed tit and common firecrest, whereas the most recently burned stand had a stronger contribution from generalist and shrub-associated species, including hooded crow.

Four species showed clear directional patterns with time since fire

At species level, detection probability increased with years since fire for long-tailed tit and common firecrest, but decreased for Eurasian hobby and hooded crow. Here, higher detection probability means that a species was more likely to be recorded acoustically at a site; it is not the same as a direct estimate of population size or density. The authors stress that the study compared only four fire-history conditions and did not replicate independent fires within each age class. The species-level patterns should therefore be read as exploratory associations among the sampled stands rather than as proof that time since fire alone caused the differences.

Sources and image credit

  1. Valeta, C., Karmiris, I., Pleniou, M., Navarrete, E., Spatharis, D., Zevgolis, Y. G., & Astaras, C. (2026). Changes in avian communities following wildfires in Mediterranean pine forest: A passive acoustic monitoring approach across temporal and seasonal gradients. Avian Research, 17(4), 100415.Primary open-access research article. The ScienceDirect record places the paper in the December 2026 issue, while public indexing and contemporaneous coverage show it was available in July 2026; 30 July is the earliest explicit public date verified. Four Aleppo-pine stands in northern Greece represented an unburned reference and burns from 2001, 2009 and 2018. Detection probability increased with years since fire for Long-tailed Tit and Common Firecrest and decreased for Eurasian Hobby and Hooded Crow; the authors treat these species-level patterns as exploratory because fire-history categories were not independently replicated.

Image: Charles J. Sharp — wild Long-tailed Tit at Lye Valley, Oxford, United Kingdom, 22 April 2021. Source: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. Representative species image; not a bird from the Greek study. · CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · Source

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Ecology

SPECIES IN THIS STORY

Species in this story

Long-tailed Tit Aegithalos caudatus Explore species Hooded Crow Corvus corone cornix Explore species

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