Barriers and opportunities to preventing residential bird–window collisions

Anastasia J V Lysyk; Aalia I Khan; Deborah Conners; Rachel T Buxton

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0342330

. 2026 Feb 25;21(2):e0342330. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0342330

Barriers and opportunities to preventing residential bird–window collisions

Anastasia J V Lysyk ^1,^‡,^*, Aalia I Khan ^1,^‡, Deborah Conners ², Rachel T Buxton ^1,³

Editor: Teddy Lazebnik⁴

PMCID: PMC12935251 PMID: 41739778

Abstract

Collisions with windows are a leading source of avian mortality in North America. Window treatment options are commercially available; however, these solutions are rarely used. To investigate knowledge and perceptions of bird–window collisions, willingness to treat windows, and barriers and solutions to treating windows we conducted a survey of residents in Ottawa, Canada. Of 422 survey respondents, 90.7% had previously heard of bird–window collisions, 58.5% had previously observed a collision, 88.0% consider collisions with windows to be an issue in Ottawa, and 87.0% were willing to treat their windows. For all survey respondents, the top barriers reducing willingness to treat windows included the perception that birds infrequently or never collide with windows, aesthetics, and wanting a clear view from windows. For those willing to treat their windows, lack of time was the most identified barrier (38.2%), while for those unwilling to treat their windows, the need for more evidence that bird–window collisions require action was most identified (49.1%). Top potential solutions were provision of free materials, aesthetically pleasing materials, and clear instructions. Our results suggest that Ottawa residents are generally willing to treat their windows at home and we identify key barriers between willingness and implementation. To encourage bird-friendly window treatment at a wider scale, we suggest targeted messaging highlighting the impact of low-rise housing in driving the problem and the solution to bird–window collisions. Our results also highlight the opportunity for advocacy groups to aid residents in overcoming practical barriers to treating their windows.

Introduction

Birds in North America are experiencing dramatic declines due to a variety of human-driven threats [1]. Each year in North America, billions of birds are killed by colliding with windows, making it one of the largest sources of direct avian mortality [2,3]. Several studies and grassroots programs have quantified the magnitude of the issue of bird–window collisions. Citizen science programs in multiple countries led by members of the public who patrol cities for birds that collide with windows have demonstrated the dramatic numbers of annual bird–window collisions [3]. This includes the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP), that has documented over 100,000 bird–window collisions across the globe [4]. The resulting data have been used in research, successful lawsuits, advocacy programs, and changes to municipal green standards in Canada [5] and beyond [3,6].

Birds collide with windows because they do not perceive them as barriers in the environment due to the transparent and reflective properties of glass [7]. Solutions like window treatments are now commercially available to prevent bird–window collisions, including window films and decals [8–10]. Patterns of uniformly spaced visual markers that cover a window surface are known to provide a barrier that results in avoidance by birds [8–10]. Efficacy of these visual patterns has been found to range from 92–95% reduction in collisions at low-rise buildings (<14 storeys) [9,10] and by 84% at a rural residential building [11].

While bird–window collisions occur at all types of buildings, houses account for approximately 90% of all collisions, as they are relatively more abundant than tall commercial buildings [2]. Some conservative estimates indicate window-related mortality rates at residences are between 1.2 and 2.4 birds annually at Canadian single-and semi-detached houses [12]. Other studies have estimated collision mortalities to be 0.3–15.7 birds per year per residence [2] and reported upwards of 16–43 annual collisions for the worst residences [13]. Although many people have observed bird–window collisions at their homes (39% of respondents in [13]), awareness and uptake of preventative measures remains rare [14].

Despite an understanding of the magnitude of the problem and the effectiveness of solutions, there have been few coordinated efforts to address the bird–window collisions at scale in Canada and elsewhere [14]. Treating windows can be a contentious issue, as glass is valued for its aesthetically appealing transparency that allows landscape views [15]. Retro-fitting windows can be cost-prohibitive and logistically challenging, requiring adhering decals to the outside surface of sometimes difficult-to-reach windows. Although bird mortality resulting from window collisions are unlawful in Canada under the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994 [16], enforcement typically focuses on urban commercial buildings despite residential homes being a key source of bird–window collisions [2,13]. Given the potential for window treatments at residential homes to reduce up to 90% of bird–window collisions, it is important to understand how to motivate residents to implement bird–window protection measures.

In a survey of the Canadian public, one study found that Canadian’s willingness to pay to reduce bird–window collisions at their home was positively influenced by respondents’ interest in birds, previous donations to conservation organizations, and demographic factors like age and income [12]. In another study exploring perceptions of bird–window collisions in the US, architects, homeowners, and conservation practitioners indicated a general receptivity to management measures [17]. However, despite awareness and receptivity, most people do not understand the magnitude of the issue nor available solutions or resources [15].

Community science programs to raise awareness about bird–window collisions have proliferated across North America [3], including local awareness-raising campaigns about window treatments [18]. Strategies include increasing knowledge and public information, assuming that the more informed people are, the more likely they are to take action [19]. However, many factors influence the likelihood of people engaging with conservation behaviours, including relationships to nature, social norms, and the perceived ability for one’s actions to be impactful [19,20]. To guide efforts to increase uptake of bird-friendly window treatments, we aimed to investigate key barriers identified by residents in Ottawa to treat their windows. Specifically, our objectives were to: 1) explore the current knowledge, observation, and perception of bird–window collisions in Ottawa residents, 2) explore willingness to take action to reduce bird–window collisions and how this is influenced by knowledge, observation, and perception of bird–window collisions, and 3) explore barriers to taking action to reduce window collisions and potential solutions to these barriers. We discuss ways that knowledge of these barriers can inform broader campaigns for residents to treat windows.

Methods

Data collection for this project was conducted in the fall of 2023 through an undergraduate social science course – SOCI/ANTH2180A: Foundations in Community Engagement in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Ethics were approved by Carleton University Research Ethics Board-B (CUREB-B #119817) on July 27, 2023.

Study area

Ottawa is an important stopover site for migrating birds, bordering the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence lowlands. It is among the most heavily urbanized regions of Ontario, representing critical habitat for many species of conservation concern in Canada [21]. There is an active local community science program, Safe Wings Ottawa, that collects bird–windowcollision data and undertakes community outreach. Safe Wings estimates that approximately 250,000 birds die from colliding with windows each year in Ottawa [18]. An Ottawa network, Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability (CAFES), has engaged with this issue in the past. Through CAFES, four community associations were involved with this study: Fisher Heights and Area Community Association, the Glebe Community Association, the Hintonburg Community Association, and the Westboro Community Association.

