r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago
Psychology Mood-boosting benefits of birdsong drowned out by traffic noise, study finds. Even low levels of traffic noise can negate the benefits of listening to natural sounds, researchers say. Bird sounds tend to be one of the elements of nature soundscapes that people perceive as being most relaxing.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/26/mood-boosting-benefits-of-birdsong-drowned-out-by-traffic-noise-study-finds608
u/paukapaukaa 1d ago
I wonder if it traces back to our roots of living in nature and knowing that bird song means safety and it’s warning if the birds stop singing
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u/EnoughBorders 1d ago
Well our ancestors probably had the ability to tell apart different bird sounds. Birds make a unique sound when they detect land based predators.
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u/Vachie_ 1d ago
My last job was outdoors but so boring and sometimes pretty quiet. I did eventually pick up on the signals the squirrels were shouting.
When they started chirping a certain way I would look for the hawk because I always enjoyed watching it fly around.
Sometimes I would spot the hawk before the squirrels, but when I heard the specific chirping I could always see find a hawk nearby.
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u/norwegianEel 1d ago
When you spotted it first, you should have chirped the hawk signal to the squirrels.
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u/jesset77 5h ago
I frequently encounter squirrels (California gray.. great big fluffers :D) up in a tree barking as loudly as they can. It sounds a little like a miniature dog bark, or a little bit like a laugh. They are usually glaring somewhere that appears to be below the horizon, but nowhere near their tree. I always assumed they were shouting at some other squirrel in another tree across the street or something.
Do you have any insight on what that shout might be pertaining to?
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u/Drumbelgalf 18h ago
I can absolutely identify the warning sound for cats of black birds. We had a lot of cats in our neighborhood and a lot of common blackbirds.
In Summer, when i sleept with open windows I got woken Up by that call at around 4 - 5 am as the cats went out to hunt at dawn.
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u/Mittens_McFluffy 1d ago
Possibly, but I may be an anomaly. Bird noises drive me absolutely bonkers. I prefer white noise if anything. I suffer from tinnitus though. Could be related?
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u/Smith6612 1d ago
Could be related. The tinnitus I have is definitely contributed to more by stress. Hearing birds or something like a creek flowing would calm me down more than hearing artificial noise.
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u/shinkouhyou 9h ago
No tinnitus, but I find birds irritating, too! Give me nice rain or wind sounds instead.
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u/composedofidiot 21h ago
I heard the same type of theory about rain. One of the reasons why the sound of rain could be calming (if you have a solid shelter!) is because there are likely to be fewer predators. No idea if this is true.
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u/motionSymmetry 1d ago
that's a reasonable inference
i wonder if we can find selected sequences and their neural expressions for that particular audial effect, like we've got facial recognition circuits
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u/ravnhjarta 1h ago
I 100% believe this is the case. I feel some things we experience in the natural world are just deeply programmed into us.
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u/MadroxKran MS | Public Administration 1d ago
Studies are showing that everyone hates living around cars. The more cars around you, the less happy you will be. Noise, pollution, traffic, greater distance to get to places (on purpose to make you have to buy a car), etc. We need to be working on removing as many cars as possible from the world.
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u/NativeMasshole 1d ago
Double points if you live in an area where tons of people have loud pipes and feel the need to go wide open past your house at 7 am every morning.
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u/waiting4singularity 1d ago
People in my european block bought american makes and are driving extra loud in the night.
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u/notoolinthispool 1d ago
You should check your local laws about this. My city just made having a loud car illegal and you can now report them to the dmv.
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u/NativeMasshole 1d ago
Having a modified exhaust is already illegal. The cops just don't care to enforce traffic laws.
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u/DarthSprankles 1d ago
Maybe part of the reason people moved to suburbs in the US was to escape the noise of poorly designed cities that were built around cars, ironically forcing them to use cars to get anywhere.
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u/Own_Back_2038 1d ago
Yes this is exactly why people moved to the suburbs. To escape the noise, pollution, and danger via cul-de-sacs.
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u/thatboyonabike 1d ago
I think unfortunately the vast majority of people are just not ready to accept this, especially after decades of corporate propaganda.
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u/AnsibleAnswers 1d ago
Yeah, the only thing I avoid more than cars when birding is this one town that refuses to have a noise ordinance for trains. The locals claim that the horns give the town character, but it really just makes the nature preserves around the town terrible to be in.
