The Blindboy Podcast - A conversation on a subtropical Irish Island with Bird expert, Sean Ronayne

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

I travel by boat to garnish Island in west cork, to chat about wildlife with Sean Ronanyne Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Repent from the devil's tennis racket, you henpecked Declans. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack, you know the story. I have a magnificent, scattered and bizarre podcast for you this week. I'm literally just back from West Cork. I was in West Cork for the entire weekend. I was at the Island Drift Festival and I did a very, an intimate podcast recording on Garnish Island to a very small audience of maybe.

These I'd say only about 150 people. I spoke to Sean Ronane. Sean is an expert in Bard's song. He's an ornithologist. He records and documents the sounds of birds, insects, wildlife. He's written books. He's made documents. entries. He has his own podcast now. It's called the Sean Chorus. This is his third time on this podcast.

And the reason I ask him back is, it's not just that he's an incredibly interesting person. It's because we both have very similar flavors of neurodivergence. So the conversations we have are like a spectacle of double empathy. It's like we're playing a game of ping pong with four balls and as mad as the back and forth is, we seem to make it work. We both interrupt each other. We both info dump on each other. We both go on tangents. And we both feel incredibly comfortable chatting with each other. What makes this recording so special for me and this journey, this pilgrimage down to Garnish Island so important to me is there was a lot of youngy in synchronicity. We're talking about an area of West Cork that is deeply loaded with mythology.

And for me, personal mythology. That area of West Cork is where my grandparents come from. It's where my dad was born. It's where Michael Collins is from. It's where some of the most intense and important fighting and military campaigns of the Irish War of Independence took place. My granddad was involved in that in the IRA and then I grew up with those stories from my father. Youngian synchronicity, it comes from Carl Young, who was a psychologist. Youngian synchronicity is meaningful coincidences. While I'm on this island, I'm speaking about very, very powerful, site-specific mythology. I was speaking about Christian mythology and indigenous Irish mythology and something mad happened during the podcast. While I was on Garnish Island

speaking to the audience and we're all outdoors in this beautiful garden, I noticed that the sun was setting behind me and I drew attention to it because the setting sun in that specific location is very important. See we're on an island just at the mouth of the Atlantic and the next The next island up from us, about 30 minutes by boat, is Bull Rock. Now humans can't really get to this island. The... The waves around it are too extreme. No one really goes on to Bull Rock unless they have to.

In Irish mythology, Bull Rock is... The mouth of hell. Now that's the best way that I can describe it. But to a people who didn't really... who didn't have heaven or hell or even linear time, it was something different. But it was a super natural passage to the other word for the souls of the dead. Later on in the podcast I speak about ancient Irish flood mythology.

Our mythology says that the first people to come to Ireland came here by boat, escaping an ancient flood. One of the lads on this boat, his name is Fintin, transforms into a salmon for a thousand years and lives in a mountain near Limerick called Fintin's grave. another one of the lads in the boat called Dunn doesn't escape the flood this big deluge

Dunn drowns in the flood and his body is washed off to this rock bull rock and this becomes Chalk Dunn the house of the dead and as I was speaking

to the audience on Garnish Island I'm telling him this story and I'm saying right behind us now out in the Atlantic is this bull rock and the reason it's important

is the sun is setting behind me and at certain times of the year, especially when viewed from these, there's these Bronze Age wedge tombs on the cost of Kerry. And apparently if you stand there at certain times of the year and look out at this rock and the natural arch, the sun sets perfectly inside the arch of this rock. And when that happens, the sun within this arch setting on this one day, a year, it looks like a single red eye, this one demonic red eye in the Atlantic Ocean. And the spectacle of that to our ancestors is probably what drew them towards mythologising that rock, making it supernatural, making it the place where souls go before they transcend

to the other world. But anyway, as I'm telling this story to the audience and saying the sun is setting behind me and telling him about this single eye. Just as I say that, my guest, Sean Runein, got stung in the eye by a wasp, came up on stage and he did the entire podcast, while one of his eyes swelled bright red and remained shut for the entirety of the podcast as the sun went down behind him. And that's deep, Yungian synchronicity to me. Now am I here saying to you? That's what actually happened.

Some mad crazy magic happened and then a wasp stung him in the eye. No, it's cunty wasp season. It's very aggressive wasp weekend. That's what's going on. In fact, throughout the entirety of the podcast, I'm vaping like a mad cunt. I don't vape that much anymore. I don't vape on podcasts.

