Just 10 Minutes of Birdsong in a Restored Forest Can Significantly Ease Stress, NC State Study Finds

A new study from North Carolina State University suggests that just 10 minutes spent in a restored forest while listening to birdsong can measurably lower stress and boost mood, offering a low-cost tool for improving mental health on college campuses and in cities more broadly.

The research, led by Nils Peterson, a professor in NC State's College of Natural Resources, was published July 17 in the journal Environmental Conservation. The study set out to answer a specific question with broad implications for urban planning: how much of nature's calming effect comes from what people see, and how much comes from what they hear?

A simple, tightly controlled experiment

Researchers recruited 106 student volunteers from NC State courses and had each of them sit quietly for 10 minutes in two very different locations on the university's Raleigh campus. One setting was a restored stretch of streamside forest along Rocky Branch, a waterway that had been re-engineered and replanted between 2002 and 2006. The other was a developed, urban area on campus, described by researchers as a "grey space" lacking natural vegetation or sound.

At each location, participants wore noise-canceling headphones that played either recorded birdsong or the sounds of traffic. Both the physical setting and the audio track were randomized for each participant, allowing the research team to isolate the individual effects of place and sound rather than assuming the two always work together. After each session, participants reported their stress levels, their positive and negative emotional experiences, and a measure researchers call "restorativeness" — essentially, how refreshed or mentally recovered they felt.

Forest plus birdsong produced the clearest benefit

The results, according to the study, were not subtle. Students reported the lowest stress and the fewest negative feelings after sitting in the restored forest while listening to recorded birdsong, a combination that outperformed all three other pairings in the study's two-by-two design. Both the setting and the soundscape independently influenced every well-being measure researchers tracked, with statistically significant effects across the board.

Peterson said the immediacy of the effect stood out. Describing the broader implications for degraded or heavily developed spaces, Peterson said that adding natural sound to an otherwise stressful environment can meaningfully soften its negative impact, noting that "you can ameliorate the downsides of that gray space" simply by reintroducing elements like birdsong.

Why the researchers focused on birds

The study's authors chose birdsong deliberately, in part because of its practicality as a public health intervention. Unlike expansive green space, which is often limited or expensive to create in dense urban environments, birdsong requires no land acquisition and no specialized skill to enjoy. Because birds inhabit cities nearly as readily as they do forests, their songs can reach people in places where trees and greenery cannot, including on concrete plazas or in other heavily built environments.

That accessibility matters given the scale of the mental health challenges the study aims to address. According to research cited in the paper, roughly 60% of college students reported experiencing mental health challenges by 2020, a figure researchers say worsened further during the COVID-19 pandemic. Against that backdrop, the NC State team wanted to test whether a brief, low-effort intervention — sitting quietly for a matter of minutes — could produce a measurable shift in how people feel in the moment.

Isolating sound from setting

A key design feature of the study was its attempt to separate the psychological effects of a natural setting from the effects of natural sound, two factors that are often bundled together in real-world experiences of nature but rarely tested independently. By pairing each location with either birdsong or traffic noise at random, researchers could measure how much of the benefit came specifically from being in a forest versus specifically from hearing birds, rather than treating "spending time in nature" as a single, undifferentiated experience.

The findings suggest both factors matter substantially on their own, but that combining them — a restored natural setting paired with birdsong — produced the strongest results of any combination tested.

Broader relevance for urban design

The study's authors argue their findings carry practical implications well beyond a single college campus. Cities facing constraints on how much new green space they can realistically create may still be able to improve residents' well-being by incorporating natural soundscapes into public areas, even where planting large amounts of vegetation isn't feasible. Peterson noted that while the current study focused specifically on bird sounds, a broader body of existing research supports similar benefits from other natural sounds, including flowing water.

The research adds to a growing body of academic work examining how exposure to nature, in its various forms, affects mental health, an area of study that has gained increasing attention as urbanization continues to reduce many people's regular contact with natural environments. The NC State team's use of a rigorously randomized, controlled design distinguishes the study from more observational research on nature's psychological benefits, lending additional weight to its conclusions.

A low-cost intervention with real-world potential

Because the intervention tested required no special equipment beyond a quiet space and a recording of birdsong, and produced measurable effects in as little as 10 minutes, researchers say the findings point toward relatively simple, inexpensive ways that campuses, employers, hospitals and city planners could support mental health. Rather than requiring large-scale reforestation or expensive infrastructure changes, incorporating birdsong into public or shared spaces — through speakers, nearby bird habitat, or simply preserving existing urban tree cover where birds are already present — could offer a meaningful, low-barrier way to reduce stress for people navigating increasingly built-up environments.

The study received no external financial support, according to its authors, who reported no competing interests. It was conducted with approval from North Carolina State University's Institutional Review Board and followed international ethical guidelines for research involving human participants.