Apr 22, 2015 10:05 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Birds can enhance life in even the busiest or crappiest neighborhoods, according to a recent study.

Researchers at St. Edward's University and the University of Illinois at Chicago found that people living in a city setting had generally very positive feelings towards backyard birds. However, a few people found bird droppings, nests in gutters, and other nuisances to be annoying.

For the study, researchers wanted to examine at the relationship between people and nature in a city setting.

Researchers surveyed the breeding birds in 25 neighborhoods adjacent to forest preserves in Cook County, Ill., recording a total of 36 species, and sent questionnaires to the families in each neighborhood.

The questionnaire asked respondents to estimate how many bird species were found around their homes, but there was no relationship between residents' perceptions of bird diversity and the actual species numbers observed in the bird surveys. Instead, the more favorable someone's feelings about local birds, the more species they guessed were present.

"The interdisciplinary approach for this study stemmed from the knowledge that many of today's pressing environmental questions can't be answered by a single discipline alone," researcher J. Amy Belaire of St. Edward's University said in a statement. "The social surveys helped shed light on the many things people value about birds in the neighborhood, especially the birds' aesthetic qualities and the role they play in local ecosystems. Although residential neighborhoods in our study sites had surprisingly high bird diversity, we found that people didn't seem to be entirely aware of this biodiversity."

Programs such as citizen science projects can increase people's awareness of their neighborhoods' avian diversity, according to researchers.

The findings are detailed in in a new paper in The Condor: Ornithological Applications.

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