Have you heard, about the bird? As it turns out, many have. With big tech making the internet increasingly addictive, more and more young people are diagnosing themselves with Early Onset Birder Syndrome and flocking en masse to amateur birdwatching (AKA birding). I can relate, having recently evolved from searching for fictional virtual creatures in Pokemon Go to being immersed in the actual wildlife around me using Merlin Bird ID, an app which is sort of like Shazam but for bird calls. A little bird told me that similar bird-logging apps also exist, including Birda and Birdex, though I haven’t tried them (yet).

Lots of people are talking about their birding exploits on social media, and even the RSPB has been posting memes on TikTok that chime with Gen Z’s distinctly nonsensical sense of humour. According to Google Trends, searches for the term ‘birdwatching’ have been on an incline for the last five years, peaking in February 2026. Bryant Park in NY recently went viral for attracting huge crowds trying to see the dancing American Woodcock (sidenote: imagine generating this much hype just for existing). But what’s behind this growing interest in our neighbourhood feathery friends? 

Tennessee-based birding advocate and singer-songwriter Bonner Black picked up birdwatching “kind of as a joke” around five years ago, while looking for a hobby during a mental health crisis. “Within a month, I was completely hooked,” she admits. “Birding really did rescue me.” 

Birders often refer to the first bird that grabbed their interest as a ‘spark bird’. For Black, this was a Carolina wren. “I was in a state of depression when I saw this small brown bird land on my backyard fence and for whatever reason, that sparked the thought: ‘what if I tried birdwatching?’” Black immediately ordered a pair of binoculars and a bird book, and her social feeds are now a blend of music-related posts and birdwatching content. “People show up to my shows with bird-themed gifts and nature photographers will use my music for their bird videos,” she says, adding that, as well as hosting birding tours, she has also been invited to speak at birding events in both the US and the UK. “The birding community is made up of the greatest people ever and I’m so thankful to be immersed in this world.” 

Having already birded in Spain, Costa Rica, and the British Virgin Islands, Black also uses her tours as an opportunity to log new species. “I just got back from a tour in the UK and in between the shows I went birding. I got a white-tailed eagle just outside of London!” She’s now scheduled to attend various birding events across the US and UK, as well as host a birding and wellness retreat in Costa Rica. “I love my brain on birds,” she explains. “In birding, you may not always find what you are looking for, but there is always something beautiful to be found as long as you go looking. This is how I see life.”

The soothing effects of birding and being out in nature more generally are not to be underestimated. “We’ve been raised on 24/7 news and have more stimulation than the generations before us,” Black says. “My anxiety is a constant battle, but the act of birding is a grounding exercise… What am I hearing? Where is it coming from? What am I seeing? What are the details?” 

I have to be so present in that moment: no screens, no texts, no outside noise. It totally regulates my nervous system in a way nothing else can

Search ‘birdwatching’ into Instagram and you’ll find endless bird memes and nature clips with captions like, “type shi you gotta do to not go insane”. The hobby’s associated mental health benefits have been backed up by science: according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience last month, birdwatching can help your brain to build neuroplasticity and protect itself against the negative impacts of ageing. 

Bird-watching has also had a transformative effect on the life of Dominique Palmer, a London-based author and climate advocate. “No one talks about what happens to you in your 20s”, she says in one video, while carrying binoculars through a rainforest in Thailand. “One day I thought, ‘oh that bird looks cool’ and the next second I’m sweating through the rainforest with nothing but my binos, bird ID apps and a dream”. She tells me that she began birdwatching in 2022, after a friend gifted her some binoculars. Her spark bird was a kingfisher she observed chilling on a nearby branch. Birds have since become a big fixture in her life; she even spotted two golden eagles right after getting engaged in the Scottish Highlands.

Palmer finds birding to be incredibly grounding. “My ears are alert for different calls, or the sound of a woodpecker drum. My eyes scan the horizon for a small ruffle of a tree, or a flash of colour,” she explains. “I also find joy in getting familiar with the same birds in my area: currently, a green woodpecker is building a nest for its babies, and it always makes me excited to still see it there.”

“I think in the current political and socioeconomic state we find ourselves in, more people want to feel connected to nature,” she continues. “As a climate advocate, one of the reasons we are in a climate crisis is a lack of connection to nature and each other: forget doomscrolling, it is time for joymaxxing!”

In a TikTok video which has racked up over 60,000 views (captioned ‘so cooked I started birdwatching in my 20s'), hospitality worker and content creator Emmy Short holds up a pair of binoculars and peeks out from a wooden bird hide. The comments are generally positive or, at the very least, curious; unsurprisingly, the RSPB is in there too. “Growing up in the countryside, I have always had an awareness and connection to nature,” she tells me. “As a child, my grandma would point out birds in the garden and tell us stories about them.”

After realising her casual appreciation had turned into a deeper fascination, she started taking birding more seriously in 2024. “It’s the perfect combination of serenity and excitement. There’s a sense of achievement and accomplishment when you unlock a new species,” she explains. Her spark bird was the heron, which now graces two tattoos on her back. “They feel so prehistoric and majestic, and they’re super prevalent in all my favourite places, like my childhood home and the river I walk my dog along every day.”

Birding, for Emmy, is a way to be anchored in the present moment, away from screens, texts and outside noise. “It regulates my nervous system in a way nothing else can,” she says. “I never walk away from the bird hide with the same problems I walked in with. They always seem to feel lighter after a few hours birding.”