“…(2) Because most of the bird species in the Mediterranean forests have a non-Mediterranean origin and are typically associated with advanced forest stages (Blondel and Farré , 1988;Suá rez-Seoane et al, 2002), we expected afforestation to increase bird colonization (e.g., Reif et al, 2007;Gil-Tena et al, 2009) but to a lesser extent than maturation. (3) We also anticipated that changes in forest structure resulting from forest management practices would not prevent bird colonization because most of the forest bird species in the Mediterranean appear to be adapted to landscape heterogeneity derived from anthropogenic practices (Tellería and Santos, 1999;Santos et al, 2002;De La Montañ a et al, 2006;Robles et al, 2007).…”