Birding, mental health and a year list

The last five years, particularly since the Covid lockdowns, has seen an increase in awareness of issues of mental health amongst the general population.  This has had a twin effect: a really positive increased openness to discuss mental health and an understanding from many people that poor mental health can and does affect a significant percentage of the population at any given time.

There have been a large number of people who have messaged me from this blog to say that they appreciate my honesty about my own mental wellbeing, and people who have read it that I meet while birding and talk to seem surprised by how upbeat and quick to laugh I am given the state of my mental health - and more on this later.   In my role at work I have been trained to understand how and why people react to stress, anxiety, trauma, depression and the effects of struggling with prolonged low mood, and that will inform some of the reflections here.

During 2025 birding has been my release from the build-up of pressure following a major breakdown and the aftershocks of this event.  I suppose a way to look at it is to compare it to a physical illness: getting a cold doesn't happen straight away, the symptoms build until they peak with sneezing, fever, coughing, tiredness.  Then they recede, and you feel back to 80% fitness, and decide to go back to work, or out for a day of walking, only to find that you're not quite right yet.  You overdo it a bit, and suffer a little relapse of symptoms of the cold, becoming tired and perhaps snuffly.  Not a full blown snot-fest, but just... not quite right.  In the same way, a mental illness such as a breakdown following trauma sometimes feels like it's completely better, and sometimes catches you by surprise.  One of the biggest surprises that many people have about the symptoms of mental ill health is quite how closely linked they are to physical wellbeing.  Any tiredness, fatigue, or other state that makes me feel less than 100% can have a disproportionate effect on my mental health.  I believe this (for me at least) is partly because of the frustration of not being able to depend on your own thought processes or physical ability like you're used to - having also suffered quite severe plantar fasciitis this year there are days where my right foot just will not work.  Where I can't put weight on it.  I never know if it will be a day like that until I'm already trying to walk - the frustration at myself for not being able to do something I have taken for granted for decades leads quickly to low mood.  Perhaps you can relate.

In the same way, I have sat in my car after a long drive to see a bird and not been able to get out of the vehicle, knowing my mind won't let me yet, that it can't support me yet.  This has been a rare effect of poor mental health, but has led me to refuse a number of twitches for birds that I haven't seen.  It's not that I don't want to see the bird, or that I mind travelling, or that I'm lazy - I just... can't.  More commonly, I see the bird following a solo drive, and then set off home and find myself struggling on the journey home - self-talk nothing but negative, the "high" of seeing the bird leading to a comedown that I struggle to contain.  The natural adrenalin peak and trough that we all manage on a daily basis can be just too hard to cope with when you're already struggling with an overload of negative feeling.  Seeing the Montagu's Harrier at Marshside in August was a huge high.  I was laughing and high-fiving other birders watching a beautiful raptor hunting over gorgeous purple saltmarsh flowers in the warm sunlight and I've never felt as buoyed by a birding experience.  I drove home with a good mate, and we talked about that experience all the way, laughing and joking.  I dropped him off, and went home to an empty house - my family away for the weekend.  I felt my mood dipping, so I logged on and wrote my blog as a way of managing my mood, but immediately afterwards I felt all my mental defences crumbling and spent the rest of the night overthinking every word I'd said and replaying all the worst things I've ever done, becoming more and more self-critical.  I'm sure we've all been there in the low of the wee small hours.

I have learned that when it gets to the sleepless and self-defeating stage I need to achieve something concrete that gives me a sort of reset.  So I painted the shed.  And the garden fences.  And the new gate.  Allowing my mind to drift with music playing and a largely mindless physical task empties all the thoughts, that state that Buddhists call Zen, which I think of as switching it (my mind) off and on again.  Yet to meet me (or many others suffering from a breakdown and associated effects) you wouldn't notice that this process is happening.  I think some people have half an expectation that I'll be a constant wreck, some caricature of madness, when in reality I am friendly, confident, very present.  I tell jokes, I try and help people see birds, I chat at twitches when appropriate.  I enjoy the company of others and laugh often.  I seem happy and well-adjusted, and I am, most of the time.  It makes me wonder how many people are just about coping with their day, barely keeping the mask of politeness and societal acceptance fixed to their face.  Some of you will know exactly what this feels like.

My Big Year attempt that began in April when I realised I had seen a ridiculous number of birds already has had impacts both positive and negative on my mental health.  On the downside, dipping a bird feels awful.  It can feel like a huge personal failure (I didn't go quick enough/I didn't research this properly/I wasn't a good enough birder to find this) and I have had to very purposefully talk myself round to remember that some birds are just hard to see!  I find that talking to birders soon after dipping really helps - and the lads on the WhatsApp group have been my "dipping-recovery" team, with gentle humour and reminders that we all miss birds.  Long journeys can leave me overtired and feeling stretched.  More than any other year I have had to plan and budget breaks in birding into my routine.  If you'd said to me 18 months ago that I could burn out on birding I'd have laughed at you.  Birding has been my obsession and passion for years.  But a couple of times this year I've found pressure from others to go for birds, or pressure from myself to increase my list (as though the Bubo list is an actual meaningful league table which stands for anything more than who has the fewest responsibilities/most disposable income/most free time) has led to feeling fed up that I have to go and see such and such a bird.  I've had to be strict with myself about how I choose what birds to try and see, and which ones I need to miss.  Sure, I've probably missed 12 species this year that would have given me a bigger list; but I've had to prioritise mental wellbeing to be able to be a parent, a husband.  I have, at times, craved "normal" birding and looked forward to January 1st 2026 - something other Big Year listers have said is a common effect.

On a positive, the Big Year has given me goals - there's always a reason to get up and face the day, when sometimes other motivation really doesn't work.  That might sound ridiculous, but many people feel that most people in their world simply want things of them - work, family, colleagues begin to treat you as a function rather than a person.  The Big Year is, selfishly, for me, and whether it's the done thing to recognise this or not, that is necessary for people to have a healthy mental state.  Goal setting gives a measure of control that you exert over your life and this is a natural human process and an aspect of human life that we need.  The Big Year has allowed me to make positive plans for the year, to have structure.  I'm on Scilly in October for the first time, and I can't tell you how exciting that is.  It also functions as a boundary - this event is happening, and I am going to be there.  On the worst days it helps to lift eyes to a mental horizon and search for an event that provokes hope and happiness.  This is not to even mention the positive impact of being in natural surroundings and encountering wildlife.  The by now well-documented benefits of being in green spaces and re-connecting to the real world have been incredible; rather than pretending the virtual one, or the utterly false work-culture we prioritise to make enough money to exist are the real world.  I have seen more species of birds, insects and other life this year than ever before.  I've met more birders, seen more places, experienced more of Britain than I ever have.  I've made friends, and seen some of the most beautiful wildlife and landscapes I can imagine.  I have learned and grown and developed my fieldcraft.  I'm a better birder than I was 9 months ago.  Sometimes more is just... more.  

I am in a better place than I was 10 months ago.  Not "fixed" - whatever that means - and not free of doubt and anxiety and stress.  But better.  Healthier.  Birding, and year listing providing structure, and having friends that know that I need to talk and laugh and enjoy things in the moment, have helped.  I hope that sharing this (long and self-indulgent) blog has helped some people in some way, but even if not, having a space to be honest with self is incredibly important: things are rarely as bad as we think, and being thoughtful without overthinking is the goal.  If you're struggling, then the message is that there are things that help.  Writing helps.  Birding helps.  Talking helps.