Sean Bean hosts the popular Peanut & Crumb podcast Get Birding (Image: Courtesy Get Birding)
Sean Bean loves it. Zoe Ball swears by it. Even Ariana Grande is a fan. And with more than 12 million hashtags on Instagram and 500,000 videos on TikTok, it’s safe to say birdwatching is no longer a past-time for the older generation or the eccentric few. Since lockdown, Gen Z has become so obsessed with “birding”, as it’s also known, that it is now classed as an official “hot-girl hobby”.
Louis Vuitton even sent models down the catwalk with binocular bags and Gucci has released a whole line of stylish birding wear. But perhaps what’s really made birdwatching soar is the positive effect it can have on your health, especially your mental wellbeing. It’s something actor Sean Bean knows all about. He may be known for his tough guy characters like Sharpe, Lord of The Rings’ Boromir, Game of Thrones’ Ned Stark and Robin Hood’s Sheriff of Nottingham, but off screen nothing helps him unwind better than his feathered friends in the great outdoors.
“It gives me a great deal of joy and a great peace of mind,” explains Sean, 67. “If I feel stressed out I just go out into the garden. You feel much more relaxed, more open to things. It’s so good for human beings to be able to get out there and watch them.”
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Looking for his next ‘spot’ (Image: Courtesy Get Birding)
This week is National Mental Health Week, and the theme is “action” – encouraging people to take positive steps to increase their mental wellbeing. For Sean, the therapeutic benefit of birdwatching comes from feeling at one with nature. “It’s so grounding. It’s not like anything that we do in our jobs,” he says. “It’s nothing to do with them. [That’s why] I don’t like anyone ringing me up when I’m outside!”
Sean’s been exploring recent reports about birding and how it can help your mental health, on his hit fortnightly podcast series Get Birding, which sees him interviewing other celebrity birders, including Zoe Ball, Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves), Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Jo Whiley and Samuel West.
Simply slowing down
After a difficult few years in her personal life, TV and radio star Zoe, 55, has similarly benefited from the power of birds. “It’s been so therapeutic being out in nature,” she told Sean on the Get Birding podcast. “There just comes a point where you just need to slow down and stop. The simplicity of birdsong is so good for the soul – and it’s free.”
Jim Moir added that it made him feel “more connected” to the present, a sentiment shared by Instagram’s Birdgirl, aka Mya-Rose Craig, the UK’s most famous Gen Z ornithologist. She says: “Birdwatching is very grounding and is the thing that keeps me tethered. Getting out into nature is a reallylovely version of mindfulness, because you have to be very present and it can take you away from everything else in that moment.”
Yet the proof of the hobby’s benefits is not just anecdotal. Good Morning Britain’s Dr Amir Khan is also one of Sean’s frequent guests on Get Birding, which is produced by Peanut & Crumb, a production company run by TV and radio presenter Katie Derham and award-winning producer JaneGerber.
Dr Khan can explain exactly what happens in the body when we hear birdsong.
“It is doing wonders for our body,” he said. “It’s reducing our stress hormone cortisol which is lowering our blood pressure and our heart rate. It’s increasing our dopamine and serotonin levels, which makes us feel relaxed and calm and happy.”
Sean and Instagram’s Birdgirl, aka Mya-Rose Craig (Image: Courtesy Get Birding)
Birders brains ‘may age slower’
Not only can birds help boost your mood, they may actually rewire the brain – and slow down its ageing. Canadian neuroscientist Erik Wing has just published a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience comparing the brains of expert and novice birders and it’s certainly ruffling some feathers in the science communities.
By studying MRI scans of more than 1,000 birdwatchers, he found that those who were experts in the hobby had more condensed and complex structures in areas of the brain linked to certain skills birdwatching requires.
These included the areas governing heightened spatial awareness, highly detailed visual perception and good working memory. This area of study is still in its early stages but the results indicate the hobby may actually rewire the brain and build up cognitive reserve potentially protecting the brain against decline as people age.
