Bluebird of happiness might be in your yard
Carleton researcher finds bird species richness predicts feelings of well-being
It’s not surprising that people who live in more prosperous neighbourhoods are more likely to report feeling happy about their lives. Or that people who live in leafy communities or close to water are more likely to feel satisfied about where they live.
But Lauren Hepburn, a graduate student in biology at Carleton University, also found that people who live in Ottawa neighbourhoods were there is a “richness” of bird species are also more likely to give their communities high marks for satisfaction — even if they’re not affluent neighbourhoods.
Hepburn found that income was still the major predictor of overall satisfaction. But even in neighbourhoods with lower median incomes, people reported being satisfied with their neighbourhoods if there was a broad variety of bird species. This was true even if residents didn’t appear to take notice of birds.
Green space appears to both attract birds and make people more satisfied with where they live. “My results suggest that when you make the landscape better for birds, you would improve neighbourhood satisfaction,” Hepburn said.
She conducted her study without asking residents a single question about birds. Hepburn and two undergraduate assistants went door-to-door in neighbourhoods all over the city with eight questions asking residents about their natural dispositions, their satisfaction with their lives, their neighbourhoods and their connection to nature.
In total, they interviewed 1,035 people who lived within 250 metres of one of the 100 “bird point” sites in the city where Ottawa Bird Count volunteers conduct an annual standardized tally of the number of birds and the variety of species during a 10-minute window at daybreak during peak breeding season.
At some bird point sites, volunteers reported only two species of birds. There were as many as 18 species in some other locations.
Hepburn cross-referenced the levels of happiness reported by the respondents with Statistics Canada data on median incomes in the neighbourhood and data about tree canopy cover, proximity to water and the abundance of birds and variety of species.
People who lived in neighbourhoods with high median incomes were more likely to more satisfied, as were those who lived where there is a canopy of trees, and those who lived close to water.
But as bird species richness increased, so did the probability that a resident would say they were extremely satisfied with the neighbourhood. Some sites Hepburn visited near Bayshore and the Queensway had high bird richness, but lower income. Still, residents reported higher-than-average neighbourhood satisfaction. The same was true of some sites near Hunt Club and Greenboro.
Hepburn believes it’s the presence of songbirds that corresponds to happiness.
“If I had to hypothesize, I would have to say it’s the sounds,” she said. “People bring up birdsong as something that improves mood.”
That makes sense to John Zelenski, a happiness psychology researcher at Carleton who was one of Hepburn’s advisers.
In general, research shows that experiencing nature, even if it’s a short daily walk through green space, enhances well-being. The great thing about Hepburn’s study, he said, is that it took apart the elements of nature to find out which parts of the experience produce the happiness effect.
Researchers are already looking at lines and patterns in nature — and even architecture — that produce feelings of well-being. “Maybe we should be paying more attention to sound. You hear more birds than you see. There may be something about the ambient environment,” he said. “There’s an urban gradient that may be associated with well-bring.”
Adam Smith, who is one of the directors of the Ottawa Bird Count, said more than 100 people sign up for the six-week class he offers every spring in identifying birds by their song.
It’s well-documented that birds make people calm and happy, he said.
“People like birds. Birds are fantastic and beautiful and they sing, even in the urban environment.”
There’s a human connection to nature, said Hepburn’s thesis adviser, Lenore Fahrig, a biologist who studies the effects of landscape structure on the abundance, distribution and persistence of living things.
“This brings up questions of the things that affect us subconsciously.”
The data may yield whether there is a connection between various bird species and neighbourhood satisfaction, said Hepburn.
It might be the number of singers or the diversity of singers,” she said. “Birds seem to be helping people. It would be worthwhile to take more of an interest in this.”