During late spring and early summer of 1985, we studied community composition and distributional patterns of breeding birds on a bajada in southern New Mexico. Twenty-eight species were found, of which the 13 more common were examined in detail. We compared mean densities of all species among four transects and among three physiognomically distinct habitats. Comparisons between transects yielded a few significant differences that cannot be attributed to features of the habitat, but significant variation among habitats was found for most species. Bivariate correlations between bird abundances and vegetation suggested a positive relationship between grassland birds and an increase in plant cover in open areas and between scrub birds and the increase in diversity of plant life-forms. Similar relationships were found between the multivariate axes resulting from principal component analysis of plant-cover data and both bird species richness and diversity.