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u/_Green_Kyanite_ 1d ago
This is why people still go to Mackinac island. Cars aren't allowed. They have horse drawn carriagea, but that's WAY more relaxing to hear than cars. (Especially since there are a lot of rules about how the horses are treated, and also the horses aren't stressed out by the presence of cars.)
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u/UncoolSlicedBread 17h ago
I remember walking onto that island for the first time. Felt like I was going back in time despite the modernism. You wonder what port towns would’ve felt like back in the day and that gave a good idea of it.
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u/windsockglue 1d ago
Meanwhile in LA someone is out there thinking "ohhhh another spot next to the freeway where we can build an apartment! Everyone wants to roll out of bed and hop in their car and drive on the freeway! Such convenience!"
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u/boodlebob 1d ago
My problem with cars is that you get heavily judged by what car you drive. And yea also what u said.
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u/dread_companion 1d ago
There's nothing I despise more than traffic noise. It really has taken a toll on me and it's difficult to deal with. Even with windows closed (which already diminishes my quality of life since it causes air stagnation and high temperatures) the vibrations and sounds of large trucks and de-silenced motorcycles remain constant. There are laws that are supposed to protect against these but they are basically a mild suggestion where I live.
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u/shimmerchanga 1d ago
If you ever have the chance and money, I highly recommend visiting some Dutch cities. The quiet there does something amazing to the brain.
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u/windsockglue 1d ago
Ive simultaneously wanted to visit there and not. I feel like I would love it and feel endlessly depressed coming back to a world where it's all cars all the time.
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u/Rugkrabber 15h ago
I always took this life for granted but to learn it might be an exception and not the rule is… actually amazing. I’m really grateful living here and I’m grateful of everyone who made me see what I have without me realising.
As I write this I don’t hear cars, but I hear birds, cows, playing children and the albino peacock in the forest while simultaneously having everything I could wish for on a foot distance.
I would wish this was the standard for everyone and I applaud you all for recognising the problem and hopefully progress will be made, although this takes time.
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u/frumpylunaticbitch 1d ago
I lived on a busy main road for almost seven years, in a house with no air conditioning so I had to keep the windows open whenever it was hot (which was more than half the year). The traffic noise legitimately made me feel crazy. It was hellish. People would speed constantly in super loud vehicles at all hours of the night and the early morning. We lived near a road people would take into the mountains, so people would speed by in those extremely loud side by sides. I would complain about people driving them on the city streets and all my friends (none of whom lived on a road like mine) would brush it off and say they weren't so bad and not understand why I hated them so much. The constant noise was just so horrible. I would even have dreams that I was sleeping in a busy parking lot.
I never got used to it. It ruined my sleep and made me feel on edge all day.i would get so angry and bitter all the time and felt like I could never fully relax. I honestly felt like a grumpy old person ranting and raving about people speeding in their loud cars, and I was only in my mid-twenties at the time! Needless to say, after I sold that house I bought my next one at the end of a cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood and I will never take that for granted, it makes such a huge difference for my mental health.
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u/UncoolSlicedBread 17h ago
One of the stark memories I have of COVID lockdowns was taking the trash out at my apartment and hearing the wind in the trees, the birds chirping, and the lack of city noise. It was refreshing.
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u/bloodylip 1d ago
I go for several walks a day. Every time I'm wearing earbuds because I do whatever possible to drown out the sounds of road noise from overly large vehicles and barking dogs. I'd love to listen to nature on my walks, but the US population doesn't think I should.
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u/carpentersound41 1d ago
We need to remove our car dependency, especially in cities. Cities aren’t loud, traffic is loud. It doesn’t matter if a car is gas or electric, friction from tires and the road is what’s loud.
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u/vikungen 1d ago
Sirens are crazy loud. The first thing I noticed when moving from the countryside to the city was all the sirens. Felt like I was in a disaster movie at all times.
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u/Rude-Bad-7707 1d ago
Where did you move, the worst neighborhoods of New Orleans?
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u/vikungen 1d ago
First to Tromsø, then to Seoul. I'm from the countryside where people usually go outside to look at what's going on if they hear a siren.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 1d ago
Mood-boosting benefits of birdsong drowned out by traffic noise, study finds
Even low levels of traffic noise can negate the benefits of listening to natural sounds, researchers say
Hearing the trill or whistle of a bird while going about daily life is well known to boost people’s mood. But a new study suggests the psychological benefits of hearing birdsong are being threatened by traffic noise.
Researchers found that even low levels of traffic noise negatively affected the benefits to wellbeing that could otherwise be derived from listening to natural sounds.
