Analysis on New Records of Birds in Provincial Administrative Regions of China in Recent Decade

With the vigorous development of scientific research and citizen science, more and more new records of birds in China have been discovered in recent years. It is of great significance for ornithological research and bird conservation to timely collect these data and explore the potential patterns of bird distribution changes. Therefore, based on books and journal literature, the new records of birds were systematically collated among different provincial administrative regions of China in recent decade. The results showed that there were 1456 bird species, belonging to 26 orders and 110 families in China up to March 31, 2022. 48.86% bird species had been first found in one or more provincial administrative region of China, and among these, 37 species were first discovered in China. Except Macao, all other provincial administrative regions had new records of birds , and most records were distributed highly in southeast, southwest and north of China. Most birds of new records were belonged to Passeriformes and Charadriiformes, which showed the increase of the former in the regions such as Guangxi and Jiangxi provinces, and the increase of the latter in the regions such as Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. According to the habitat analysis of the new records, 86.07% of the new records were concentrated in waters, forests and residential areas. The number of newly recorded species decreased with the increase of human footprint index. The results suggested that new bird record increasing may be related to survey efforts, protection effectiveness, environmental changes and bird own traits. Therefore, we suggested that researchers and managers should strengthen the survey effort of birds, especially in the remote areas, and pay more attention to the impact of climate and habitat changes on biodiversity.