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It appears that the authors have addressed all of the reviewers' comments.
I have assessed the revision myself and am mostly happy with the current version. The manuscript appears to be ready for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Richard Schuster, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Dear authors,
This version is a much improved manuscript over the first submission. However, the reviewers have identified a number of minor concerns that need to be addressed before we can accept this submission. I have also identified a couple of items that also need to be dealt with: such as inconsistent capitalization on the axes of your figures, titles above some figures that should not be there, and much more detailed figure legends such that each figure is standalone. Finally, there are a number of times throughout the manuscript where there is not a space between the text and the parentheses of a source (example: Line 91: approximately 530 km2(Gelashe, 2017)).
Please address these minor issues in your response.
Cheers,
Danny
the article will be ready for publication, after fixing only one reference included in the manuscript:
the write reference as follow (Searle, S.R., Speed, F.M., Milliken, GA., 1980. Population marginal means in the linear model: an alternative to least squares means. Am Stat 34: 216–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.1980.10483031.)
The study design and methods appropriate to the research objective
Conclusions are well stated
The paper is a lot clearer now, great job -- the figures are easy to read now, and the flow of the paper is much clearer overall. You should be proud of the new version. I feel like most of my critiques have been addressed. My only remaining comment are about the figures and captions.
Grammar:
E.g., Figure 9 reads: Number of Species observation in different Habitat during Dry and Wet Seasons
but should read: "Number of species observed in different habitats during the Dry and West Seasons"
The caption for Figure 7 has an eight in it. There is also some funny capitalization in the figure captions -- be sure to review them.
Figure explanations:
What do the bars vs. the circles represent in Figure 7 and 8? Please explain in the caption or with a legend. Each figure should be understandable without reading the rest of the paper (I think).
Good.
Good.
Dear authors,
I have recieved comments from two reviewers who both found merit in your submission. They both also pointed out a number of issues which must be addressed before we can consider this manuscript for publication in PeerJ. In particular, there are many grammatical issues throughout the manuscript that distract from the content. For example, in the Abstract, the second sentence starts with numbers, but the start of the sentence the # must be spelled out. Also, there is a space missing from the end of most sentences and the citation at the end of the sentence. Please correct these throughout. The reviewers have also pionted out several of these examples too.
Another big area of focus is the quality of the figures. Many of the figures, especially 5, 6, 7, and 8, appear blurry, look very small, and the text is hard to read. If the quality of these could be improved, that would really help this paper.
Please address all of the reviewer's comments in a revised version of this manuscript and I would be happy to consider it for publication.
Cheers,
Danny
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review and editorial comments are addressed in a response letter and any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
**Language Note:** The review process has identified that the English language must be improved. PeerJ can provide language editing services - please contact us at [email protected] for pricing (be sure to provide your manuscript number and title). Alternatively, you should make your own arrangements to improve the language quality and provide details in your response letter. – PeerJ Staff
Title and Keywords:
The title and keywords appropriate to the content
Abstract:
The abstract adequately describe the paper, its main findings, and conclusion
Introduction:
The Introduction supplies sufficient background information for the reader to understand and evaluate the experiment, satisfactorily defines the hypothesis, explain the importance of the study.
Material and Methods:
The study design and methods appropriate to the research objective, a sufficient detail provided on procedures, analysis and statistical method, the information included can help another researcher to be able to repeat the experiment itself.
Results:
The results clearly explain the finding, authors made appropriate use of tables and figs to demonstrate their findings.
Discussion:
The authors adequately described, explaining and evaluating the finding.
References:
Some references inside the manuscript not founded in references section
experimental designed is good, a sufficient detail provided on the experiments
The authors adequately described, explaining and evaluating the finding
All the needed review included directly into the pdf file
Writing could be improved for clarity, eg., in line 21: "...bird study was carried out southeast of Ethiopia in line with Bale Mountain National Park aimed at investigating the composition..."
This sentence seems to mean that the study was carried out in a country that is not Ethiopia, when I think you mean it was carried out in the southeast part of the country. I'm also not sure what is meant by 'in line with.' Based on the rest of the paper, I think it means 'adjacent'
I'd suggest rewording this, and other sentences, to increase clarity. I might re-write this sentence to: "...bird study was carried out in southeast Ethiopia, adjacent to the Bale Mountain National Park and investigated the composition..."
There are also some places where you might improve grammar. E.g., line 32: "The density of birds was different in three habitats and two seasons, but habitat difference was not depending on seasonal effects." should be corrected to "The density of birds was different in three habitats and two seasons, but the difference in habitat was not dependent on seasonal effects."
If these corrections are unclear, I'd recommend using a grammar checker -- chatgpt is quite expert at fixing such errors.
I think this is an important contribution to our understanding of baseline bird abundance, habitat preference, and seasonality. I'd love to see a bit more clarity on the gap that it fills.
In line 76, you clearly describe the objective. Could you say a bit more about the degree to which this knowledge exists? Have there been other baseline surveys of this area? Have they covered these habitats and seasons? Including this information will help the reader understand how your contribution fits into existing knowledge.
Overall, the findings seem well-supported.
However, I would like to see more rationale for the 'bottleneck' argument. As it is, this only comes up in the conclusion, and is only briefly stated. "Nevertheless, this localized endemism also brings challenges, including the concentration of endemic species and potential resource bottlenecks that endanger specific bird populations."
I'd recommend either removing this from the abstract and conclusion, or providing additional argument for why this constitutes a bottleneck, based on your data and the literature.
Great paper! I was especially intrigued by your analysis of seasonality. Good luck!
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