Data collection

To address our research questions, DC, instructor of SOCI/ANTH2180A, designed a survey over several months with iterative engagement with Safe Wings Ottawa, CAFES, and RTB. The survey was created using Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo, UT) [22]. We were rigorous in limiting the length of the survey to an estimated five minutes to reduce non-response bias. Undergraduate students were divided into four groups of eight to ten with each group working with one of four community associations to distribute the survey. One or two representatives from each community association supported their student group in the creation of unique survey recruitment materials focused on the needs and opportunities in their community, including emailing QR codes, advertisements in the community, and tabling at community centres, coffee shops, and other venues. Responses were collected between September 21 – October 30, 2023. We limited survey responses to community members that were at least 16 years of age and lived in Ottawa. All respondents were provided a question to confirm their informed consent prior to participating in the survey (S1 Survey). Respondents could answer with “I consent” or “I do not consent”. Minors (those older than 16 and under 18 years) were able to consent for themselves and our ethics waived the need for a parent or guardian’s consent. Upon completion of the survey, respondents were invited to a workshop hosted by CAFES to further learn about bird–window collisions and receive a free starter kit of materials to treat their windows at home.

We were aware that members of the community association represent a group that is actively engaged in taking community action on environmental and other community issues and thus may be more inclined to indicate that they are willing to act on this issue. They also represent a demographic that is more likely to be interested in environmental action. Thus, we ensured that while we used the communication tools available to contact these groups, we also reached beyond them in our recruitment activities. Actions included email contact to each association’s mailing list of active members, as well as activities such as information tables – with opportunities to complete the survey in the moment – in public gathering places, such as shopping areas or community centres.

The survey consisted of 22 questions to collect information on home traits, demographics (optional), experience with bird–window collisions (including whether respondents had knowledge of the issue, observed a bird–window collision, or perceive bird–window collisions to be an issue), willingness to act to prevent bird–window collisions, and barriers and solutions to acting. Most questions were closed on a 5-point Likert scale from “Definitely yes” to “Definitely no”. Knowledge of the issue of bird–window collisions was determined with the question: “Have you ever heard about birds colliding with the windows of homes in Ottawa or not?”. Observation of bird–window collisions was determined with the question: “Have you ever observed a bird colliding with a window in your current home or not?”. Perception of bird–window collisions as an issue was determined with the question: “Do you think bird–window collisions at homes in Ottawa are an issue or not?”. These three factors (knowledge, observation, and perception) were considered together as “awareness” to investigate the scope of people’s understanding of bird–window collisions. Care was taken to ensure that the questions did not give participants the perception of a preferred answer to reduce social desirability bias. For example, the question addressing knowledge about the issue asked “Have you ever heard about birds colliding with the windows of homes in Ottawa or not?”.

Willingness to prevent bird–window collisions by treating windows was determined with the question: “Are you willing or not willing to apply materials to the outside of your windows to reduce bird–window collisions?”. Respondents answered on a Likert scale from “Definitely willing” to “Definitely not willing”, with an additional option for “Already have [acted to address bird–window collisions]”. To assess barriers to taking action to prevent bird–window collisions we asked, “What stops, or would stop you from taking action (or more action)?” and allowed respondents to choose as many barriers from a list of ten (e.g., time/getting around to it; cost) and/or “other” with the opportunity to specify in a text box. Finally, to explore solutions to barriers preventing action we asked, “What would support you to take action?” and allowed respondents to select from a list of seven (e.g., someone to come and apply the materials; free materials) and/or “other” with the opportunity to specify in a text box. The full survey can be found in the supplementary material (S1 Survey). The list of barriers and solutions to preventing bird–window collisions were generated by experts at Safe Wings Ottawa and through a review of the literature [12,13,15,17].

Data analysis

All analyses were performed in R statistical software (v.2024.12.0; R Core Team, 2024) [23], and figures were made using the ggplot2 package [24]. Responses that included answers to all questions barring the optional demographic questions were considered complete and used for analysis. We assessed the correlation between knowledge (i.e., hearing about) of bird–window collisions, observation (i.e., seeing) of bird–window collisions, perception of bird–window collisions as an issue, and willingness to act on bird–window collisions using Spearman’s correlation coefficient using the Hmisc package [25] given the ordinal nature of the data. We removed those who selected “already have [acted to address bird–window collisions]” under the “willingness” category (n = 32), resulting in a total of 390 responses used for analysis. The resulting correlation matrix figure was created using ggcorrplot [26].

To explore the relationship between willingness and the frequency of each barrier, we fit a cumulative link mixed effect model with Laplace approximation, using the ordinal package [27]. We included willingness as the response variable with the absence or presence of a barrier, age, gender, housing type, and ownership of a birdfeeder as covariates, and years spent in Ottawa as a random effect. Only respondents with answers to all demographic questions were included (n = 355; 84% of complete responses). Two response types for gender (i.e., “Transgender” and “Non-binary”) had too few responses for analysis and were removed. Those who responded “already have” under the “willingness” category were also removed, resulting in a total of 311 responses used for this analysis. Forest plots were created to depict the associations of each variable on the response as parameter estimates (PE) with 95% confidence intervals. A Spearman’s correlation was conducted to test for multicollinearity prior to building the model; no covariates had correlation coefficients over 0.5.

To determine which barriers correlated most closely with different solutions selected by respondents, we calculated the Cramer’s V correlation coefficient using the vcd package [28]. Cramer’s V was determined to be the best correlation test for this scenario, as it works for nominal or binary variables that form more complex (i.e., greater than 2x2) contingency tables [29]. All de-identified data and code is available on an Open Science Framework repository DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GBHCF.

Results

We received a total of 465 survey responses, of which 422 were complete and included in further analysis. The majority (91.5%) of respondents had lived in Ottawa for at least one year, with 62.1% having lived in Ottawa for over five years. The largest proportion of respondents were women (74.3% of all respondents) and people who identify as ethnically white (85.7% of all respondents). The most responsive age group was older adults (50+) (37.3%), followed by those aged 31–50 (33.2%). Most residents (63.0%) lived in a two to four storey house, followed by a one storey house (16.1%), an apartment with greater than six storeys (12.8%), or an apartment with fewer than six storeys (8.1%). About a third of respondents (35.1%) had a bird feeder. Most survey respondents (66.6%) lived in the four core neighborhoods where surveys were distributed, the other 33.4% lived in a range of neighborhoods across Ottawa.

