Contrasting effects of natural habitat cover on insect‐consuming and crop‐damaging birds in Mediterranean orchards

Insectivorous and frugivorous bird communities in fruit orchards provide multiple ecosystem services and disservices in agricultural landscapes. However, bird populations, particularly those of insectivorous species, have declined substantially in recent decades, primarily due to habitat loss driven by agricultural intensification. Mediterranean central Chile is a biodiversity hotspot, but also a globally important region for agricultural production. As a result, the landscape consists of a mosaic of remnant natural vegetation embedded within a fruit farm matrix. How these landscape‐level changes in agricultural areas affect birds that provide ecosystem services and disservices in orchards remains an open question in Mediterranean regions. Here, we evaluated the effect of the proportion of natural habitats in the surrounding landscape on the detection frequency of insect‐consuming and crop‐damaging bird species in 18 sweet cherry and apple orchards in central Chile, using passive acoustic monitoring as a sampling tool. Our results indicate that both groups of species were more frequently detected in orchards surrounded by a higher proportion of natural habitats, which could lead to increased pest control services but also to a greater risk of bird‐mediated fruit damage. However, insect‐consuming species were infrequently detected in orchards with little surrounding natural habitat, whereas crop‐damaging species were detected on most days even where natural habitat was scarce. These results suggest that maintaining natural habitat in fruit‐growing landscapes may favour pest‐controlling birds without substantially altering the already‐high presence of crop‐damaging species.