Mindfulness and birding

Birding has always been about noticing and recording birds in the landscapes they inhabit. It’s something that can happen anywhere: car parking lot, mountain trail, touristy beach, back-porch at home, etc. Watching birds is not just about naming or listing, it can also be a way of slowing down, of connecting with nature, of being present. Maybe it is sometimes a kind of "meditation on nature". By blending mindfulness techniques with birding, I’ve found that the experience can be restorative for mind and body.

Mindfulness is about being here in the moment—aware of what’s happening within us and around us—without judgment. When I bring this kind of attention to birding (....or "naturing" in general), something shifts. Also, birding (like hunting) provides many opportunities to "be still" and in ''total focus'' in nature. Sometimes you really need to spend a long time "waiting" (its not waiting, it can become a meditation). Patience, perserverance, detachement (perhaps a kind of ''zen state''). Really, when the sparks fly, you see something well or get totally lost in the observation...you do get into a zen state. Amazing how that happens.  

I was surprised to find such a thing as the Mindful Birding Network (hailing from North America, as many good thing do...).

So what I've been thinking on a lot, does actually exist. The Mindful Birding Network describes ''Mindful Birding as combining mindfulness techniques with bird observation...''. Personally, I often feel a sense of stillness and clarity when I practice time alone in nature, especially targetted observation or hunting-like excersize like birding. Research backs this up, pointing to improved focus, cognition, and wellbeing—but even without the studies, the benefits are something I feel in my own body and mind. And the "mindfulness" techniques (from simple breathwork, meditation, even soft chanting seem to help). Please don't see this as woo woo hippiness on my part (or not quite yet...). 

Sometimes, when mindful birding, identifying birds isn’t the main goal (or more correctly it is not a 'constant' goal; it ebbs and flows). Instead, one tries to let the birds (and the scene) guide him/her: to notice their movements, their calls, their presence—and to notice, too, how one responds, how one feels inside. Traditional birding skills are still important, of course. Identifying species, listening and keeping records remain invaluable for a birder. But I’ve learned that it can be just as meaningful to set aside the urge to name every bird and simply be in nature, with the birds. Listen to the birds. Simply be in nature (nature is everywhere; but particularly nature away from the urban).

In those moments - in nature - the practice becomes something more than birding. It becomes a conversation or a meditation or a ''connecting session''. I find myself reflecting on how I feel—physically, emotionally—as I walk, sit, search. As is snap pics with my digitals. The birds, in their freedom and wildness, remind me to slow down, to pay attention, and to connect. In this way, they become guides not just in the field of birding, but in life.

REFERENCES

And because this is a science blog, some notes and refs:

Association of Nature & Forest Therapy Guides (ANFT). https://www.anft.earth/

Dose of Nature. https://www.doseofnature.org.uk/

The Mindful Birding Network. https://www.themindfulbirdingnetwork.com/

Mark Bonta (2010) Ornithophilia: Thoughts on Geography in Birding, Geographical Review, 100:2, 139-151, DOI: 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2010.00018.x

Cox, D. T. C., Shanahan, D. F., Hudson, H. L., Fuller, R. A., Anderson, K., Hancock, S., & Gaston, K. J. (2017). Doses of neighborhood nature: The benefits for mental health of living with nature. BioScience, 67(2), 147–155. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biw173

Cox, D. T. C., Plummer, K. E., Shanahan, D. F., Siriwardena, G. M., Fuller, R. A., & Gaston, K. J. (2018). The health benefits of watching nature: birds and wellbeing. BioScience, 68(7), 474–485. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biy043

Hammoud, R., Heisz, J. J., & Paolucci, N. (2023). Birdwatching and well-being: A cross-sectional study of recreational birders. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 87, 101997. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101997

Luck, G. W., Davidson, P., Boxall, D., & Smallbone, L. (2011). Relations between urban bird and plant communities and human well-being and connection to nature. Conservation Biology, 25(4), 816–826. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01685.x

Nilsson, M., & Berglund, B. (2006). Soundscape quality in suburban green areas and city parks. Acta Acustica United with Acustica, 92(6), 903-911.

Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ratcliffe, E., Gatersleben, B., & Sowden, P. (2013). Bird sounds and their contributions to perceived attention restoration and stress recovery. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36, 221–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.08.004

Tryjanowski, P., Morelli, F., Mikula, P., Krištín, A., Indykiewicz, P., Grzywaczewski, G., ... & Goławski, A. (2022). The allure of birdwatching: Therapeutic benefits and research opportunities. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(21), 13850. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192113850

(And thanks to Donna Riner who inspired this blog post and where I got a lot of resources for it. See:https://www.amosbutleraudubon.org/2024/05/28/mindful-bird-watching-blending-observation-with-intentional-sensory-awareness/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

XX - All photos in this post - found on the internet; appologies for not citing details. 
 

In To See Every Bird on the Earth Dan Koeppel asks, “Why does obsession exist? Is it to fill our empty spaces? Does it work?” His answer: “Birds show us what nature is. Not just physically, but as an idea. As something we love, something we value (Bonta 2010).

BONUS

I leave you with some words from some students of nature and life, who have been so inspired by the birds...

“How I Go to the Woods”

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost un-hearable sound of the roses singing. If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

~ Mary Oliver

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Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

~ Mary Oliver

Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) -American poet (Pulitzer Prize 1984; National Book Award 1992).

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The sheer ubiquity of birds makes them almost unavoidable. Birds are the always-present possibility of an awakening to the natural world that too many people have not yet experienced.

~Corey Finger

Corey Finger -co-owner of 10,000 Birds, the world’s most popular birding blog.

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"What motivates my life? What is the most important element in it? What brings the most enduring happiness? I know myself from this angle, and the answers are inordinately simple, for I am convinced that nature, in all it's aspects and my relationship to it, is and always has been my guiding light."

~ Sigurd Olsen 

Sigurd Ferdinand Olson (April 4, 1899 – January 13, 1982) - American writer and environmentalist.


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“A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”

~ Maya Angelou

Marguerite Annie Johnson (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) - American writer, dancer and civil activist. Angelou was the name she kept/as stage name at first; from her marriage with a Greek-American.

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I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

~ Claude Monet (November 14, 1840 - December 5, 1926) - French Painter.

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“The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind”

~ Carly Simon

Carly Simon (b. June 25, 1943) - American musician, singer, songwriter, author.

 

Can fish migration barriers "restore" themselves?

From a visit to Euboea's Manikiatis River - Autumn 2025

In the summer of 2022, I inspected the Manikiatis River on Euboea, home of the Evian Barbel—an endemic fish found only on Euboea island, in Central Greece. I have written about this river on this blog before.

What is most remarkable is that back in the summer of 2022 (see the photo above), there was a significant barrier at the bridge immediately next to the village of Manikia. In the autumn of 2025, the story was very different. The two photos above are from the exact same location (hard to believe, I know). On the left are my colleagues in June 2022 beside a waterfall that we assessed as impassable for barbels—the only fish inhabiting this upland stretch of the river. On the right is the condition in October 2025. Trust me: it’s the same place, and now there is no real barrier to the fish anymore! The plunge pool is gone.

So what happened, and is this common?

First, what happened was a storm—a very big one. It moved a huge amount of rock. Storm Daniel, also known as Cyclone Daniel, was an erratic but catastrophic Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone, and the deadliest recorded in the region. It struck Central Greece on September 4th, 2023. Two years later, the stream is almost unrecognizable.

And what about the fish? Back in the summer of 2022, barbels were much more common below the bridge. Very few were found above it, and the ramp under the bridge of Manika functioned as barrier,  a complete block to movement in this small mountain stream. (You might even have considered investing money to fix the problem—it’s a threatened species, severely impacted by anthropogenic barriers such as this one.) This autumn, the barrier was gone. Barbels were present both above and below the former barrier, although overall population density was much lower than in 2022, and very few large individuals were found. Still, the fish survived the storm.

Long live the Evian Barbel (Barbus euboicus)!

Photos from 2022 follow. 

 

The killing of a birding hotspot: The Rafina Megalo Rema river

 

Rafina Megalo Rema River, Attika Greece

Since about the mid nighties naturalists have been aware of the Rafina Megalo Rema river and its characteristic river mouth area near the port of Rafina. 

