When I moved to Amsterdam in 2015, there was a much needed quietness. I couldn’t understand the language so even if on a train, tram or bus … I was protected from chatter, opinion and politics.
I can not recall how long this lasted - maybe just until my understanding of language and the expression of talking - stopped me completely retreating.
I also realised that while I was choosing to give myself a break from ‘talking’. Amsterdam was actually a very noisy place - birds singing, woodpeckers pecking, ducks quacking, and Rose-ringed parakeets.
It make sense and much research supports that ‘natural environments, and particularly visual stimuli in nature, are usually perceived as restorative following stress and attention fatigue’,
Researchers from Kings College London published a study in 2018 testing the effects of exposure to nature on mental health. Birdsong improved people’s mental well being - and not only was relaxing, it reduced our ‘impulsivity‘… making people more deliberate.
Yet it was interesting to read Eleanor Ratcliffe perspective on this topic.
Personal connection to nature may also influence how restorative birds and their sounds are perceived to be by different individuals. While existing theoretical approaches to restorative environments generally view connection to nature as a general human trait, recent work in the fields of connectedness to nature suggests that this may vary individually (e.g. Mayer & Frantz, 2004).
Birdsong recurs as a type of sound used in such studies, but little is known about restorative perceptions of bird sounds on their own and how these may relate to existing theories of environmental restoration.
To extrapolate, not all birds may be perceived as restorative, and not all listeners may find them restorative. As such, it seems sensible to explore how personal associations with different birds and their sounds, as well as one's overarching relationship with the natural world, might influence the extent to which they are considered beneficial for restoration.
While bird song and calls were found to be the type of natural sound most commonly associated with perceived stress recovery and attention restoration. However, not all bird sounds were regarded as helpful for such processes.
Three themes formed the basis of these perceived relationships:
- affective appraisals,
- cognitive appraisals, and
- relationships with nature.
Sub-themes of the acoustic, aesthetic, and associative properties of bird sounds were also related to restorative perceptions.