Just 10 Minutes Of Birdsong In Forest Linked To Stress Relief

Restored Forest Plus Birdsong Beat Every Other Setting in Stress Study

A new experiment asked college students to sit quietly outdoors for 10 minutes while different sounds played through their headphones, then measured how stressed, emotionally drained, or mentally restored they felt afterward. The results were not subtle. Students reported lower stress and fewer negative feelings after the forest and recorded birdsong condition than after the other three conditions, and the gap registered clearly in a controlled study.

Mental health on college campuses has been deteriorating for years. By 2020, roughly 60% of college students reported experiencing mental health challenges, according to research cited in the study, and that number worsened during the pandemic. Against that backdrop, researchers at North Carolina State University set out to test a simple question: does sitting in a restored forest while birdsong plays actually change how people feel in the moment, and does the physical setting matter as much as the sound?

Turns out, both matter. Every measure researchers tracked pointed the same direction, and the size of the gaps between conditions was too large to chalk up to chance.

How 106 Students Tested Four Combinations of Nature and Noise

Researchers recruited 106 student volunteers from NC State’s College of Natural Resources for the study, published in the journal Environmental Conservation. Most participants identified as female, and the average age was 22.5 years old. Over one roughly two-hour session, each student visited two spots on or near campus, carrying a camp chair, noise-cancelling headphones, and their own cellphone.

One spot was a restored forest along a creek, replanted and re-engineered starting in the early 2000s, with more than 70% tree canopy cover and no view of buildings. Participants faced away from the footpath, toward the trees. The other sat outside the Talley Student Union, a grey, built-up area with more than 70% hard structures and clear sightlines to buildings.

At each spot, participants sat quietly for five minutes to settle in, then listened to one of two 10-minute soundscapes through their headphones: either a birdsong recording from a freshwater marsh at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, featuring Carolina wren, blue-grey gnatcatcher, and white-eyed vireo, or traffic noise recorded near a busy intersection outside Paris. Every student went through all four combinations of location and sound.

After each 10-minute exposure, participants completed a short survey on their phones, rating current stress on a scale from zero to ten, along with questions measuring positive and negative feelings during the past 10 minutes and how restorative the experience felt.

Stress Ratings Dropped Sharpest When Location and Sound Both Lined Up

Of the four combinations tested, stress ratings ran lowest for the restored forest paired with birdsong, which also produced the fewest negative feelings and the most positive feelings. Traffic noise in the grey space produced the opposite result on every single measure: highest stress, most negative emotions, fewest positive emotions, and lowest sense of mental restoration.

Mixing the two, birdsong in the grey space or traffic noise in the forest, landed somewhere in the middle. Both the natural setting and the bird sounds seemed to add their own boost on top of each other, which is why the combination beat either one alone.

One wrinkle stood out: for how restorative participants rated an experience, location mattered more than soundscape. Sitting in the forest left people feeling substantially more restored than hearing birdsong in a concrete setting did. Birdsong still added a meaningful bump on top of the forest alone, and even birdsong in the grey space scored better than traffic noise in that same built environment, though the forest remained the stronger factor.

Participants didn’t need any birdwatching know-how. No binoculars, no field guides. They just sat and listened.

Restored Urban Forests Could Offer Cheap, Accessible Stress Relief

College students make a useful population to study partly because they face unusually high stress loads and often have limited access to traditional mental health resources. Birdsong has an edge over a lot of other stress-relief options: it’s already sitting in urban parks and green corridors, free for anyone nearby to hear.

That point carries weight for city planning. This study used a small patch of restored urban forest, not a sprawling wilderness preserve, and still found strong effects. Strategically placed green spaces with meaningful tree cover, and the birds that come with them, could offer short-term stress relief, though longer studies are needed to determine whether the effects last beyond the 10-minute window tested here.

Access to these benefits is not equal. The researchers pointed out that birdwatching has historically skewed toward older, white participants, and it stands to reason that restored forests with dense canopy cover aren’t spread evenly across neighborhoods either. Benefits tied to where a person lives will likely reach some people far more than others.

For the roughly 100 million Americans who birdwatched in 2022 alone, a figure cited in the paper, this research offers something concrete: in this group of NC State students, 10 minutes in the forest-and-birdsong condition was tied to lower stress ratings and fewer negative feelings than the other conditions tested. That effect showed up clearly with nothing more than a chair, a recording, and somewhere to sit.

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Disclaimer: This article summarizes findings from a single peer-reviewed study involving 106 college students at one university. The study measured immediate self-reported feelings after 10-minute exposures and did not test lasting effects, clinical outcomes, or whether these results apply to people outside this age group and setting. It is not a substitute for medical or mental health advice.

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