Bird communities in the sacred groves of Epirus, Greece

Scientific context In Greece, sacred groves were mainly established in mountainous regions during the Ottoman Period (15th-19th century), currently remaining as old growth stands of large trees around chapels that are relatively undisturbed and are by principle excluded from logging by the Forest Service. They can be considered as primary old-growth forests, as they are naturally regenerated forests of native tree species, where there are no clearly visible indications of human activities and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed (FAO and UNEP, 2020). Description The dataset includes the bird dataset of oak-dominated sacred groves in comparison with their respective oakwood control sites that are under a forest management regime, in Epirus Region, Northern Easter Greece. It includes: a. Site localities: Code of the forests sampled, forest type (sacred or managed), name of the chapel, name of the forest locality in terms of the nearest village, and the coordinates of the bird point counts (GGRS87 / Greek Grid) b. Bird inventory: The inventory of passerine and woodpecker species sampled. c. Bird database: the full dataset including the maximum abundance recorded for each species during sampling. Species that were recorded in the sites but not during the sampling process are marked with * and were not included in data analysis.