This dataset contains bird community and vegetation data collected from 12 shade coffee plantation estates and two sites within Bhadra Tiger Reserve in the Chikmagalur District of Karnataka, India, between December 2005 and May 2006. The data were collected as part of an MSc thesis at the National Centre for Biological Sciences and the Centre for Wildlife Studies. The study examines how local-scale habitat properties and landscape-scale factors (viz. distance to contiguous forests) influence bird species richness and abundance in shade coffee plantations of the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot. Associated publication: Anand, M. O., Krishnaswamy, J., and Das, A. (2008). Proximity to forests drives bird conservation value of coffee plantations: implications for certification. Ecological Applications, 18(7), 1754–1763. https://doi.org/10.1890/07-1839.1