Awareness of bird–window collisions

Most survey respondents were aware of bird–window collisions, had previous knowledge of bird–window collisions and perceived it to be an issue to some extent. 91.0% of respondents had previous knowledge of bird–window collisions and 87.9% perceive window collisions an issue in Ottawa despite only 57.3% of respondents having observed a window collision before (Fig 1).

Fig 1 — Those who responded “already have” for willingness to address bird–window collisions were grouped with “definitely yes”. Negative values (i.e., values to the left of zero) represent the percentage of respondents who selected “definitely not” or “probably not”. Positive values represent “probably yes”, “definitely yes” or “already have”.

We investigated correlations between knowledge, observation, and perception of respondents to address bird–window collisions at their residences (Fig 2). Previous knowledge of window collisions was correlated with perception of window collisions as an issue (r = 0.36, p < 0.01). However, more than half of respondents that had not heard of window collisions still perceived them to be an issue (60.5%). Knowledge of window collisions was also correlated with observation of a bird–window collision (r = 0.31, p < 0.01).

Fig 2 — Responses were ranked on a Likert scale from 1 to 4 from “definitely no” to “definitely yes”. Those who responded to “already have [acted on bird-window collision issues]” under the “willingness” category were removed, resulting in a total of 390 out of 422 complete responses used for analysis.

Willingness to address bird–window collisions

Most survey respondents were willing to treat their windows (79.6%) and only 7.6% of respondents identified they had already treated their windows. Of these respondents, 91.8% of them also considered bird–window collisions to be an issue and 58.7% had observed a bird–window collision before. Of respondents who were not willing to treat their windows, 16.7% had not heard of bird–window collisions, 51.8% had not observed a bird–window collision, and 38.9% do not think bird–window collisions are an issue in Ottawa.

Perception of bird–window collisions as an issue had the strongest relationship to willingness (Fig 2) (r = 0.38; p < 0.01). Knowledge of window collisions was only weakly related to willingness (r = 0.15; p < 0.01). Of survey respondents who were knowledgeable about window collisions, 88.3% were willing or had already treated their windows. However, of those that were not knowledgeable, 76.1% were still willing to treat their windows. Previous observation of a collision had the weakest relationship to willingness (r = 0.08; p < 0.01). However, of those that had not seen a window collision, 84.4% were still willing or had already taken action to treat their windows. Of those who had seen a window collision, 89.3% were willing or had already taken action to treat their windows.

Demographic variables were also associated with willingness. Our cumulative link mixed model (Fig 3, numerical results in S1 Table) found that respondents who selected “Male” as their gender were significantly less willing to treat windows than those who selected “Female” (PE ± SE = −1.10 ± 0.29, p < 0.01). Compared to respondents aged 50 + , those aged 31−50 were less willing to treat their windows, although not significantly (PE ± SE = −0.30 ± 0.30, p = 0.32), and those aged 16−30 were significantly less willing to treat their windows (PE ± SE = −0.85 ± 0.36, p = 0.02). Owning a birdfeeder also affected willingness, where respondents without a birdfeeder were significantly less willing to treat their windows (PE ± SE = −0.69 ± 0.31, p = 0.02) than respondents who owned a birdfeeder. Participants whose neighbours owned a birdfeeder, while they themselves did not, were even less willing to treat their windows (PE ± SE = −0.93 ± 0.35, p < 0.01). When it came to housing type, respondents who resided in a one storey house demonstrated a similar amount of willingness to those who resided in a two-four storey house. Those who resided in apartments over six storeys were slightly less willing to treat their windows, although not significantly (PE ± SE = −0.61 ± 0.38, p = 0.11). However, those who resided in apartments under six storeys were significantly more willing to treat their windows (PE ± SE = 1.20 ± 0.54, p = 0.02).

Barriers to action

For all respondents, the most identified barrier to treating windows was that birds infrequently or never collide with their windows (36.7%), followed by time (35.5%). Other commonly identified barriers included wanting to have a clear view from windows (29.4%), cost (27.0%) and access to the outside of windows to apply materials (27.0%) (Fig 4).

Fig 4 — For respondents who identified each barrier, the total number that also reported/answered they were not willing, willing, or have already acted to address bird–window collisions.

422 respondents from Ottawa, Canada. Multiple barriers could be selected by each respondent. Respondents who said “probably not willing” and “definitely not willing” are grouped into “not willing”. Respondents who said “probably willing” and “definitely willing” are grouped into “willing”.

For respondents that are willing to treat their windows, time was the largest barrier (39.0%) and the perception that birds infrequently collide with their windows was the second most identified (37.2%). For respondents willing to treat their windows, only 3.3% identified they did not think bird–window collisions were an issue requiring action. For those not willing to treat their windows, birds infrequently or never colliding with their windows was the most identified barrier (48.2%), followed by wanting to have a clear view from their windows (44.4%). Cost, unclear tenancy rules, and not liking the look of anything on their windows were other commonly identified barriers by those not willing to treat their windows.

While birds infrequently colliding with respondents’ windows and lack of time were the most commonly selected barriers, they did not have a significant influence on willingness. Barriers with significant negative effects on willingness were aesthetics (those not liking the look of anything on their windows) (PE ± SE = −0.86 ± 0.36, p = 0.02), not perceiving window collisions an issue requiring action (PE ± SE = −1.60 ± 0.60, p < 0.01), and wanting a clear view from their windows (PE ± SE = −0.78 ± 0.29, p < 0.01). Model results suggest these barriers are negatively related to willingness, where respondents that value aesthetics, wanting a clear view from their windows, and not perceiving this an issue needing action are significantly less willing to take action to treat their windows (Fig 5, numerical results in S2 Table).

Fig 5 — Points depict parameter estimates with error bars depicting 95% confidence interval. Positive estimates indicate the barrier is correlated with willingness, while negative estimates indicate the barrier is correlated with unwillingness. Estimates with confidence intervals that do not overlap with zero are significant.

Solutions to barriers

Amongst all respondents, providing free materials was the most commonly selected way to support people treating their windows (46.6%) (Fig 6). Aesthetically pleasing materials (33.6%, selected as “Application of materials I like the look of”), being given clear instructions (29.7%), and having someone else apply materials for them (28.9%) were also identified as strong sources of support. For those willing to treat their windows, more information on treatment options was also important (31.2%). For those not willing to treat their windows, evidence of the need to take action was the most frequently identified solution to support action (53.8%), followed by free materials (32.7%) and aesthetically pleasing materials (32.7%).

