I like to listen to the sound of birds singing. It is music to my ears. Without looking, I can even identify the birds who are frequent visitors of our neighborhood. The uwak’s (crow) very loud waak wakkk sound, the tarat’s (brown shriek) ratatatatat machine-gun-like song and the simple chirp-chirp of the denas (house sparrow) combine to form nature’s backyard orchestra.
As most people know, birds sing to attract potential mates. The males are the ones doing the mating call in most cases. Experts say birds also sing to defend their territories. They sing just for entertainment too. Birds have a vocal organ called a syrinx, an organ located where the trachea splits into two bronchial tubes. In songbirds, each side of the syrinx is independently controlled, allowing birds to produce two unrelated pitches at once.
Did you know that watching birds and listening to their songs is actually beneficial to our mental health? According to a study from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience of King’s College London, seeing or hearing birds offers benefits for emotional well-being that can last as long as eight hours.
Another study from the California Polytechnic State University analyzed how much the natural sounds people hear when their outdoors affects well-being. They found that the “phantom chorus” of birds singing increased well-being in protected natural areas.
Noise pollution however, is negatively affecting bird singing. A study from Queen’s University Belfast finds that noise pollution makes it hard for birds to communicate with each other. Man-made sounds mask signals between birds, researchers discovered. The study found that background noise can hide critical information that birds use and share, a problem that could eventually lead to a severe decline in population numbers.
In another study, it was discovered that traffic noise leads to inaccuracies and delays in the development of song learning in young birds. They also suffer from a suppressed immune system, which is an indicator of chronic stress. The study by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and colleagues shows that young zebra finches, just like children, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of noise because of its potential to interfere with learning at a critical developmental stage.
Still another research done by Dr. Katherine Gentry of George Mason University, Virginia, USA and colleagues said that birds sing differently in response to traffic noise, which potentially affects their ability to attract mates and defend their territory. The study found that a species of North American flycatcher sings shorter songs at a lower range of frequencies in response to traffic noise levels.
Noise pollution has a negative impact not just to humans, but to birds as well and possibly to other creatures too. Reducing or eliminating man-made noise is good for nature. And for the birds, the benefit they contribute to our mental health is another reason why we should protect them and their homes - the trees!