Bird movement in a fragmented Atlantic Forest landscape

Isolation is purported to increase the loss of species in fragmented landscapes due to poor bird dispersal ability. I followed the movements of 1282 banded birds of 92 species of passerines between 1995 and 2000 in forest fragments in southeastern Brazil. Twenty-five (48%) out of 52 forest-dependent species were able to use or disperse across open areas of at least 150 m of grasslands. Birds dispersed up to 2000 m between banding sites in different forest fragments separated by as much as 650 m of grasslands. These results did not support the widespread assumption that forest birds have low dispersal ability.