We found that many of the strongest correlations between barriers to action and solution to take action for bird–window collisions identified by respondents were those where the presented solution directly addressed a specific barrier (e.g., unclear tenancy rules and receiving landlord permission, Cramer’s V = 0.8; wanting a clear view on windows and aesthetically pleasing materials, Cramer’s V = 0.42) (Fig 7). Other strong correlations (Cramer’s V > 0.25) [29] included lack of awareness of available resources and clear instructions (Cramer’s V = 0.35), and lack of time and provision of free materials (Cramer’s V = 0.39).

Fig 7 — Respondents were able to select multiple barriers and solutions each.

Discussion

Given high bird mortality caused by window collisions at residential homes, encouraging residents to treat their windows is an important bird conservation intervention. As such, understanding factors influencing people’s behaviours in treating their windows can help overcome barriers and mobilize action. Of our survey respondents, most were knowledgeable about bird–window collisions, have not yet treated their windows, but indicated they were willing to treat their windows. Despite overall awareness and willingness, very few respondents had already treated their windows. Key barriers respondents identified as preventing them from treating windows were the perception that birds infrequently collide with their windows and a lack of time, and free and aesthetically pleasing materials with clear application instructions were potential solutions. Additionally, despite many respondents having previously heard of window collisions and perceiving it to be an issue, many identified they need more evidence that this is an issue requiring action.

Awareness and willingness to take action to prevent bird–window collisions

Pro-environmental behaviours are influenced by personality, attitudes, knowledge of the issue, potential actions, and perceptions or knowledge of behaviour efficacy [20,30]. Motivation and willingness are also influenced by socioeconomic and demographic context [31]. We found that respondents identifying as female and those over the age of 31, and those with bird feeders were significantly more likely to be willing to treat their windows. This is supported by other studies which have found that those more likely to engage with pro-environmental behaviours are typically older, white females [12,32,33] and those who engage with bird-related nature recreation activities [33].

Typically, efforts to share knowledge of an issue are done under the assumption that being knowledgeable makes people more likely to act [19]. However, the strength of this relationship varies among different types of pro-environmental behaviours [34], and in our study, we did not find knowledge of bird–window collisions to be a factor in residents treating their windows. We found that some people perceived window collisions as an issue without having previous knowledge, suggesting that perception is more influential in willingness to take action, which has been similarly found with other pro-environmental behaviours related to homeowners and pollinators [32]. It is possible that people do not need to be knowledgeable about specific bird-conservation issues to have a sense of caring or responsibility to protect birds for their inherent value [17], and this sense of responsibility or obligation to act additionally influence the desire for an individual to engage with pro-environmental behaviours [20]. However, survey responses of observing a window collision at home had the weakest correlation with willingness to address window collisions suggesting that for survey respondents, a sense of personal responsibility or obligation may not arise from observing a collision. Knowledge was moderately correlated with observation of a window collision, but it is difficult to discern if people who already know about collisions are then more likely to have observed one or if observation of a collision elicits learning of the issue. While there may be little to link environmental knowledge with behaviours [34], it is possible different levels or types of knowledge of an issue can influence behaviours. In our study, many respondents were generally willing to treat their windows and identified the need for more information or evidence this is an issue at their homes, suggesting that increasing knowledge of bird–window collisions to describe how this is an issue at homes and potential solutions and efficacies of solutions may further improve their willingness to take action at their homes.

Barriers to action and potential solutions

The most common barrier to taking action to prevent bird–window collisions amongst all respondents was the perception that birds infrequently or never collide with their windows. However, there was no significant relationship between this perception and the respondents’ willingness to treat windows. This may indicate that for those who are willing to treat their windows, the issue may not be considered pressing enough at their own homes to warrant the cost, time, or effort to take action. This may again relate to the fact that even if residents are knowledgeable about the issue of bird–window collisions, they may not understand the magnitude of the issue, particularly at residences [15,17]. While many residents believe that birds infrequently or never collide with their windows, this may not reflect the true rates of collisions at homes, as most residential collisions are not witnessed [35]. Collisions are a sudden event often followed by predation of the carcass, and can be easily missed, especially given that many people are not in their homes for most of the day. Additionally, many homeowners have no reason to be looking for evidence of collisions, and if they are, many collisions do not result in visible evidence to find like a carcass or feathers on a window [13,35,36]. Messaging strategies aiming to communicate the problem of collisions at homes and the potential for residents to contribute to solutions could potentially help overcome this barrier.

Current messaging and community science programs aiming to prevent bird–window collisions tend to focus on high-rise commercial buildings as primary sources of window collisions and targets for mitigation efforts as they account for more collisions per building than other building types [2,37]. In Ontario, some municipal bird-safe guidelines have begun to address this problem when constructing new commercial or industrial buildings, but it is difficult to regulate bird-safe design at homes [38]. Commercial buildings can present high-profile cases like McCormick Place in Chicago, where in fall of 2023, nearly 1,000 birds died overnight from colliding with McCormick Place and this event garnered public support that was successful in treating windows of this building [6]. However, annual Canadian estimates of collision mortalities attribute only ~11% of all collisions to commercial low- and high-rise buildings in comparison to houses, which account for 90% of annual collisions [2]. While these high-profile cases are important in raising awareness to prevent collisions, they may lead to an under-emphasis on the role of houses and low-rise buildings in contributing to bird–window collisions. This may lead to people believing bird–window collisions are not particularly an issue at homes and addressing the issue is more the responsibility of others [17]. Further research could assess people’s breadth of knowledge on the issue of window collisions at home versus other buildings to explore if this is driving the gap between willingness and taking action to prevent bird–window collisions for those who are knowledgeable.

Personal aesthetic preferences were also a commonly identified barrier, where many wanted a clear view from windows and identified aesthetically pleasing materials as a solution. Previous studies have also found that homeowners value unobstructed views and are less willing to retrofit their windows if glass aesthetics are affected [12,15,39]. This may be influenced by social norms and practices, or lack there-of, around bird-friendly window treatments. As they are not common on residential buildings, there may be little social pressure to implement window treatments. However, while people value clear views from their windows, Sheng et al. [39] noted that survey respondents would be willing to compromise the view if they knew the designs would prevent bird fatalities.