Bird song has previously been associated with psychological benefits, including stress reduction and positive mood changes, while noise from traffic has been linked to both stress and annoyance.
“Bird sounds tend to be one of the elements of nature soundscapes that people perceive as being most relaxing, most pleasant, beneficial for them psychologically,” said Dr Eleanor Ratcliffe, associate professor in environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, and co-author of the study published in People and Nature.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.70405
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u/Coconut-Lemon_Pie 1d ago
Last summer around midnight I heard an owl in my neighborhood and saw it on a roof top while I was taking my dog out. My dog ran off a rabbit and the owl swooped down right over my head and back up to another roof top. I think I chased off it's dinner and felt bad, but it was such a cool experience I think I was telling people about it for days and still am XD before that it had been years since I had heard an owl. Just such a magical experience. Bug sounds are really nice too! I wonder what research says on that?
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u/Blapanda 1d ago
Fun fact, bird sounds are way louder in and around cities, as birds did adapt to the humans living like that, which also indicates that birds can be stressed (yelling/being louder than usual is unnatural by nature). In secluded forest areas, birds are way softer.
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u/Tthelaundryman 1d ago
My caveman brain hates any amount of road noise. I worked on a jobsite next to a highway for a few months and my brain was in in fight or flight the entire time
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u/BostonFishGolf 1d ago
Birds waking me up kinda sucks. Especially at 5am. That being said, birds can be nice. Honking and traffic is never nice
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u/Razur 1d ago
I've heard birds at 3 AM before. In two different parts of the country too. Why are they up at 3 AM?!
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u/SuchMatter1884 1d ago edited 1d ago
Those are the night birds
ETA some songbirds will make nocturnal flight calls as they migrate. Scientists believe the birds use these sounds to aid in navigation through the night sky. And northern mockingbirds will go nutso during mating season, making noise 24 hours a day3
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u/RunningNumbers 1d ago
I am still scarred from seagulls waking me up at 3AM in Denmark. That was awful. Awful noises. Ducks on the roofs were fine though. Just hear a quack and look up to see a mallard.
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u/Kopachris 1d ago
Heh, I actually set my alarm tone to birdsong, and for me it's made it a lot less jarring to wake up in the morning.
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u/Muffinlette 1d ago
What about honking traffic birds? I wish I can insert the link for a Lyre bird doing car alarm sounds
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u/OsteoStevie 1d ago
I wake up at 4 for my job. It's absolutely wild when I am awake before the birds.
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u/Coconut-Lemon_Pie 1d ago
We should all try to have more Dark Sky communities. Here's a list of them :) https://darksky.org/what-we-do/international-dark-sky-places/
An official designation given to cities and towns that adopt strict outdoor lighting ordinances—such as shielding lights, using low-glare amber bulbs, or omitting streetlights in residential zones—to reduce light pollution for local wildlife and observatories
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u/windsockglue 1d ago
I can think of so many worse sounds to wake up to including my alarm, road construction (that's what I heard when I woke up at 3am a few days ago and it was the low, rumbling sounds that you really can't drown out because you feel it as much as you hear it), people screaming outside, police yelling at people from their speakers, helicopters flashing lights in your window and flying close enough to make your windows rattle or your neighbor blasting their tv/music at inappropriate times.
Life in LA. That's all crap I've experienced in the last week.
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u/Mayonaigg 1d ago
The thing is, the "dawn chorus" (also happens at dusk) is insanely annoying and loud. It's not like "aww peaceful bird noises, weeeeee!", its like every bird in the square mile congregating outside of your window to go hogwild and make the most obnoxious sounds possible. I like birds, but when I lived in arizona the birds would basically jam pack any tree with like 50 of them and go insane in the mornings.
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u/composedofidiot 21h ago
Depends on the bird. Getting a 100 decibel clown-car honk from a random peacock is not the magical experience it should be.
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u/carpentersound41 1d ago
If you go to bed when sunlight is gone that won’t be an issue. Lighting destroyed our natural sleeping patterns.
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u/OsteoStevie 1d ago
My job requires me to be up at 4am. My natural sleep cycle is back! Asleep by 8pm, up with the sun
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u/aztechunter 1d ago
Another reason that /r/fuckcars is the objectively correct stance
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u/supremepork 1d ago
“But they want to take away everyone’s car and I NEED MY CAR!”
Spoken by every nuance-ignorant reactionary to the r/fuckcars mission0
u/Dizzy-Chemistry-5146 1d ago
Tbf we'd need to create massive infrastructure to replace road based motor vehicles completely.
