Avian community characteristics and demographics reveal how conservation value of regenerating tropical dry forest changes with forest age.

Expansion of secondary forests following the abandonment of agriculture may have important implications for bird conservation, but few studies have examined the dynamics of this process. We studied bird use of a chronosequence of differently-aged abandoned pastures regenerating to dry forest to better understand how the value of these habitats to birds changes over time. In a five year study on Hispaniola, we recorded 7,315 net captures of 60 species of landbirds in sites that began the study at two, five, 10, and 20 years post-abandonment, and in mature native dry forest.