Practical barriers were also identified by respondents as preventing them from treating their windows. Time was the most common, but cost, access, and tenancy rules were also identified as barriers by those willing to treat their windows. Practical solutions addressing these issues included communicating clear instructions for window treatment options that are low cost and low time investment or providing free materials and/or services to treat windows for respondents to tackle time, access, or ability barriers (Fig 4). In general, our survey group represents people that would be more willing to engage with pro-environmental behaviours. Other studies have found that a similar demographic is also more willing to pay for environmental solutions [12,40] but cost still presented a barrier for respondents in treating their windows. Along with provision of free materials as a top solution to overcome this barrier, most survey respondents communicated they would be willing to apply window treatments if a free kit was given to them. Financial aid is a broader solution to help address this problem, for example, monetary incentives [12] or government subsidies [17], and if used in conjunction with products that are easily applied with clear and simple instructions, this could present an opportunity to more individuals treating their windows.

Limitations and future directions

Our survey focused on four specific neighbourhoods in Ottawa, with some broader participation around the city. Many responses came from residents that participate with a community association and may be more likely to be interested in taking action regarding environmental issues than other residents. Thus, applying our findings to the entire city or more broadly to other cities in Canada should be done with caution. However, our survey provides one of the first to our knowledge to explore the relationships between awareness, willingness, and barriers and solutions for home residents in Canada to make their windows bird-friendly and, with over 400 responses, offers valuable insights.

We took a broad approach to explore barriers to taking action to prevent bird–window collisions. As such, we did not assess more detailed influences of different factors on responses. For instance, we did not assess the type of knowledge people had of window collisions at their homes, nor did we assess their knowledge of window collision treatments. Additionally, the only preventative action we explored was window treatments rather than including actions such as relocating bird feeders or altering landscaping at homes [12,14], advocating for bird-friendly guidelines in cities, or donating to organizations that work with window collisions. These would make interesting avenues for further research to motivate action to combat bird–window collisions.

Potential pathways and opportunities for increasing action

While our results indicate the importance of knowledge in influencing willingness to take action on bird–window collisions, they also suggest that a shift in the type of knowledge presented by conservation organizations is needed to emphasize the importance of residential homes in preventing collisions. We found that respondents were willing to address this issue but required more information, particularly that this is an issue at their homes, suggesting a perception that individual actions at home might not be impactful. This is useful for collision advocacy groups to better communicate the prevalence of bird–window collisions at low-rise buildings and homes. Targeted messaging should emphasize that individual actions of treating windows at homes with effective treatments can prevent collisions and will have a large cumulative impact on reducing bird–window collisions at local, regional, and national scales. This messaging could contribute to overcoming barriers related to aesthetics and values related to the view from windows if people felt the outcomes of their actions outweighed these barriers (as indicated by Sheng et al. [39]). Additionally, providing information of different types of window treatments and using specific supporting evidence that these reduce collisions has the potential to improve people’s behaviours in treating their windows, such as the information presented on the FLAP Canada webpage “Stop Birds from Hitting Windows” [41] or the American Bird Conservancy’s Products and Solutions Database [42]. To address practical barriers, another potential opportunity is for advocacy groups to help make treating windows at home as easy as possible for residents (e.g., identifying window washing companies that treat windows and providing volunteer services to treat windows, e.g., [43]). Efforts to make treating windows an easier process to accomplish, aesthetically pleasing, and connected to peoples’ values and sense of responsibility, would help bridge the gap between willingness and taking action to prevent bird–window collisions.

Supporting information

S1 Survey. Qualtrics survey questionnaire on bird–window collisions for residents of Ottawa, Canada.

(DOCX)

pone.0342330.s001.docx^{(28.5KB, docx)}

S1 Table. Results from cumulative link mixed model of relationship between willingness and age, housing type, gender, and ownership of a bird feeder.

(DOCX)

pone.0342330.s002.docx^{(138.1KB, docx)}

S2 Table. Results from cumulative link mixed model of relationship between barriers and willingness.

(DOCX)

pone.0342330.s003.docx^{(137.9KB, docx)}

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank A. Keller-Herzog, P. MacDonald, and others at the Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability, J. Niwa and W. English at Safe Wings Ottawa, and D. Doherty at Bird-friendly Ottawa for supporting this project. We thank community association representatives W. Burpee and P. MacDonald (FHACA), J. Freeman and T. Beauchamp (CGA), R. Philar (HCA), and D. Chapman (WCA), and the SOCI/ANTH 2180 class for recruiting survey respondents.

Data Availability

All relevant data are within the manuscript and in the Supporting information files. The online repository is available at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GBHCF.

Funding Statement

Funding was provided to RTB, AJVL, and AK through three funding sources. 1) Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant (RGPIN 04888) (https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/index_eng.asp). 2) the Kenneth Molson Foundation (https://fondationmolson.org/en/). 3) Environment and Climate Change Canada (GCXE24S042) (https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change.html). Funders did not play any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0342330.r001

Decision Letter 0

Teddy Lazebnik

29 Aug 2025

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[We would like to thank A. Keller-Herzog, P. MacDonald, and others at the Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability, J. Niwa and W. English at Safe Wings Ottawa, and D. Doherty at Bird-friendly Ottawa for supporting this project. We thank community association representatives W. Burpee and P. MacDonald (FHACA), J. Freeman and T. Beauchamp (CGA), R. Philar (HCA), and D. Chapman (WCA), and the SOCI/ANTH 2180 class for recruiting survey respondents. RTB, AJVL, and AK were funded by NSERC (RGPIN 04888), the Kenneth Molson Foundation, and Environment and Climate Change Canada (GCXE24S042).]

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Reviewer #1: This article summarizes a survey conducted in Ottawa, Canada, about bird-window collisions, which are a major cause of bird deaths in North America. The survey found that most Ottawa residents are aware of and concerned about bird-window collisions, and a high percentage are willing to treat their windows to prevent them. However, several factors act as barriers to implementing window treatments, especially the perception of infrequent collision and aesthetic concerns about how window treatments look and affect clear views as well as lack of time and costs associated with treating windows. The study suggests that offering free materials, aesthetically pleasing options, and clear instructions could help overcome these barriers. Ultimately, the authors advocate for targeted public messaging to highlight the impact of residential homes on this issue and to encourage widespread adoption of bird-friendly window treatments.

The article is interesting, well written and succinct. I provide comments below to help clarify the writing and the presentation of results and subsequent discussion.

Major comments:

- Are the legends correct on Figures 4 and 6? I ask because I don’t understand the “already have” for many of the responses such as “no access” (+ others) and what that has to do with willingness. Also, in the methods, I thought you asked the questions on a 5-pt Likert Scale but the answers aren’t presented that way. Could you please clarify all this where needed.

- Paragraph that starts at L340. There is quite a bit of literature about the gap between environmental knowledge and pro-environmental action. I suggest integrating some of that literature into this paragraph or a new one so that you can tie your results to theoretical models of this “gap”. This is one key paper along those lines: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504620220145401 but there are others.