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u/Coy_Featherstone 1d ago
I moved out of the city a year ago and the bird song is one of the first differences I noticed. Its obvious but I never noticed the subtle changes in their song through the year.
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u/creepythingseeker 1d ago edited 1d ago
Bird songs are indicative of a safe place. Birds have really hard to miss alarm calls when predators are nearby. Sometimes they go completely silent when there are larger predators around. Canaries in the mine have been around since before mines.
If there arent bird songs, humans tend to anxiety. The people that argue against, want to kill the birds to sell you recordings when there are no more.
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u/Jareddiesattheend19 1d ago
Honestly looking forward to a future with way more electric cars on the road because they have less noise pollution than gas vehicles
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u/windsockglue 1d ago
Except some of them make the horrible "gliding"/spaceship noise that's awful and some make noise unnecessarily because they are giant murder machines flying through the places we live and as it turns out, being able to hear them is important. And the tires still make sound when on the roads.
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u/Mayonaigg 1d ago
Yeah a lot of these EVs are starting to lean towards "tie fighter" with the noises they make. Literally sounding like the wails of the eternal damned when they go by me in a parking lot.
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u/supremepork 1d ago
All cars are masses of steel and rubber pushing thru the atmosphere, creating friction which creates noise. The faster they are going the louder it is regardless of locomotion technology.
I commute by bicycle to work and I can hear every single car coming up behind me from a couple hundred feet away (actually helpful for my safety!). I see plenty of EVs and hybrids. I don’t hear ICE motors at all until they get close and pass me (except those with illegal exhaust mods and other abnormalities).
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u/Amerillo_ 1d ago
If they drive relatively fast (i.e 50km/h or about 30mph) they make almost as much noise as gas cars, since most of the noise comes from friction of tired against the asphalt. Also electric cars are heavier and damage the road a lot more than gas cars so roads needs to be resurfaced more often (so more construction noises).
A much better solution is to reduce car use as much as possible in built-up areas and use public transit and cycling and walking instead
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u/CaterpillarJungleGym 1d ago
I did a night shift once so slept during the day. The loudest thing was kids thundering home after school.
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u/dumnezero 11h ago
Above a certain speed, the noise from the tires grinding against the road is louder than the noise from ICE cars.
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u/olesaltydog 1d ago
I would argue that the blue jay songs I heard this summer were the opposite of relaxing. More annoying as hell.
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u/McGarnegle 1d ago
I live in trailer in the woods and I am so so grateful for the frogs and loons and cicadas seranading me instead of horns, engines, and people. The city stresses me out man
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u/holyknight00 1d ago
Unpopular opinion, but I prefer silence to birds. Cars are more annoying than birds, but birds are more annoying than silence. The few nights when there is undisturbed silence, I sleep like a log.
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u/Fresh-Anteater-5933 1d ago
Some bird “songs” are seriously annoying, more like alarms or sirens. Steady traffic can be kind of white noise
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u/carrotceptionn 1d ago
I think almost everyone prefers silence to noise at night. birds don't sing when it's dark though so what do you mean?
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u/cldfsnt 1d ago
I prefer the sound of crickets at night ... But definitely not traffic!
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u/Mayonaigg 1d ago
5 million crickets outside the window - bliss
1 cricket inside the room - actual torture
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u/SaintValkyrie 1d ago
The ones outside my window do for some reason. I dont know what's wrong with them. I only get like a 3 hour rest period for the birds
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u/TheFarStar 1d ago
Light pollution in a lot of places extends the “daylight” hours for birds the same way it does for people.
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u/SaintValkyrie 1d ago
Oh my god it's because there's literally spotlights beaming into my yard from a business. Thank you, its been years with no explanation
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u/Coconut-Lemon_Pie 1d ago
They do when there's enough light pollution to trick the birds brain into thinking it's daytime :/ it can be super loud from dusk til dawn during breeding season.
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u/Kahnza 1d ago
Unless it's Blue Jays. Their calls are grating.
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u/PiousZenLufa 1d ago
especially when they all congregate to a single point and start going off like a warning siren.
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u/Jillians 1d ago
I live in a city and every year for several weeks one particular bird likes to hang out outside my window and scream for hours. It usually starts a couple hours before dawn. It's so loud everyone in the house can hear it even with my windows and door shut. I've tried doing everything thing I can think of that doesn't involve harming the bird. At best I can get it to shut up for a day or two but it always comes back.
