The bird community of Bañados de Figueroa, an important AICA of Santiago del Estero, Argentina

In the vast plain formed along the Salado River, north of Argentina, there are the Bañados de Figueroa, a complex system of forests, grasslands, crops, natural and artificial wetlands. At present, this complex system has been modified by the influence of man, by modifying the natural limits of Bañado, with works of hydraulic engineering, which have altered the regime of the river and of the wetland as a whole. The aims of this work are to describe the diversity, the trophic assemblages and the variation of the bird community, in three artificial reservoirs that are part of the Bañado. Transects of long and fixed width were performed, from spring 2008 to winter 2012, with a total of 106 samples. We identified 154 species, with a total abundance of 164.051 individuals, of which 38.31% of species are migratory. The species were grouped into five assemblages according to feeding strategies and diets used by birds. The best represented assemblages were the ones that looked for the food moving between the vegetation (64 species) and those that look for the food walking in beaches and / or shallow waters (43 species); in addition, the omnivorous (53 species) and insectivorous-invertivorous species (49 species) were dominant. It is necessary to maintain the different wetlands of this system, which is considered an important area for bird conservation (AICA), to implement guidelines to regulate the hydrological regime to conserve the biological potential of the area.