Birdsong and Health
Birdsong can be healing.
In 2020, during the strange time of the Covid-19 pandemic measures that kept many people indoors and working from home, the traffic in many cities was light. When the world slowed down, there were fewer cars on the roads. It was quiet and cleaner in many neighborhoods with less air pollution because there was less exhaust coming from fewer cars on the road. People walked and rode bicycles both for exercise and running errands. Somehow, with less noise and cleaner air, the environment became more hospitable to the birds during this time. The urban sounds of traffic in my city seemed to be replaced by birdsong, and I noticed birdsong every day. Though the Covid-19 “lock downs” made for a challenging time, the birdsong gave me hope and made me feel that something good could come out of what was happening.
Beneficial Effects of Birds and Birdsong
Birdsong does indeed have a beneficial effect on health and well-being. The reasons for this have to do with the fact that the conditions that support bird life also support human life. In addition, there are subtle factors at work that involve how we as humans perceive sound and space and living things that make birdsong especially healing. A meta-analysis of scientific studies on the health benefits of nature sounds in national parks that include birdsong reveal that nature sounds can improve mood, reduce stress, and increase well-being (read more here). Another noteworthy study tracked momentary assessments of mental health of 1292 participants between April 2018 and October 2021 and found that ordinary encounters with birdlife (hearing birds or seeing birds) were associated with long lasting improvements in mental wellbeing, which was true for healthy people and people diagnosed with depression (read that open access study here). In this blog post, I share with you some of findings from studies involving birdsong and health and also share my thoughts on birdsong as healing sound.
The Way you Hear Birdsong
You hear birdsong in a way that is different from the way you hear other sounds like traffic noise. In a 2022 study published in the journal, Nature, health study researchers compared participant responses to birdsong versus traffic noise, and those studies showed what most of us would guess to be true: participants responded positively to birdsong versus traffic noise. In fact, it was found that the birdsong decreased anxiety and depression where the traffic noise increased anxiety and depression.
Birdsong can be the first thing you hear in the morning, and it has been associated with waking hours and waking you up. Listening for birdsong requires a different kind of attention that is known as an “open focus” or a “soft fascination” that is different from the “laser focus” or “narrow focus” that characterizes the highly directed attention required to do mental and physical tasks that involve avoiding risk or solving problems. Those high periods of work and directed focus can be exhausting. Soft fascination is about letting your mind wander and not feeling so busy. Sometimes, simple chores like doing dishes can spark a feeling of soft fascination if you treat the task as an opportunity to be mindful, lighthearted and nonjudgmental. In such a state, there is no pressure to get through things quickly, so you can just do the task, and it might even feel effortless and relaxing. In a similar way, effortlessly listening to birdsong is a great way to practice “soft fascination,” and doing so has been shown to restore people’s ability to focus and concentrate (read more here). Birdsong is generally random and variable but still recognizable, and not overstimulating to the senses. Effortless attention then gives way to “open focus”: Described by scientific researcher, Les Fehmi, “open focus” is a state of alert relaxation when the brain is producing lots of alpha waves and usually arrived at when you engage the senses in a relaxed manner. Birdsong can be a sensory experience that opens your attention to the world and expands your sense of the world.
Even recorded birdsong has been found to have health benefits (see one such study here), not because it is a simulation of nature, but because listening to birdsong in consciously created environments can create a soundscape that stimulates the imagination and allows the body and mind to rest. Another such study featured participants hiking on protected trails that included recorded birdsong and live birdsong, and it was found the recorded birdsong was perceived to enhance the natural environment and increase its beneficial health effects (read that study here). There’s something about the sounds birds make that is especially engaging to the human nervous system.
Our nomadic ancestors learned to listen for birdsong in environments as a sign that resources like clean water and food were nearby. Birdsong meant safety, and perhaps even in modern times the human nervous system still considers birdsong a sign of a safe environment. Birdsong is a subject worth researching when it comes to designing urban environments and green spaces, and it is also part of the discussion of public policy that affects nature conservation and preserving natural resources.
The physical characteristics of nature sounds can be soothing to the human ear. The high frequencies of birdsong are in ranges that are pleasing to the ear: birdsong ranges in frequency between 1,000 Hz and 8,000 Hz, which is the middle range of human hearing often reported to be between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. Thus, both kinds of birdsong—live and recorded—can create soundscapes that bring the mind into the experience of nature and its healing and restoring benefits.
