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This data package contains bird abundance data collected in plots that have had various plant functional groups or species experimentally removed at the Jornada Basin LTER site in southern New Mexico, USA. This data was collected in an effort to distinguish the differential effects of plant community biomass, plant community functional groups, and biodiversity within functional groups on plant community function, including effects on animals. To make these distinctions, treatments were established by the selective removal of plant species or functional groups within experimental plots. There are eight treatments: control (C, no removals); four functional group removal treatments (PG, perennial grass removed; S, shrubs removed; SSh, subshrubs removed; Succ, succulents removed), and three species richness manipulation treatments. Richness manipulations included a simplified treatment (Simp), where only the single most abundant species of each growth form is preserved and all other species in the growth form are removed, a reduced‐Larrea treatment (rL), where the Larrea is assumed to be the dominant and is removed while minority components remain, and a reduced-Prosopsis treatment (rP), where Prosopis rather than Larrea is removed as the shrub dominant. Following treatments, bird abundance and habitat preference data was collected in 1997. This data set consists of plot number, treatment type, and time of bird presence by taxa and by habitat and behavior. This study is complete.