It is a hotspot for wildlife watching near Athens. 

Unfortunately, the idea of a building a mega- anti-flood engineering project to supposedly protect against floods is now destroying 17 kms of this small river and the tiny wetland hotspot at the river's mouth. 

They, the politician responsible, the technocrat companies and their like, have absolutley no idea how easy it was to at least make some changes to their original scheme, to compromise for the sake of nature. The eBird hotspot at the river mouth is definately on the the top birding sites in Greece and a 'gateway experience' for families and youngsters to have contact with nature. I cannot experess how important it is, in words.

It should not be lost. 

What I could do is rant about this and just get all depressed, very easy. What I will do is direct you to a site that has the whole story and to some poeple that are doing their best to stop the catastrophe. I hope we can succeed. 

Hope never dies.

Have a look here: 

https://megalorema.gr/

Enigineering works in 2025! Deepening and narrowing the channel...

Rafina in the 1950s. The river valley and estuary of the Rafina Megalo Rema river-mout evident at Left. ...this my friends was 'The Greece of Yesterday' (in the late O. Rackham's words). 

Our proposal for the future, the vision in 2023; a plan to protect and restore the wetland within the City of Rafina. Above, the site in 2023; Below a future idea based on ecological restoration and wildlife habitat enhancement principles. 

Can we restore this temple back to its landscape? Temple of Apollo at Bassae, Peloponnese

 

The ancient Greek temples and their landscapes

Harry Eyres writes in Newsweek (Apr 19, 2015) about the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae in the Peloponnese:

“Since 1987 a huge, mournfully flapping and increasingly mouldy tent has covered the monument while complex restoration work is carried out.

Seeing the temple in this state on a cold March morning, nearly 40 years after being stunned by its bare, rugged magnificence, was the most shocking moment of a nostalgic trip to the Peloponnese with an old friend to revisit sites we had last inspected as schoolboy classicists. The venerable building seemed like a patient on life-support.

....everything was changed by the tent, interrupting the relationship with the landscape and the way the sanctuary emerges from it. You could not help feeling the shrouded, melancholy-looking temple was an emblem of the whole beleaguered country.

...How about this idea: European nations, in a gesture of goodwill, get together in providing a fund to hasten the works and ensure the speedy removal of the tent?”

Nikos Kazantzakis on this temple and its landscape:

“….And suddenly, at a turn of the mountain, the famous temple of Epicurious Apollo rises unexpectedly in front of him. Directly facing the cliff, shaped as it is with the same stones of the mountain, you feel the deep response of the landscape and the temple. Like a piece of the mountain, stone from its stone, the temple seems inseparably wedged between the rocks, a rock too, but a rock over which the spirit passed. The pillars of the temple, carved and placed in this way, express the essence of all this mountainous austerity and desolation. 

You are confident that it is the head of the landscape, of the sacred area, where its mind is kept, vigil, and protected. And here the ancient art, continuing and perfectly expressing the landscape, does not surprise you. Agility, calmness, from a human path takes you, without panting, to the top.”

Before 1987

After 1987

The article by the British journalist and author above was the first time I heard someone mentioning the need for landscape restoration: 'removal of the tent'. Something so obvious! 

Is there no landscape consciousness in this country?

The temple in the first years of the 19th century, Edward Dodwell.

But the Peloponnesian coverved temple is not the only case. The Archeological Service and Hellenic Minitry of Culture seems to have forgotten many a monument's tie with the landscape. 

Enter the Parthenon! 

This amazing building on the Acropolis of Athens. Probably one of the five or so wonders of the global archeological monuments of all time...It seems to be permanently “scarred” by the presence of scaffolding  and other engineering works....since the early 1980s. No end in sight! No reference to bringing the glory of the building and its landscape back. Very sad.

Before 1983

Recent years

We have seen wonderful success with protected archeological sites in this country. But, we can do better. 

We who teach and promote landscape appreciation in Greece would like to help. 

Photos in this post are from internet sources; I appreciate their contribution. The last landscape photo from the hill of Pnyx with the view of the Acropolis of Athens is from College Year in Athens (CYA). https://cyathens.org/