Seven Reasons You Should Take Up Birdwatching This Year
The psychological benefits of birding.
Posted January 1, 2026 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
When I was around 5 years old, living in a small apartment in New York, my mother showed me something miraculous. She broke up a piece of stale bread and put it out onto the fire escape in front of our kitchen window. Soon, there was a swarm of beautiful winged creatures, lovely little birds with rufous, tan, and black feathers on their wings, coffee-colored streaks behind their eyes, grey crowns, and black throat feathers above a bright white belly. My mother told me they were called “English sparrows.”
A couple of decades later, I was camping with my own son in Shenandoah National Park, and there were a lot of birds flitting around; we went into a nearby town and bought a cheap pair of binoculars, as well as a small field guide on birds. When we trained our new binoculars on the trees, we were treated to avian displays of brilliant red (cardinals), yellow (goldfinches), and blue (indigo buntings).
But as impressive as those experiences were, I didn’t really become an official birdwatcher until I was closer to 50 years old. And whenever I go birding, I notice that the population of serious birdwatchers includes many more senior citizens than young people. This might be because older people have more time on their hands, or because we are a bit wiser about what makes for a satisfying life experience. In any event, I have learned that birdwatching has some serious psychological benefits, and I recommend it to anyone, perhaps especially to younger people, who, according to one recent survey, now regularly spend five hours every day on recreational screen time (Mowreader, 2025).
Here are seven reasons it would pay to trade some of those screen hours on watching birds:
Get a pair of binoculars* get out into the nearest park, look into the green trees and bushes, and maybe later you’ll not only feel better about your own life, but be inspired to save the world.
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- They should be 8 x 42. You might think 10 times magnification is better than 8, but things get shaky, and the field of view is narrower when the magnification gets too high, plus they get heavier to carry around.
Coventry, P. A., Brown, J. E., Pervin, J., Brabyn, S., Pateman, R., Breedvelt, J., ... & White, P. L. (2021). Nature-based outdoor activities for mental and physical health: Systematic review and meta-analysis. SSM-population health , 16 , 100934.
Lomax, T., Butler, J., Cipriani, A., & Singh, I. (2024). Effect of nature on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents: meta-review. The British Journal of Psychiatry , 1-9
Mowreader, A. (2025). How excessive phone use can hinder student success. Inside Higher Ed . December 18
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Douglas T. Kenrick, Ph.D. , is professor of social psychology at Arizona State University.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.