Birdwatching and Health

If your mind space is crowded with too many stressful “negative” occupants such as COVID crisis, border conflicts, shattering economy, uncertainties of future or locusts, just to name a few, and if you are in a mood to explore something new and relaxing, give Birdwatching a try.

At the outset, let me confess that being a workaholic all my life and born under the Zodiac sign of Capricorn, I had never found time for such “idle” hobbies”. In fact as students with lives packed with studies, sports, thrills, work and challenges, we had scoffed at Dr Salim Ali, one of the greatest ornithologists, who had made headlines decades ago.

It all started 2 years ago when my wife hung a “bird feeder” outside our window and our gardener planted a new creeper in the garden. Two years down, when I found myself locked in at home recently in my own empty nest, I found time to notice and appreciate groups of domestic birds visiting us.

And when I Googled “Bird watching health benefits” I was stunned with 3 million hits!

And here are some of them

1. It helps you to be CALM and PATIENT and ACCEPTING. Yes, birds do not like “hyperactive” or “loud” humans and fly away. Hence it forces you to talk and move less, yet making you

2. ATTENTIVE and OBSERVANT: watching how they behave, feed, interact with each other. You need to be sharply focused and observant to catch their moves and actions.

3. It is MEDITATIVE in a way, helping accomplish much of what you can achieve by sitting still and calm yet remaining focused, that many techniques of meditation propound.

4. It is a great STRESS BUSTER: you will find it hard to resist a smile when happy birds cheerfully chirp outside your window or share the EXCITEMENT of watching a baby sparrow take its first flight!

5. It teaches you to be GENTLE and to CARE…something that modern urban children inadvertently trained to be aggressive and competitive can do with these days.

6. It helps restore NATURE DEFICIT DISORDER…..a new malady that is being recognised as a cause of increasing urban unhappiness.(see below)

7. The hobby helps you make friends with others with a similar frequency and mind set.

8. Of course it help you travel and remain close to wild spaces….but that does not apply to present COVID lockdown times….that is for some time later.

For my pundit friends, who want scientific “proof “, there are over a hundred papers, especially done in England and western USA documenting increased levels of stress and depression in dwellers of crowded urban concrete regions compared with those living near greener natural spaces frequented by birds.

A word of caution though: Birds are beautiful only when they are free to fly and be with nature. Keeping them caged enables you to see only their bodies but not share the joyfulness of their spirits!