ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide a general overview of why bird species differ in adaptation to urban areas, because food availability and encephalization are crucial for understanding why some birds thrive in towns and cities, and how they adapt to unidirectional interactions with humans. Urbanization has caused new living conditions for all organisms, including birds. The expansion and intensification of urban structures created increasingly artificial environments compared to surrounding habitats. Most papers discussing urban impacts on birds treat the built-up zones of towns and cities as homogeneous entities: the ‘urban habitat’ as opposed to more diverse rural habitats. The characteristics of species that have successfully managed to expand their range into urban areas remain largely unexplored, although they are of general interest in a world that is increasingly urbanized. Species differ in their potential to adapt to changed urban conditions and life close to humans.