Important Caveats and Implications
Scientific studies involving birdsong in urban forests show what we suspect intuitively, which is that perceiving the environment has complex and multi-sensory characteristics. The seasons (which affect migration patterns of birds), the time of day, the landscape, the diversity of bird life, and personal preference can all influence the birdsong and how we perceive it. I remember attending a spiritual retreat during the summer one year, and people were camping outdoors and being awakened by birdsong in the mornings. Some people were in bliss. Others, not used to camping, found the arrangement stressful and were irritated by the birdsong! In a 2024 study of urban forests and parks and roadside green spaces where birdsong is often the most frequent natural sound in these environments, it was shown that birdsong perception preference has effects on “the recovery benefit of biological factors such as heart rate and skin conductance, which can affect the recovery benefits of urban forests on public physiology and psychology.” However, because people’s perceptions of the birdsong vary, “the benefits of birdsong on recovery are not always favorable.” This is an important point regarding birdsong’s health benefits: personal preference matters as much as measurable environmental factors. That story about the campers’ experience of birdsong either being blissful or irritating rings true!
Birdsong as Pure Sound
I believe birdsong is a form of sound healing in the sense of any sound can carry healing intentions. Thus, birdsong as pure sound from nature carries the energy and information, the Qi, of nature itself. Nature is always renewing and restoring itself or attempting to do so. The message of nature is a message of balance and harmony, and it is a healing message.
Perceiving birdsong out in nature can be an experience of sound perception in its purest sense. Like other nature sounds, birdsong gives a feeling of being in nature and experiencing nature: it fits right in with the sound of running water or wind blowing or dry leaves crunching and all the sounds we would expect when in the great outdoors. The purity of the nature sounds contains a different kind of information that is not verbal or mental. Perceiving birdsong, humans can sense and appreciate aspects of life that are not human created or manufactured. Nature sounds are what we hear when life is quiet, when we are quiet and experiencing nature. The trees and the birds do not judge you, as spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, taught. Birdsong does not have a meaning outside of what it simply is, a part of nature. It can remind you that you are part of nature. So, encountering this kind of pure specimen of life and sound can be a moment of pure sound and simple being.
The physics of sound is that sound is vibration that moves you. It literally vibrates your skin and bones and can transport our consciousness to places. In this way, sound is immersive and can create a sense of place and an intense sense of presence.
Sound artist, Stuart Fowkes, created a sound art piece called “Cities and Memory” that features soundscapes from all over the world. The soundscapes in this sound art piece are immersive and sometimes very exciting and often quite beautiful. Stuart Fowkes thinks deeply and philosophically about sound and considers sound to be a vital human experience. In a recent interview, he shared the observation that “you can hear things before you are born.” When you are a fetus in the womb you can hear the voices of your parents as well as sounds in the environment. In addition, at the other end of the spectrum, when people die, the sense of hearing is widely thought to be the last sense to go. It is thought that as the dying person takes their last breath, the sounds in the final moments can be received. In this way, the ear is a special sensory organ, and what and how we hear sound can deeply affect us. As a child, I wondered about this curious feature of our physiology: Have you ever noticed that we have eyelids but not ear lids? You cannot close your ears the same way you can close your eyes to shut out vision. To shut your ears, you need to take an extra step. In fact, during sleep, while your eyesight is not being used, your sense of hearing is still very much present. A sound in the middle of the night can get your attention and wake you up!
Sound is very much a primordial part of our human sensory existence. Listening to sound with relaxed and healing intent is a way to experience sound in its purity. At such moments, pure sound can transport you to the “essence of the essence,” such that your awareness is full of only sound. For an eternal moment, immersed in sound in this way, your human life is experienced in a way that is spacious and very different from “normal” conscious awareness in busy human life. In this moment of heightened awareness of sound, you can experience yourself as not being a body but having a body and thus be aware of the body but not obsessed or burdened by the body. Any time spent in this awareness is a healing moment for the body, the mind, and the heart, no matter how long the moment lasts.
So: If we can experience birdsong as pure sound it becomes a powerful momentary meditation that can make the body, the mind and heart, go quiet. The feelings, the history, the memories, the ideas, the condemnations and judgments, the fears, emotions, sensations and even pain can go quiet—sometimes permanently. There are stories of masters hearing birdsong upon coming out of meditative states and experiencing spiritual enlightenment and total liberation from what has been described by Eastern spiritual traditions as the pull and push of cyclic existence and the constant activity of the mind. One such teacher named Adyashanti relates the story of coming out of a meditation session and hearing birdsong one day. A question arose in response to the birdsong: “Who hears that? What is hearing that?” As the birdsong continued, the question seemed to evaporate into thin air. The mind silent, there was only birdsong, the vastness of existence, and a thought-free knowing, simply being.