[Application of mist net in studies of forest bird communities]

It had been more than twenty years for using mist net to study forest avian community. Mist net was very useful for studying cryptic, less vocal or non-vocal, and non-territorial birds, particularly understory birds in forest. The accuracy of mist net was relatively independent of observer biases and skills. It allowed identical and simultaneous sampling of numerous sites and straightforward comparisons among studies done at different sites by different people. So, a lot of ornithologists considered it as a necessary way for studying forest bird communities. Few studies had been reported on bird communities by using mist nets in China. In this paper, some examples on studying forest bird community by using mist nets were introduced, and studies on forest bird community with mist net should be used widely in China in the future.