Sounds of Nature in the City: No Evidence of Bird Song Improving Stress Recovery

16th November 2023

Natural noises

• The purpose of this study is to see if natural noises from birds, provided at an ecologically realistic sound level, may alleviate physical stress by masking noise from urban traffic.

Reduction strees

• Although not statistically significant, there appears to be a trend according to our prediction that "traffic noise" would have the least stress reduction and "bird song" would have the largest stress reduction.

• Our assumptions, on the other hand, were based on earlier findings from research that employed self-evaluations to suggest that bird songs relieve stress more than other disturbances such as traffic noise.

Bird’s sound

• We selected bird songs to disguise the noise since it is a typical soundscape seen in cities throughout the world.

• Bird melodies and flowing or running water are common natural noise makers.

• Overall, soundscapes are ill-defined, with just the term "chirps of birds" being used to identify or characterise the birds, even though there are over 10,000 bird species and much more bird songs.

• People's views of an urban context are influenced by the type of species, the number of species, and the mix of species.