Diet of birds in a forest restoration area in the Atlantic Forest of southeast Brazil

Studies focusing on diet of birds allow a greater understanding of the trophic relationships among organisms and the environment, and can provide important information for evaluating the progress of revegetation programs. Considering that data on this subject are still new in Brazil in areas of forest restauration here we aimed to sample the diet of birds in a restoration in the region of Itu, SP, Brazil (23º14’04S; 47º24’06”W). For achieving this goal, we captured birds monthly, during a year, by mist-netting. The captured individuals were temporally settled inside individual cloth bags with filter paper for collecting faecal samples. We got 88 captures from 23 species, and that resulted in 30 fecal samples. We found a predominance of unidentified invertebrates with 77% of samples (n=26), besides Araneae (30%; n=9), Lepidoptera (17%; n=5), Coleoptera (13%; n=4), Hemiptera non-Heteroptera (7%, n=2), Orthoptera (3%, n=1), Hymenoptera (3%, n=1), Hemiptera non-Formicidae (3%, n=1) and Isoptera (3%, n=1). We also found four morphospecies of seeds and/or fruits. We classified bird species in trophic guilds of insectivores (n=8), omnivores (n=8), granivores (n=6) and frugivores (n=1). There was a predominance understory insectivores, which forage directly or near the ground, and are more sensitive to habitat fragmentation. Our study may contribute to understand and evaluate the success of revegetation programs, serving as a starting point for future evaluations.