Of all forest environments, urban and peri-urban woodlands are beginning to play an increasingly important role in some European countries. Human pressure in suburban forests all across Poland and Europe has been increasing in recent years. During the recent pandemic, people became increasingly aware of the need to be in contact with nature, and outdoor recreation and leisure activities became extremely popular. The higher intensity of recreation and human pressure on peri-urban areas raises additional problems. Disturbances to birds during the breeding season can reduce their breeding success and cause them to abandon favourable habitats and move to quieter and safer places. The main aim of this study was to analyse the structure of two bird communities breeding in a suburban forest and in a protected forest. The research was carried out in eastern Poland. The assemblages of breeding birds in the study plots were determined using a combined version of the mapping method. The main difference between the two bird communities analysed here was the greater species richness in the protected forest, which was more than twice as high as in the suburban forest. No ecotone species were found in the protected forest, but such species were sparse nesters in the peri-urban study plot. Despite the many similarities between the two assemblages, the bird community nesting in the suburban forest was characterized by a lower proportion of ground-nesters.