- Are the mixed models fitted with all the respondents or just the ones who do not already have treatments on their windows? If the former, when you run the models with the subset, do the results change? What about for the correlations?

- In the methods, you say that socio-economic and demographic questions were optional on the survey, what is the effective response rate for those questions, and how many respondents are included in the statistical models you build later? I believe this should be included at the very least in the figure captions, maybe as n=XXX).

- L183, will need to be changed to the link to the OSF repository upon publication

- The references are not formatted properly (e.g. journal titles should be italicized) and some references are missing information (e.g. 12 and 21). Please check those thoroughly or use a formatting software such as Zotero (free).

Minor comments:

- For future surveys you might conduct, Dillman et al. (https://sesrc.wsu.edu/about/total-design-method/) recommends writing questions as statements and then using the standard definitely agree to disagree Likert scale. So your questions about “Are you willing to not willing to X”, become “I am willing to X”.

- For Figure 2, in the grey squares, I would put the p-values or have some way to visualize them. This might work for you but is not the only way to do this: https://indrajeetpatil.github.io/ggstatsplot/articles/web_only/ggcorrmat.html You could also just add the p-value in parenthesis in the colored box for ease of interpretation (or present this Figure as a table which may be more efficient)

- Line 67, could you specify what a low-rise building is?

- Line 84, missing “on”

- Line 97 at the end, missing “and”

- Line 110, in my field, the word data is treated as a plural (datum is the singular) so it would be “data were” but I’ve noticed this seems to be journal/field specific.

- Line 123, spell out “4” as “four”. I think anything below 12 is expected to be spelled out (occurs on L 157 and 160, 192 too)

- L163, it would be helpful to have the references for the literature that informed the list of barriers and solutions (assuming it’s <~6 refs)

- L172, instead of “ran” consider “fit” and the order of the sentence could be different: you fit the model Mixed Effect Model with a cumulating link and Laplace approx..

- L212, what is the p-value for the observation and knowledge questions?

- L219-220, I don’t see that info in Figure 1.

- L219 and 225, you repeat the same info about already treated households

- L227-231 seem to be a repeat of L206-212 as well. Pick one or merge the two perhaps?

- L237, what does PE stand for?

- L235, consider replacing “also affected” by “were also associated with” since the first implies causation

- L320, consider replacing “older” with “middle-aged” or “over 50 years old”?

- L320, I think you need to rephrase that sentence of maybe replace the “and” with a “who” or “who identified with”

- Sentence starting at L322 has too many “ands”

- L325, results don’t find anything, please rephrase

- L327-328, you say multiple studies corroborate your findings, but only cite one (32). Either chance studies to study or cite more than one study.

- L332, at “Respondents”, consider making that a new paragraph.

- In a future study, it might be interesting to about observed collisions where the bird(s) died upon impact or not.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript describes survey-based research study in which a sample of citizens from various neighborhoods in Ottawa, Canada were surveyed about their knowledge and perception of bird–window collisions at residential homes, their willingness to treat windows to prevent collisions, and barriers to action. The survey resulted in several significant correlations between variables, including perception of bird–window collisions and willingness to treat windows. Somewhat surprisingly, perception of collisions as a problem that should be addressed was more significantly correlated with willingness to act than experience witnessing a bird–window collision. Another important finding is that many respondents had witnessed a collision at home but needed more evidence that such collisions are a big enough problem before they would consider treating their windows. Significant barriers to respondents treating their windows at home included time, cost, and lack of clear instructions. All these points can help inform conservation groups and collision monitoring programs tailor their educational, outreach, and advocacy efforts to better communicate that most collisions occur at low-rise residential buildings rather than at tall downtown buildings that are often featured in news media as being the top cause of collisions.

Considering the great numbers of birds that die each year from building collisions in North America alone, this study has much merit, as it helps fill a gap in the published literature and should aid conservationists and communications experts working to spread awareness of and reduce bird–building collisions. As an ecologist and researcher with years of experience leading a collision monitoring program, I was excited to see this study and look forward to further studies that will build off this.

The manuscript is well-written overall, presented in logical order, and includes sound statistical analyses, useful supplementary tables, and relevant references. I recommend accepting the manuscript, pending revisions.

Major Feedback:

1) While the authors mention some limitations of their survey in the Discussion, the Methods section does not describe any steps that were taken to reduce bias in data collection. This is a serious concern, as survey results are highly sensitive to issues such as sampling bias, non-response bias, and social desirability bias. I recommend that the authors provide more detail on how the survey was designed and administered to minimize these risks (e.g., question design, question randomization, recruitment strategy, etc.). Without this information, it is difficult to evaluate the reliability of the findings.

2) For readers who are not familiar with Likert scale charts (like me), Figure 1 may be difficult to understand as presented. I recommend adding more detailed explanations of how to interpret this to avoid confusion and perhaps add percentages inside the bars. For example: explain why Fig. 1 has positive and negative percentages, why the bars are staggered, and what this means.

3) The use of CLMMs is appropriate for ordinal responses, and I appreciate that the authors ran two separate models and presented the results in forest plots. However, the basis for Figure 3 is not entirely clear. From Table S2, it appears that the demographic model used ‘>50 years’, ‘2–4 story house’, ‘female’, and ‘owns a bird feeder’ as reference categories, but this is not explained in the text. The reference categories should be stated clearly in the main text or Fig. 3 caption so readers can interpret the effect estimates in relation to the correct baseline groups.

In addition, one statistically significant covariate (age 16-30) is not included in Fig. 3, whereas two non-significant covariates (transgender, non-binary) are included. In contrast, Fig. 5 displays all predictors, regardless of significance. I recommend clarifying the rationale for which covariates are displayed in each forest plot and ensuring consistency in presentation. Otherwise, readers may incorrectly assume that omitted variables were not significant or were not tested.

Lastly, I recommend including an explanation of what the parameter estimates mean in the main text for clarity. Currently, this information is only stated in Tables S2 & S3.

4) The Discussion section is quite wordy and restates much information presented in the Results section, making it unnecessarily long and repetitive. Revising for conciseness, focusing on what the results mean and why this should matter to readers, without restating the results, would make the discussion much stronger and more digestible/useful for readers.

Minor Feedback:

Minor suggestions regarding grammatical errors, typos, etc. can be found as comments in the attached pdf. Other minor feedback is listed below.

1) Throughout the manuscript, the authors use a hyphen (-) between “bird” and “window” when referring to collisions, but an en dash (–) should be used instead. Hyphens should be used in compound adjectives, e.g. bird-friendly materials, whereas an en dash should be used to indicate linkages between two things, e.g. bird–window collisions.

