Grassland habitats and their associated avian communities historically occurred along the mid Atlantic coast of the United States. Urbanization has decimated these habitats with the concomitant loss of the associated natural avian communities. Airports are ubiquitous features of urban areas, and in the Northeast United States they provide among the largest tracts of grassland habitats available. In this study our goal was to determine if the grassland habitats of an eastern airport serve as a refugium for avian grassland communities. We compared the avian community at an airport in Eastern United States with the natural avian communities of the region. We determined the composition of the avian community at Atlantic City International Airport from 1991-1994. We used cluster analysis to compare community composition at the airport with communities of the surrounding habitats. We found that the airport did serve as a refugium for individual species, but the overall community was likely quite different from the avian grassland communities of the region in presettlement times. These differences were mainly the result of influences from the avian communities of the altered habitats surrounding the airport.
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