Wing said more work had to be done to confirm a definite causal link, but was very interested by what he’d found so far.
“In brain regions supporting expert performance, older birdwatchers continue to have more compact, organised structure than age-matched novices,” he said. “We know that knowledge developed across many years helps protect cognitive function in ageing, and this will be important to keep studying in birding.”
Everyone can try birding… (Image: Getty)
It even changes our brain waves
“Birdsong is calming and comforting but it’s not repetitive – it changes every so often – so what it does is it changes our brainwaves as well,” Dr Khan told Sean’s podcast. “We go from Beta brainwaves which are anxiety-inducing busy brainwaves to Alpha brainwaves which are more calming and put us in our rest state.”
A 2022 study from King’s College London went even further. Scientists created a smartphone application, Urban Mind, to collect people’s real-time reports of mental wellbeing before and after hearing wild birdsong. They then asked 1,292 participants to take part three times a day for three years. By analysing 26,000 data entries, they were able to statistically prove the link between hearing birds and an elevated mood.
The natural mood boost was found to last up to eight hours, and even helped some participants with depression.
Your social prescription
The report’s lead author Ryan Hammoud suggested doctors should add birdwatching to their “social prescribing” roster. “We have for the first time shown the direct link between seeing or hearing birds and positive mood,” he said. “This study has potential for mental healthcare policy.
Visits to habitats with a high degree of birdlife could becomepart of social prescribing schemes, playing a role in preventing mental health difficulties and complementing more traditional interventions.” So could sparrows and starlings in the garden or local park really be the answer to better mental health? Mind, one of Britain’s biggest mental health charities, feels the need for further studies but backs social prescribing as a complement to other treatments.
Ornithologist Mya-Rose Craig shares her tips for getting started (Image: Getty)
Feeling twitchy: here’s how to get started
Top tips for birdwatching beginners from Get Birding’s resident expert Mya-Rose Craig, aka @BirdgirlUK, the influencer who is taking the hobby by storm…
1. Become more aware of your surroundings, with birds in mind: So noticing if you see birds out of your window, when they might be the mostactive – generally dawn and dusk – noticing if you have any green patches near you and just becoming more engaged.
2. Identify what you are seeing. There are lots of great online resources and apps to help with this. A particularly popular one is Merlin, which helps to identify birds by sight, but also by sound, so you know what is around you, even if you can’t see them. It is a nice, accessible app, and is free.
3. Next, start thinking about a pair of binoculars to help get an up-close view of the birds around you. You can go quite fancy with these – I have the Swarovski Optiks, but there are cheaper pairs that do the job just fine.
4. Once you have got to grips with the area around your home, start to think a bit further afield, maybe woodlands, nature reserves or wetlands. The RSPB website, rspb.org.uk, is a good place to find these.”
5. Birdwatching is a hobby that can be done solo but it is also nice to make it a social hobby. You might want to connect with local groups, as there are a great deal of us birdwatchers around these days!
Sean’s hit birding podcast goes out every other week (Image: Courtesy Get Birding)
“The ‘mindfulness’ element could be a factor in why paying attention to birdlife may be beneficial,” says Rosie Weatherley, the charity’s information content manager.
“Studies show that spending time in nature can reduce stress and help cope with mental health problems. Taking time to smell flowers or listening to birdsong, can be particularly beneficial. Focusing on your senses can help bring you to the present moment and can be calming.”
The charity is currently working to ensure everyone has access to green spaces, regardless of where they live and has a number of schemes to help those unable to get to a local park. But for the most part, fans have stressed that the joy of birding is in its simplicity. Most of the time, it can be done anywhere, and at almost any hour. Sean summed it up perfectly in a recent discussion. “We’re so lucky to have this around us for free,” he said.
All it takes is patience and a few feathered friends.
- Get Birding, a Peanut & Crumb production, is available wherever you find your podcasts, and on YouTube @GetBirdingUK, with a new episode every fortnight. Join its members club, The Flock, at getbird.ing
