1. Ecological restoration has emerged as a key strategy for conserving tropical forests and habitat specialists, and monitoring faunal recovery using indicator taxa like birds can help assess restoration success. Few studies have examined, however, whether active restoration (AR) achieves better recovery of bird communities than natural regeneration, or how bird recovery relates to habitat affiliations of species in the community.2. In rainforests restored over the past two decades in a fragmented landscape (Western Ghats, India), we examined whether bird species richness and community composition recovery in 23 actively restored (AR) sites were significantly better than recovery in paired naturally regenerating (NR) sites, relative to 23 undisturbed benchmark (BM) rainforests. We measured eight habitat variables and tested whether bird recovery tracked habitat recovery, whether rainforest and open-country birds showed contrasting patterns, and assessed species-level responses to restoration. 3. We recorded 92 bird species in 460 point-count surveys. Rainforest bird species richness was highest in BM, intermediate in AR and lowest in NR. Contrastingly, open-country bird species richness was least in BM, intermediate in AR and highest in NR. 4. Bird community composition varied significantly across treatment types with composition in AR in transition from NR to BM. Bird community dissimilarity between sites was positively related to dissimilarity in habitat structure and floristics, and geographical distance between sites. Variance partitioning indicated that structural and floristic dissimilarity explained 90% of the variation in community composition.5. Indicator species analysis revealed significant associations of 34 species with one or more treatment types. Species associated with BM and AR treatment types were all rainforest species, while only 38% of species associated with AR and NR treatment types were rainforest species. Synthesis and applications. We show that active restoration (AR) of degraded fragments benefits rainforest birds and reduces the infiltration of open-country birds, and highlight the importance of considering rainforest and open-country species separately. In human-modified tropical rainforest landscapes, AR of degraded | 275

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While mixed-species flocks of birds (hereafter ‘flocks’) have been widely studied, few studies have looked at the effect of habitat structure on flock presence and flocking propensity within a site. Here, we employ a use-availability approach in locations with flocks and random locations to ask whether habitat characteristics influence the presence of flocks, and whether structurally similar microhabitats support compositionally similar flocks. We also examine the effect of habitat on flock size and species richness, and the effect of intraspecifically gregarious flock participants on habitat selection. We find that flocks use a narrow subset of available tree density and canopy cover variation and prefer relatively less-dense areas with large trees and a complex foliage structure. Similar microhabitats do not result in compositionally similar flocks, and while foliage complexity was associated with flock size, no habitat characteristics influenced species richness. Flocks led by the intraspecifically gregarious western crowned warbler (Phylloscopus occipitalis), a potential nuclear species, showed preference for high foliage complexity and tree density. Thus, habitat preferences of intraspecifically gregarious species, which are followed by other species, could play a strong role in habitat selection in flocks. This suggests that degraded forests that cannot provide a suitable range of tree density, canopy cover, and/or complex vegetation structure may not support some core flock species around which flocks form, which may lead to decreased flocking in those patches.