The positive benefits to mood lasted until the next app message or up to eight hours.
“That was something that quite hit home that it’s not just an immediate effect,” the study’s lead author, Ryan Hammoud, research assistant at IoPPN, said. Hammoud continued in a news release:
“There is growing evidence on the mental health benefits of being around nature and we intuitively think that the presence of birdsong and birds would help lift our mood. However, there is little research that has actually investigated the impact of birds on mental health in real-time and in a real environment.
By using the Urban Mind app, we have for the first time showed the direct link between seeing or hearing birds and a positive mood. We hope this evidence can demonstrate the importance of protecting and providing environments to encourage birds, not only for biodiversity but for our mental health.”
Research partner in the Kings College London study, Jo Gibbons, a landscape architect, added:
“Who hasn’t tuned into the melodic complexities of the dawn chorus early on a spring morning? A multisensory experience that seems to enrich everyday life, whatever our mood or whereabouts. This exciting research underpins just how much the sight and sound of birdsong lifts the spirits. It captures intriguing evidence that a biodiverse environment is restorative in terms of mental well-being. That the sensual stimulation of birdsong, part of those daily ‘doses’ of nature, is precious and time-lasting.”
I can remember on my first trip to China while helping to build a dialysis clinic, I noticed one day that there was something missing as I walked around the hospital garden area. As I pondered what it was that was missing, it suddenly came to me; there were no birds. I was not hearing any pleasant chirps and songs that I was so used to hearing in the surrounding areas I was used to walking in. There were no birds. As I ate dinner that night and had a very small, cooked bird presented as one of my courses, it hit me that they had most likely eaten most of the birds so that there were none left to sing. How sad!
Worse, each year, millions of tons of toxic chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides (glyphosate, etc.) are sprayed on our food and into our environment. This along with weather geoengineering is killing our precious birds and their food supply at an alarming rate. We need to tell our Reps that this must stop! Birds are a vital part of our ecosystem.
Humans are designed to be connected to their natural environment, and when this connection is severed, as is so common in the modern world, physical, emotional, and mental health suffers. It’s noted in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.