Urbanization limits the number and type of species that can colonize urban environments. As habitatchange and large abundances of urban exploiter species have been related to changes in urban bird communities, weevaluated shifts in the bird communities in 2 small sized settlements, 1 with exploiter species and one without them.Our results show that bird species richness decreases when an area becomes urbanized, regardless of the presence ofurban exploiters. While bird densities were low in the human settlement lacking urban exploiters, they were high inthe other settlement due to the numbers of 2 urban exploiter species. Bird community evenness decreased from foreststo the human settlement lacking urban exploiters, while decreased importantly in the settlement dominated by urbanexploiters. The composition of bird communities was highly similar between forest conditions and the settlementlacking urban exploiters, and highly different to that from the settlement with urban exploiters. Our results thus suggestthat when an area becomes urbanized, changes in habitat structure and their subsequent invasion by urban exploiterspecies generate a significant loss in bird species richness, favoring those species that can inhabit and exploit the newurban condition.