Linear infrastructures (LI) such as roads, railway and powerlines expand at a rapid rate to cater an ever-increasing demand for transport and utility infrastructure around the globe. The majority of these developments are projected to take place in tropical regions. The impact of infrastructure on the environment may differ depending on the type of infrastructure and the environment that they occur. Available information on impacts of LI is biased towards certain types of infrastructure and graphic regions (i.e. mostly focused on roads and temperate regions). Furthermore, studies at community level also are scarce. Therefore, our study investigated impacts of three different LIs (roads, railway and powerline) on the bird community of a tropical dry evergreen forest in Sri Lanka. Birds were selected as the study group due to their relatively high mobility that allows them to quickly respond to a disturbance than other taxa and also because they are relatively easy to detect in the field for monitoring purposes. Point-count bird surveys were conducted to record species richness and abundance at 80 survey plots. Seventy plots were within a one-kilometer buffer of one or more infrastructures and the remaining 10 plots were in core forest areas, more than one kilometer away from all types of infrastructure. In addition to bird surveys, five vegetation variables were measured at each plot. Using these data, we assessed the relationship between bird communities (i.e., richness, abundance, and composition) and distance to each infrastructure type as well as variation in the five vegetation variables measured from survey sites. The bird species richness and abundance declined significantly as distance to railroad increased, while community composition was significantly altered by the distances to all three LIs. In the communities that occur along the distance gradient, certain forest dependent species were seen to be preferring habitats away from all the infrastructure whereas certain generalists were seen more frequently closer to the infrastructure. Only one species showed preferential occurrence. The White-browed Bulbul was seen frequently at habitats closer to the powerline and far from the other two infrastructures. Taken together, our results emphasize that the impact of LIs on birds differ depending on the specific type of infrastructure and on their level of forest dependence. This may ultimately designate certain species as winners and some as losers in having such linear developments in their habitats.