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We studied the Little Owl Athene noctua distribution in the city of Milan with a single-visit survey carried out during the 2013 breeding season. We searched for Little Owls in 82 sampling stations spread out all over the city using play-back technique. We detected 52 Little Owls in 33 sampling stations. The species appeared to be quite common in the municipality of Milan but with a greater abundance in the southern outskirts (Parco Agricolo Sud Milano). We modelled species occurrence by means of Generalized Additive Models selecting our best models with an information-theoretic approach. Little Owls' presence resulted more likely in presence of permanent crops and farmsteads. The latter represent one of the main sources of nesting sites for the species. Little Owl's detection is also more likely in relation with buildings' mean height, of about 10 meters while it appears to avoid completely the more dense urban areas present in the central and in the north-eastern side of Milan. The Little owl is finally more likely to be found in the larger urban parks. The species' distribution in the study area showed a significant spatial autocorrelation. Our best model accurately predicts 80.2% of observed data. According to model predictions 29.5% of the municipal territory has a medium or medium-high habitat suitability for the Little Owl. Field methods used in this work seemed to be easily carried out even by non-professionals. We discussed the global survey protocol for the species in light of our experience and with the desirable outlook of a large scale monitoring programme in our country: this is urgently needed to fill in the gap of knowledge on large scale distribution and population trends of the Little owl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountain areas often hold special species communities, and they are high on the list of conservation concern. Global warming and changes in human land use, such as grazing pressure and afforestation, have been suggested to be major threats for biodiversity in the mountain areas, affecting species abundance and causing distribution shifts towards mountaintops. Population shifts towards poles and mountaintops have been documented in several areas, indicating that climate change is one of the key drivers of species' distribution changes. Despite the high conservation concern, relatively little is known about the population trends of species in mountain areas due to low accessibility and difficult working conditions. Thanks to the recent improvement of bird monitoring schemes around Europe, we can here report a first account of population trends of 44 bird species from four major European mountain regions: Fennoscandia, UK upland, south‐western (Iberia) and south‐central mountains (Alps), covering 12 countries. Overall, the mountain bird species declined significantly (−7%) during 2002–2014, which is similar to the declining rate in common birds in Europe during the same period. Mountain specialists showed a significant −10% decline in population numbers. The slope for mountain generalists was also negative, but not significantly so. The slopes of specialists and generalists did not differ from each other. Fennoscandian and Iberian populations were on average declining, while in United Kingdom and Alps, trends were nonsignificant. Temperature change or migratory behaviour was not significantly associated with regional population trends of species. Alpine habitats are highly vulnerable to climate change, and this is certainly one of the main drivers of mountain bird population trends. However, observed declines can also be partly linked with local land use practices. More efforts should be undertaken to identify the causes of decline and to increase conservation efforts for these populations. Overall populations of 44 mountain bird species declined significantly c. −7% in Europe (inc. Fennoscandia, UK upland, Alps and Iberia) during 2002–2014. Mountain specialists species, which occur only in the mountain areas in Europe, showed a significant −10% decline in population numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]