Bird Diversity Unconsciously Increases People’s Satisfaction with Where They Live

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is overall a very well thought out and administered study of contact with nature and neighbourhood satisfaction, with the interesting finding that bird diversity was strongly correlated with satisfaction yet was generally not consciously identified by the respondents as a factor in their staifsction with their neighbourhoods. While this is generally a well designed and executed study, there were two areas of concern. These include the fact that bird abundance and diversity would be expected to be correlated with both tree canopy cover and distance to water and this may have a confounding effect on the interpolation of the results; is it the trees and proximity to water that is most important or the actual presence of number and diversity of birds that are eliciting the responses? Is there something about the species of trees and types and quality of nearby water that influenced bird species diversity and abundance. We’re the trees indigenous or exotics, did the water bodies contain habitat are requirements favoured by a bigger diversity of bird species? This should be clarified better in the article.

The other concern is related to the use of the term “subconscious”, in that it is stated that respondents were subconsciously aware of the birds as they did not often mention seeing or hearing birds much in their responses to other questions. The term subconscious  is based on a Freudian interpretation. Perhaps the word “unconscious” awareness of bird presence might be less controversially given critics of Freudian psychology and psychoanalytical theory.  The fact that birds were sensed primarily through their sounds as opposed to trees and water bodies, which would be primary visually perceived, may account for their not being identified as readily as the cause of neighbourhood satisfaction could use a bit more clarification. The different modes of perceptions, auditory and visual, may be a primary cause of the birds not being as consciously identified as important yet may be associated unconsciously with greater tree cover and proximity to water may be a salient factor.

Overall, this is a very interesting and well designed and executed study with important implications for urban planning and landscape architecture. The presence and diversity of bird species is, however,  influenced by presence of the habitat requirements of the bird species present.    

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a well written article which adds to the evidence for the relationship between urban biodiversity and resident wellbeing, in particular highlighting the relationship between bird diversity and neighbourhood satisfaction.

My main concern is with the conclusion that is highlighted in the Title of the manuscript (as well as the Abstract and Discussion), as the study does not prove that bird diversity “subconsciously” increases neighbourhood satisfaction. There may be other mechanisms at play which the authors have not considered (see my comments below). It would be more appropriate to focus on the relationship between bird diversity and neighbourhood satisfaction in the Title and offer some suggested mechanisms for this in the Discussion.

The following are some more detailed comments:

Introduction

Line 45: add “in this field/area” after “growing body of literature”

Line 59: be consistent with tenses – should be “focus” not “focused”

Line 61: the sentence about the Fuller study needs reworking as it is difficult to follow in its current form

Line 67: there could be other mechanisms at play here – people could have a strong connection with nature but lack of time or mobility issues, for example, could mean they don’t visit parks. I would also suggested deleting “suggesting that some kinds of people are more likely to be found in parks” from line 70/71.

Methods

Line 126: Should in this case be “resident’s” not “residents’”.

2.2 Survey of residents: I would suggest creating two subsections here, one on the survey design (the first two paragraphs of this section) and a second on how the survey was deployed (the final two paragraphs). For the latter, I would swap the ordering of the paragraphs as it is more logical to talk about how households were selected first.

Interpretation of some of your key results are based on “free form” answers at the end of the survey. I would, therefore, expect to see details of how these responses were collected (e.g. what questions were asked to elicit this information?) and analysed (e.g. were responses coded and then analysed in relation to other survey responses?).

2.3 Site selection: how were the 928 Ottawa Bird Count locations originally selected? Were they selected because they were good known locations for birds? Or at random? Or stratified somehow? This is important to know whether they are representative of the city as a whole.

Line 178: where you say “see below”, offer a section number to refer to

Line 222: it would be useful to discuss the potential implications of some of the bird surveys being done up to 11 years before the resident survey. Could some green spaces, and therefore, bird abundance and/or diversity have been lost over this period? Or could some green spaces have been enhanced and bird abundance/diversity increased?

Line 245: are data available on the variation of income within Dissemination Areas? If so, this would be useful to include to give an idea of how accurately the median value might represent the actual income of participants in the study.

Results

Include summary of the free form responses that inform some of the conclusions drawn in the Discussion.

Discussion

Line 334: add “of the variables we considered” at the end of this sentence.

Line 349: I think it would be useful to consider some of the other mechanisms at play here. You have discussed possible direct links between bird diversity and satisfaction (e.g. bird song). Could there be indirect mechanisms? For example, in terms of potential bird habitat, you have only considered tree cover and distance to water. Could increased bird diversity imply a greater diversity of habitats in these areas e.g. grassland, scrubland. A greater diversity of habitats may, in itself, lead to greater satisfaction or it could imply an overall greater coverage of natural areas (in addition to trees and water) within these locations which could also increase satisfaction.

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf