This paper provides the information on nesting biology of 20 bird species in alpine shrub (4000-4700 m a.s.l.) or alpine meadow-wasteland habitats (4300-4700 m a.s.l.) in Lhasa region,Tibet.Of these species,three are endemic to the Tibetan plateau and 17 widespread in altitudes.The data on these taxa are all new to the high-altitude environments,especially the upper limit of their breeding distribution.A few species are firstly reported with respect to nesting information in the world.The study will contribute our knowledge for natural history of birds occurring in the harsh,extreme habitats.
The Sichuan Hill Partridge （Arborophila rufipectus ） requires successional broadleaf forest and their populations have declined as a result of fragmentation of endemic bird areas in subtropical forest in the mountains of southwestern China. In this paper, habitat utilization of the Sichuan Hill Partridge was studied in replanted broadleaf forests, in Laojunshan Nature Reserve of Sichuan, to determine the importance of habitat features, during the non-breeding period from November to December 2005. The Sichuan Hill Partridge utilized habitats within elevations of 1 000 to 1 600 m and with a south-facing slope of two to 15 degrees, close to road and forest edges. The birds preferred sites with smaller bamboo density, lower bamboo cover and snow cover and shrub cover was greater at used sites than at random sites. Principal components analysis indicated that food on the ground layer, topographic condition, concealment and temperature were the first four components of bird habitat selection, and the load of the first component was 29.407%. The findings indicated that the Sichuan Hill Partridge might face the well-documented trade-off between food resource and predation risk when utilizing habitat. We suggest that the conservation and restoration of successional broadleaf forest habitats will benefit the Sichuan Hill Partridge.
