DYNAMICS OF BIRD POPULATIONS ON THE SACALIN ISLAND - DANUBE DELTA

Sacalin Island is an area of major importance because it is situated in the path of one of the most important bird’s migration routes in the world, covering three continents: Asia, Europe and Africa, the route with a great abundance and biodiversity of avifauna including sedentary species, passage species, and summer and winter guest species. In order to demonstrate the necessity of preserving this area and to establish the biodiversity of ornithological fauna, this article presents the results obtained from the data collection in a period of 6 years and analyzed in terms of the status, abundance and biodiversity of birds, highlighting the need to protect this habitats. Our result showed that the birds collected form Sacalin Island belonging to a wide variety of birds including 17 orders, 46 families and 201 species; 53% of the total of 382 bird species identified in our country. The frequency of bird populations in relation with biogeographic regions during winter and vernal season showed that the dominant species are the species typical for Palearctic regions. By analysis of trophic level, our results showed that there is a definite dominance of insectivore species (72%), followed by carnivore (9%), omnivore (5%) insectivore ? larvivore (4%), and larvivore (2%) species. Summarizing all the results it is clearly that Sacalin Island should maintained the strictly protected area status; here are present 85% of strictly protected bird’s species. Key words: avifauna, biodiversity, Danube Delta, Sacalin Island.