A few years ago, Kelly-Sue O’Connor of Blenheim, Ontario, was trying to learn meditation under her therapist’s guidance. But she struggled with a key step: tuning in to her physical feelings. “I cannot connect with my body easily,” says O’Connor, who has PTSD, ADHD, and an autoimmune disease. Then her therapist made a surprising suggestion: O’Connor could focus on a practice that brings her pleasure—observing nature and, in particular, birds.
Soon the longtime birder saw her hobby could help her slow her thoughts and become more attentive in the moment, just as in other forms of meditation. Today, she is a champion of birding as an avenue for self-care and founded the Birder Brain project to help others boost their own mental health. “My brain is so much clearer when I’m in nature,” she says. “I can concentrate on the present.”
For decades, research has shown that spending time in nature has positive effects: lowering stress, restoring focus, and inducing feelings of awe and joy. “The exciting thing now is really going beyond that,” says Melissa Marselle, an environmental psychologist at the University of Surrey. Scientists are digging into why these outcomes occur and how to maximize them—and along the way they’ve found that birding can be an especially powerful balm.
A study published in April illustrates this effect. Researchers found that when college students, faculty, and staff went on weekly 30-minute nature walks, they reported better well-being and lower distress compared to those who went about their usual routines. When they specifically watched for birds on those walks, they saw even bigger benefits. Other studies have found that everyday avian encounters can boost happiness and relaxation, that hearing birdsong helps people recover from stress and fatigue, and that these benefits may increase when people notice greater diversity in an area’s birdlife.
Studies have found that everyday avian encounters can boost happiness and relaxation.
Attention may be one key factor in these findings, says North Carolina State University wildlife ecologist Nils Peterson, an author on the nature walk study. Simply enjoying the great outdoors is clearly beneficial, but birds—in all their varied behaviors, colors, shapes, and songs—“draw you into that natural experience,” he says. Watching a sparrow flit past or tuning into a grosbeak melody can help us appreciate beauty and tap into our senses, rather than dwell on our stress.
How you observe birdlife contributes, too. You can connect with nature more deeply through a slow or mindful birding practice, which emphasizes moving at a gentle pace to take in more details about the animals you encounter. Birding, after all, “doesn’t have to be a sport,” says Joan Strassmann, an evolutionary biologist and author of the forthcoming The Slow Birding Journal. “It can be a meditation.”
This story originally ran in the Fall 2024 issue as “Use Birding as a Balm.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.
