Birdsong improves wellbeing

The increase in life satisfaction from listening to birdsong is equivalent to a £100-a-week pay rise, says new research.

“The happiest Europeans are those who can experience different bird species daily, or who live in near-natural surroundings home to many species,” says Joel

Methorst of Goethe University. “We also examined socioeconomic data of people surveyed, and we found that avian diversity is as important for satisfaction as much as income,” says the university’s Dr Katrin Böhning-Gaese. The study used data from 2012’s European Quality of Life Survey.