2) Ln 38-40: It isn’t helpful to report parameter estimates in the abstract, as readers cannot interpret these outside the context of the full model results. I recommend highlighting the meaning of the results (relative strength, significance) rather than raw statistical values in the abstract.

3) Ln 65-66: The article cited here (Klem & Saenger 2013) isn’t about window films or decals. They tested UV-treated windows and Acopian BirdSavers in this study. There are several better options to cite here, including DeGroot et al. 2022 (doi: 10.7717/peerj.13142) or Bird-friendly Building Design from American Bird Conservancy (https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Bird-friendly-Building-Guide_2015.pdf).

4) Ln 182-183: Please add an accession number or URL prior to publication.

5) Ln 186-195: It appears that the percentages reported in this paragraph are based on all 465 respondents rather than the 422 included in the analysis. For clarity and consistency throughout the Results section, please base these percentages on the number of responses used in the analysis.

6) Ln 187-189: It is unclear if the percentages of older respondents and those who identified as white are based on the number of female respondents only or all respondents. Please reword to clarify.

7) Ln 189-190: It is unclear why counts are reported here rather than percentages. I recommend reporting percentages for consistency. Again, these should be based on the number of responses used in the analysis.

8) Ln 212: For consistency, please report the p-value with the correlation coefficient, as in line 209.

9) Ln 219-220, 224-225: The percentage of respondents who had already treated their windows is reported twice in this paragraph. I recommend deleting the last sentence and removing the word “only” from the first sentence.

10) Figure 3: To aid in comparing the importance of variables within categories, I recommend reordering the variables to be grouped by category rather than strictly in increasing numeric order. I also recommend denoting which variables are significant to aid readers who may be less familiar with interpreting forest plots.

11) Ln 289: Please clarify what is meant by “more information”. (More information about what?)

12) Figure 5: As with Fig. 3, I recommend denoting which barriers are significant.

13) Ln 320-328: Considering that the authors reported in the Results that the largest proportion of respondents were older, white females, I wonder if this may introduce bias into the survey results and interpretation via sampling bias. Thus, I would like to know if the authors took this into consideration.

14) Ln 333-336: It is not clear if the authors are referring to all respondents or a subset of respondents here, nor why this group is considered more likely to act. Please clarify. Also, the end of this sentence reads clumsily. I suggest revising to something like, “…suggesting barriers that prevent people from taking action still exist.”

15) Ln 362-363: I suggest changing “under” to “nearly” for clarity.

16) Ln 399: I suggest inserting “frequently” before “followed”, as carcasses are not always depredated.

17) Ln 426-427: This is true, but considering the survey results, it seems this will only lead to a significant number of individuals treating their windows if the monetary aid is in conjunction with suggestions for bird-friendly products with clear, simple instructions (such as FeatherFriendly). I feel this is worth mentioning.

18) Ln 447-450: The way this sentence reads, it suggests that such a shift has already occurred, rather than a shift is needed. I suggest revising as, “…they also suggest a shift is needed in the type…”.

19) Ln 457: Perhaps replace “a few” with “some”, as this makes it seem that very few collisions occur at individual homes.

20) Ln 461-463: An excellent resource that could be included as an example here is the Glass Collisions section of American Bird Conservancy’s website, particularly their Products & Solutions Database (https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/products-database/).

21) References: It would benefit readers to include DOI numbers for referenced articles.

22) Ln 510-511: Please correct the formatting for the Warren (2013) reference, as it is a Master’s Thesis.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

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Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-25-29481_reviewer.pdf

pone.0342330.s004.pdf^{(2.1MB, pdf)}

PLoS One. 2026 Feb 25;21(2):e0342330. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0342330.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 1

26 Nov 2025

This information is repeated in the uploaded response to reviewers file.

Author Response to Editor

Dear Dr. Lazebnik,

Thank you for the helpful feedback on our manuscript. Please extend our thanks to the reviewers as well, if possible.

Below, we have detailed how we revised the manuscript to address each reviewer’s comments, suggestions, or concerns. Our response to each point is typed in bold and references to the text are included in italics . Line numbers match those in the clean version of the revised manuscript with each change marked in the track-changes version. In regards to the funding statement and acknowledgements, we do not wish to change the funding statement but have revised the acknowledgements in the manuscript.

We hope you will find the revised manuscript acceptable for publication, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Anastasia Lysyk & Aalia Khan, and all Co-Authors.

Academic editor comments:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

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Response: We have made edits to meet the style requirements including maintaining sentence case in section headings, and bolding the figure titles in each figure caption.

2. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

[Funding was provided to RTB, AJVL, and AK through three funding sources.

1) Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant (RGPIN 04888) (https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/index_eng.asp).

2) the Kenneth Molson Foundation (https://fondationmolson.org/en/).

3) Environment and Climate Change Canada (GCXE24S042) (https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change.html).

Funders did not play any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.]

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

Response: We have removed the funding statement from the acknowledgements section of the revised manuscript.

3. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: [All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.]

For example, authors should submit the following data:

- The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported;

- The values used to build graphs;

- The points extracted from images for analysis.

Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study.

Response: We have updated the manuscript to include a DOI number to an online repository through Open Science Framework containing all relevant data and analyses (line 207).

Response: Access to code sharing is included in our online repository through OSF.

Response: We have described in the methods section that ethics were approved to describe informed participant consent through a survey question and all participants over the age of 16 were allowed to consent their own participation in the survey (lines 135-139).

Response: The ethical approval for this study allowed all participants over the age of 16 to confirm their own informed consent to participate in the survey (lines 135-139).

The article is interesting, well written and succinct. I provide comments below to help clarify the writing and the presentation of results and subsequent discussion.

Response: Thank you very much for this positive feedback!

Major comments:

Response: We have clarified these are three separate responses by removing “willingness” in the legend title and we have changed “already have” to “already have taken action to address BWC” in Fig.4. In the same figure, we have changed “no access outside windows” to “no access to outside windows”.

Response: Thank you for suggesting this paper, we have incorporated this and others in the revised paragraph starting on line 362.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We agree with your feedback and have decided to remove respondents who already have treatments on their windows from our models and correlation analysis, as they have already bypassed the barriers we are exploring in our study.

Results do not change substantially when the models are fitted with the subset, with the exception that people aged 31-50 are no longer significantly less willing to act compared to reference (age 50+). Fig2, Fig3, Fig5, Table S2 and Table S3 have been updated with the new results.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have included the response rate and number of respondents used for our statistical models in our methods section (line 195-200).

