When I started birdwatching, I had none of the gear and no idea, and as a young solo woman, I stuck out like a sore thumb in a community dominated by older men.

Unlike them, I wasn’t trampling those same muddy paths to get a ‘tick’ on my bird list, but because I felt like I was grasping onto the edges of my sanity more tightly than ever before.

I’ve had depression, anxiety and OCD from the first age that I can remember, which means I’ve attempted all kinds of strategies to try to manage my broken mind. I’ve tried all the classics: running, meditation, reading, listening to music and even crocheting, but none of them helped me to slow down in the way that I needed to in order to function.

I was first inspired to learn about birds by watching the BBC wildlife show Springwatch, and something about watching the live nest cameras piqued my interest – what were they and where could I see them?

The Urban Mind research project discovered that time spent with birds had a positive mental effect on both healthy people and those experiencing depression. A report in the Journal Of Environmental Psychology found that birdsong specifically was reported to combat the “psychological stress and attentional fatigue” associated with modern life.

I was 29 when I decided to properly try birdwatching for the very first time. I’d watched birds for my entire life, but never consciously – I was just always curious about them.

At the peak of my anxiety, I drove to the Ynys Hir reserve in Wales and tried to drive away the mental fog as I walked around it. I’d been working such long hours in newsrooms and on sets that I felt like my cup was well and truly empty. 

When I saw a small brown, orange and white bird called a stonechat perched on a telephone wire, it felt like maybe I was putting something back into myself that wasn’t completely toxic. This was the first time I’d felt that way since the first year I started my job, five years before.

While it wasn’t a magical cure, my mind wasn’t racing the way it would have done if I’d stayed at home.

I have the tendency to ruminate, where my thoughts get ‘stuck’ in my head, so having something to aim for when I’m out helps disrupt that negativity. While I find that it’s unrealistic to try to be happy all the time, it’s more achievable to slow down my thoughts, which helps me to find a more peaceful headspace.

It’s much harder to allow feelings to fester when you spy a tiny wren hopping from branch to branch in search of insects to snack on.

Thankfully for me, birds are everywhere – in the sea, sand and sky. I’ve watched birds at train stations in India, through my office window and by the side of motorways. Waiting is a big anxiety trigger for me, so having something to focus on is the distraction that I need to prevent spiralling.

During the Covid lockdowns, my daily walks brought me hope as I observed birds building nests and rearing their young, unaffected by an unfathomable global crisis. I wasn’t alone; a YouGov survey reported that 63% of people in the UK enjoyed watching and hearing birds during lockdowns.

This ‘bird therapy’ was the most time I’d ever been able to spend finding, learning about and photographing wildlife and it propelled me to a better place mentally than I had been in a decade.

It has been a gift to me, as I have a deeply obsessive nature that requires a healthy outlet. I’ve always been unsure as to whether it’s my true personality or related to my mental illness, but either way, it’s not something I can ignore. Counselling, medication and other therapies are still all necessary tools, and I’ve used them all, but they’re underpinned by my time spent in nature.

Without all of this healing, I’m not sure if I would have got to stable enough headspace to become pregnant and have my son. Becoming a mother was still not easy and my first postpartum year was a brutal mental challenge.

After a traumatic birth and unrelenting breastfeeding problems, there were many occasions when I didn’t know how I would navigate caring for my boy as well as managing my mental health problems.

When my anxiety was high and my baby was fractious, I did the only thing I could think of in the haze created by the life bomb that I’d dropped on myself. I would sit at the window and talk to my baby about birds. It wasn’t a quick fix, but as the months passed and the hormones subsided, my mind started to quieten enough for me to feel my version of normal.

Now that he’s older I try to make dates with nature whenever I can, and I feel like each one heals me in some way. Being seen with a camera or binoculars is akin to having a dog as friendly birders that you would never normally meet will stop to chat.

Once you start looking, you really could see anything and that’s what releases the happy chemicals in my brain. As well as over a hundred species of birds, I’ve been surprised by deer, rabbits, hares, foxes, hedgehogs, frogs, toads, newts, bats, dragonflies and butterflies.

If I hadn’t taken the time to stand still, I would have missed all of it.

I hope that one day I can wander aimlessly in nature and immerse myself fully in that world without any internal distractions lurking in the corners of my brain. Maybe it will never happen, but those moments of connection – whether with the other enthusiasts, my son or the birds themselves – will never leave me.

Now that he is a toddler he points out birds every time we go out for a walk, and I tell him all about them. I’m glad he already knows that if he ever feels worried or overwhelmed, he can always turn to the sky, just as I do.

Frame Of Mind is Stylist’s home for all things mental health and the mind. From expert advice on the small changes you can make to improve your wellbeing to first-person essays and features on topics ranging from autism to antidepressants, we’ll be exploring mental health in all its forms. You can check out the series home page to get started.

Images: courtesy of Jennifer Sizeland