Montane desert birds are particularly vulnerable to population declines driven by global climate change that is accelerated at higher elevations. Providing reliable and accurate information about their populations is essential for effective conservation management plans. However, few studies have compared the effectiveness of different survey methods for birds in high altitude arid environments, particularly in the Middle East. Here, we compare the reliability and precision of two sampling methods to estimate densities for two resident bird species in Egypt's Sinai mountains, the white-crowned wheatear (Oenanthe leucopyga) and desert lark (Ammomanes deserti). We conducted surveys for both species in vegetated and unvegetated desert using fixed-width strip transects and line transects using the distance sampling approach, and employed several statistical approaches to compare density estimates. While both methods provided reliable density estimates given sufficient detections of target species, strip transects exhibited more flexibility overall for estimating cryptic and rare species, which comprise a large proportion of this and other montane desert bird communities. Strip transects also entail lower effort and costs, an important consideration given research funding constraints. We therefore recommend strip transects over distance sampling for estimating bird densities in this and other arid montane regions.

山地沙漠鸟类特别容易受到全球气候变化驱动的种群下降的影响，全球气候变化在更高的海拔高度加速发展。提供有关其种群的可靠和准确的信息对于有效的保护管理计划至关重要。但是，很少有研究比较不同调查方法对高海拔干旱环境（尤其是在中东）中鸟类的有效性。在这里，我们比较了两种采样方法的可靠性和精度，以估计埃及西奈山，白冠麦wheat（Oenanthe leucopyga）和沙漠百灵（Ammomanes deserti）的两种常住鸟类的密度。）。我们使用固定宽度的条样样带和线样样，使用距离采样方法对植被和未植被沙漠中的物种进行了调查，并采用了几种统计方法来比较密度估计值。两种方法都可以在对目标物种进行充分检测的情况下提供可靠的密度估计值，而条状样带总体上表现出更大的灵活性，可用于估计隐性物种和稀有物种，而隐性物种和稀有物种占该物种和其他山地荒漠鸟类群落的很大一部分。带状样带还需要较低的工作量和成本，考虑到研究经费的限制，这是一个重要的考虑因素。因此，我们建议在远距离采样时采用带状样条，以估算该山区和其他干旱山区的鸟类密度。