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To quantify bird responses to a large unplanned fire, taking into consideration landscape‐level fire severity and extent, pre‐fire site detection frequency and environmental gradients.

South‐eastern Australia.

A major wildfire in 2009 coincided with a long‐term study of birds and provided a rare opportunity to quantify bird responses to wildfire. Using hierarchical Bayesian analysis, we modelled bird species richness and the detection frequency of individual species in response to a suite of explanatory variables, including (1) landscape‐level fire severity and extent (2) pre‐fire detection frequency, (3) site‐level vegetation density and (4) environmental variables (e.g. elevation and topography).

Landscape‐level fire severity had strong effects on bird species richness and the detection frequency of the majority of bird species. These effects varied markedly between species; most …