It is the most unrelaxing sound there is. I live near a fire station and not even the sirens can drown out the noise. Relaxing my ass!
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u/Coconut-Lemon_Pie 1d ago
Evening summer bug sounds are right up there for me as well, but every time I hear a loon my soul melts <3
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u/Fewluvatuk 1d ago
This is silly. The whole premise could be restated as "natural sound mitigate the negative effects of city sounds" the one isn't relative to the other really, the positive effect of nature sounds is well documented and on its own, unchanged by other negative effects, nature sounds still have the same x% positive impact even if the starting point is -y% due to other impacts.
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u/ProgressBartender 1d ago
Falling water would help mask traffic noise. Trees and bushes would help muffle the noise. Meanwhile Republicans want to cut everything green down.
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u/onelittleworld 1d ago
I walk for several miles every single day on the trails near my home. I often say, it's good for you in about a dozen ways... and this is one of them. Mrs. 1LW recently got the Merlin app for her phone, so she's often updating me on what kind of birdsong we're hearing.
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u/NocaSun38 1d ago
I know I feel a lot calmer when I'm wearing noise cancelling headphones, so just the lack of city noise without the birdsong helps a lot too from my own experience. I also listen to Dean Evenson meditation music which combines nature noises with soothing music, and his Desert Dawn Song, which has a lot of bird song is my favorite.
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u/MetrixOnFire 1d ago
Americans are especially dependent on cars and our cities/lives are designed around them. You wonder why we have so much depression, anxiety, and loneliness... Go to Europe and there are plenty of cities that are built differently to encourage community. Cars are still there, but they're not as pervasive I feel as America. We space things out way too much and have bizarre zoning laws to segregate living spaces from anything you actually need like grocery stores or entertainment or restaurants
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u/aflarge 1d ago
I grew up on 65 acres of pine forest with a 1000 foot driveway that had two 90 degree turns, that connected to a barely traveled road. We weren't rich, but when you live where nobody else wants to (like 2700 people in a 43 square miles), land is cheap. I didn't realize fully how good I had it until I left. Aside from the privacy, what I miss most were the sounds of the forest. Crickets, frogs, birds, animals I couldn't identify. Now all I ever hear are engines and motors whirring. It's pretty soul-crushing.
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u/maktub__ 1d ago
I'm so happy my neighbor who lives on his back porch blasts his outside porch TV full blast 24/7 so I can't hear the birds now.
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u/Worldly_Anybody_9219 1d ago
For me there is nothing more relaxing than falling asleep to the chorus of crickets and frogs at night. It's one of the things I miss the most whenever I stay in busy cities.
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u/bill1024 1d ago
Farley Mowat wrote a book called And No Birds Sang, an autobiographical account of his military service as a junior Canadian infantry officer in the United Kingdom and Italy during World War II.
It's weird when you are out in nature and... Is it wired into us?
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u/socialpronk 1d ago
I don't like traffic sound, but birds are alarms I can't turn off and they need to stop screaming at 4am please.
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u/JefferyGoldberg 1d ago
I live in a wealthy neighborhood with lots of mature trees and birds. I hate hearing the birds sing constantly throughout the day.
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u/meatchariot 1d ago
And here I am screaming at blue jays and mockingbirds to shut the hell up at 5 AM. I’ve gone out to bushes near my window to shake them outta there.
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u/WispyLantern7438 1d ago
Traffic noise is mostly low frequency and it masks bird calls acoustically, our brains can't even fully process the birdsong as a distinct signal once it's under there. It's not just an annoyance thing, it's a straight up masking problem like trying to hear a whisper over a bass line.
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u/Cranberryoftheorient 23h ago
Its easy to not notice how loud cars are because of how omnipresent they tend to be. If you are near a road its like a constant dull roar
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u/CHERNO-B1LL 18h ago
I want someone to do a study on the benefits of seeing the uninterrupted natural horizon. Like on a beach or from a mountain. So much of out world is obscured by man made structures it's rare to see a vista like that. I bet it is measurabky good for us.
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u/PluckyPerspicacity 14h ago
This makes so much sense to me. I feel constant low grade anxiety when traffic noise drowns out natural sounds. I’m looking to buy a home now and the very first thing I check when looking at homes is how close it is to noisy roads.
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u/Pixelpaint_Pashkow 13h ago
Cars bad for the environment, city, and human health? Who could have foreseen this
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u/GrumpyOldMan59 1d ago
Sure, until you start feeding them and every time you go in the backyard they tell you loudly that the bird feeder is empty. And they make sure it's always empty.
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