- L183, will need to be changed to the link to the OSF repository upon publication

Response: The DOI number to the OSF repository has been added to the manuscript (line 209).

Response: Thank you for your feedback. We have edited the references according to existing guidelines for PLOS ONE (journal titles are not italicized as the citation style follows the “Vancouver” format). We have added the missing information.

Minor comments:

Response: Thank you for the suggestion, which we will consider in future studies.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion! We have now included p-values in the colored boxes for Figure 2.

- Line 67, could you specify what a low-rise building is?

Response: Addressed in line 66.

- Line 84, missing “on”

Response: Addressed.

- Line 97 at the end, missing “and”

Response: Addressed.

- Line 110, in my field, the word data is treated as a plural (datum is the singular) so it would be “data were” but I’ve noticed this seems to be journal/field specific.

Response: Addressed.

- Line 123, spell out “4” as “four”. I think anything below 12 is expected to be spelled out (occurs on L 157 and 160, 192 too).

Response: Changed here and throughout the paper.

- L163, it would be helpful to have the references for the literature that informed the list of barriers and solutions (assuming it’s <~6 refs)

Response: Thank you, we have included references at the end of this sentence (Line 180).

- L172, instead of “ran” consider “fit” and the order of the sentence could be different: you fit the model Mixed Effect Model with a cumulating link and Laplace approx..

Response: Changed.

- L212, what is the p-value for the observation and knowledge questions?

Response: Added to results.

- L219-220, I don’t see that info in Figure 1.

Response: Addressed - Fig1 is no longer cited for this info.

- L219 and 225, you repeat the same info about already treated households.

Response: Removed repeated line.

- L227-231 seem to be a repeat of L206-212 as well. Pick one or merge the two perhaps?

Response: Thank you for your suggestion. Results on L206-212 (now 233-238) are about correlations among knowledge, observation, and perception, while results on L227-231 (now 254-258) are about correlations with willingness. We have removed the term “willingness” (line 231-232) to make this more clear.

- L237, what does PE stand for?

Response: PE stands for “parameter estimates” - we have defined this term in the methods sectio

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_BWC_nov26.docx

pone.0342330.s005.docx^{(2.7MB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0342330.r003

Decision Letter 1

Teddy Lazebnik

21 Jan 2026

<p>Barriers and opportunities to preventing residential bird-window collisions

PONE-D-25-29481R1

Dear Dr. Lysyk,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Teddy Lazebnik

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions??>

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

Reviewer #2: The authors did a thorough job of addressing my concerns and suggestions, and the revised manuscript is much stronger and clearer for readers. Specifically, bias reduction is now addressed in the Methods section. The first paragraph in the Results section is much clearer now, with percentages based on the number of responses used in analyses. The revised Fig. 1 is much easier to interpret now with percentages added and additional caption text. CLMM results have been corrected, and parameter estimates are now explained in the main text. The revised Fig. 3 is also easier to read, and the caption now includes all pertinent information. The revised Discussion section is more concise, flows much better, and is more effective than the original.

I only have one suggestion & a few corrections, listed below:

Ln 93–96: I suggest changing this back to two separate sentences, as combining them results in a long sentence that’s tough to follow.

Ln 152: Correct the misplaced en dash (should be between “bird” and “window”).

Ln 166: Insert missing quotations at end of sentence.

Ln 410, 422, 423, 427, 493: Remove extraneous hyphens from the phrase “bird—window collisions”. (In these lines, both an en dash and hyphen are used, e.g. bird—-window collisions.)

Ln 422: It appears that the word “and” is missing between “houses” and “low-rise buildings”.

Ln 442: Delete extraneous period after “Fig 4”.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

**********

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0342330.r004

Acceptance letter

Teddy Lazebnik

PONE-D-25-29481R1

PLOS One

Dear Dr. Lysyk,

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS One. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team.

At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following:

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

S1 Survey. Qualtrics survey questionnaire on bird–window collisions for residents of Ottawa, Canada.

(DOCX)

pone.0342330.s001.docx^{(28.5KB, docx)}

S1 Table. Results from cumulative link mixed model of relationship between willingness and age, housing type, gender, and ownership of a bird feeder.

(DOCX)

pone.0342330.s002.docx^{(138.1KB, docx)}

S2 Table. Results from cumulative link mixed model of relationship between barriers and willingness.

(DOCX)

pone.0342330.s003.docx^{(137.9KB, docx)}

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-25-29481_reviewer.pdf

pone.0342330.s004.pdf^{(2.1MB, pdf)}

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_BWC_nov26.docx

pone.0342330.s005.docx^{(2.7MB, docx)}

Data Availability Statement

All relevant data are within the manuscript and in the Supporting information files. The online repository is available at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GBHCF.

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PERMALINK

Barriers and opportunities to preventing residential bird–window collisions

Anastasia J V Lysyk

Aalia I Khan

Deborah Conners

Rachel T Buxton

Roles

Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Study area

Data collection

Data analysis

Results

Awareness of bird–window collisions

Fig 1. Proportions of 422 survey responses “definitely not”, “probably not”, “probably yes”, and “definitely yes” to questions corresponding to observation, knowledge, perception and willingness to address bird–window collisions in Ottawa, Canada.

Willingness to address bird–window collisions

Fig 3. Forest plot of results from cumulative link mixed model of relationship between willingness and age, housing type, gender, and ownership of a bird feeder from survey respondents from Ottawa, Canada.

Barriers to action

Fig 4. Number of respondents who selected each barrier to taking action to prevent bird–window collisions at their residence.

Fig 5. Forest plot of results from cumulative link mixed model of relationship between willingness and barriers selected by respondents from Ottawa, Canada.

Solutions to barriers

Fig 6. Types of solutions selected by 422 respondents from Ottawa, Canada.

Fig 7. Cramer’s V correlation coefficient showing which solutions are most often associated with barriers identified by 422 respondents from Ottawa, Canada.

Discussion

Awareness and willingness to take action to prevent bird–window collisions

Barriers to action and potential solutions

Limitations and future directions

Potential pathways and opportunities for increasing action

Supporting information

Acknowledgments

Data Availability

Funding Statement

References

Decision Letter 0

Teddy Lazebnik

Roles

Author response to Decision Letter 1

Decision Letter 1

Teddy Lazebnik

Roles

Acceptance letter

Teddy Lazebnik

Roles

Associated Data

Supplementary Materials

Data Availability Statement

ACTIONS

PERMALINK

RESOURCES

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