This weekend I was vaping because we're outdoors and I was vaping with stuff. strong menthol to create a steam halo around me at all times to keep wasps away, because ye know about me and wasps and my plastic bag. So that's what happened. You know, he got stung by a wasp on County Wasp Weekend. But Youngian synchronicity, it's not just a weird coincidence. It's a coincidence in which an external event and then like a psychological or symbolic event,

become connected through meaning and not just like causal mechanism it's the writer in me that's excited by this it's the artist in me that's excited by this I wish mann Kahn was still around I wish Mankan was here so I could tell him this because

Mankan would hear this and would go fucking wild he'd be a hundred percent onto this with me he'd ring me up and say I need to come on the podcast and speak to you about this it's just I'm here on this powerful location, bringing up powerful mythology, and then that happens. Speaking about the one red eye on the rock,

and then fucking Sean gets stung by a wasp and arrives up with an eye that becomes... His eye became swollen and red as the sunset. He became that fucking rock. It's the poetry of that that I adore. That's the basis of a novel. That's the basis of a short story. And I only had that realization this morning.

throughout the podcast When he arrived on and the wasp stung him in the eye I wouldn't let it alone I kept going back at it because I was like no there's some connection here I need to join the dots here

what is it what is it and this morned it hit me that's what the fuck it was wow isn't that incredible another very enjoyable thing about this recording was there was a dog in the audience who started barking at the end

when I said dog bless and I loved that so I'm going to be playing you the entire recording I did very little edits. I want to play it through. It's long. It's one of these podcasts that you'll probably enjoy throughout the week.

You can come and go as you please rather than listening to the entire thing in one go, but you can do that if you like too. I also recorded myself on the boat coming out to the island. The whole thing's like a little journey. Another thing too is I read out an excerpt of a short story, which I'm going to leave in. I'm going to leave it into the podcast. I usually don't do that with live podcasts.

But this time I'm going to leave the excerpt of the short story in because it feels appropriate. Before I do any of this, I'm going to do the Ocarina pause now because I don't want to be interrupting this. I want to let the whole thing flow as one and for you to be able to listen to it that way. So I'll do the Ocarina pause now. First, just want to remind you this is a listener-funded podcast

through Patreon. and if you find yourself listening to this regularly because it brings you entertainment or mirth or merriment just understand that this is my full-time job this is how I earn a living it's how I rent out of my equipment it's how I rent out my office most importantly it's how I have the time and space to write and record this podcast as my vocation as something that I show up and deliver each week in a professional way and that's only possible because of the listening listeners, patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint

or a cup of coffee? Well, you can do it digitally. But if you can't afford that, if you don't have that money, not a problem. Listen for free. Listen to the podcast for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So every single person gets the exact same podcast and I get a living and I want to stress that too I don't upload exclusive content to the Patreon page if you message me on Patreon you're not necessarily going to get an answer quicker than anywhere else since the start I've always I want everybody to get the exact same experience whether you pay or not I just like that model it seems fair it seems sound so if anyone's wondering like why don't you have

exclusive Patreon content that's why I'd rather not do that. I'd like everyone to get the exact same. Experience whether they're paying or not. And I'd like to keep that going for as long as I can. It's a model based on soundness and kindness. So that's patreon.com forward slash the blind bite podcast. And if you're a new subscriber on Patreon,

sign up on a web browser or on the web browser on your phone. Don't sign up as a new subscriber on the Apple app on your iPhone because Apple take 30%. Upcoming gigs. You know I've got my Abby Theatre play Animals that's going to be running for six weeks in the Abbey Theatre from I think the end of September go to the Abbey Theatre's website if you want to go along and see that up in Dublin it's a play that's been adapted from my short stories and it's really looking fantastic

and the people that are working on it are unbelievably talented the top of their game next month beginning from the 18th of October I'm going to have my England Scotland and Wales tour starting off in Brighton on the 18th, then to the new theatre in Cardiff on the 20th in Wales, Coventry on the 21st in the Warwick Arts Centre, Beacon Hall in Bristol on the 22nd, G-Live there in Guildford, London at the Barbican, Glasgow the Pavilion Theatre, Gateshead and then finally Nottingham on the 1st of November at the Theatre Royal. I'm still open for guests, if there's any guests, if any of those areas that I read out there, if you can think of interesting local guests

that you'd like me to speak to at those podcasts, give me a shout on Instagram, DM at Blindby Boat Club, and you can get tickets for those that tour at Fane.co.ukh, forward slash blindby. I'm going to come back from that and I'll do a gig in Sligo on the 19th at the Hawkswell Theatre

on the 19th of November in Sligo, nice little small gig. And then I won't do anything. I won't be doing any gigs in December. I'm terrified of Christmas parties. I'm terrified of office Christmas parties. Coming to one of my live podcasts. It makes it quite difficult.

So I don't do, don't really do gigs in December. April 27. Look, Australia and New Zealand. Um, fucking Auckland. Melbourne. Nearly sold out. Brisbane is sold out. Parth is sold out.

Sydney Opera House is about to go. But I'm releasing a few extra tickets for Sydney Opera House because it's about to sell out. All of my gigs are on the blind by podcast.e. Let's have a quick ocarina pause so you can hear some adverts for bollocks. And then we'll get into the Odyssey, the Odyssey to Garnish Island.

It felt like a mythical journey to me. Every part of it was loaded with meaning. I kept that nice and low just in case there's any dogs listening. So here we go. I'm going to start off on the boat. This won't be interrupted by adverts. I'm going to play the whole thing straight through. And it's quite long, I'd say it's between 90 minutes and two hours.

But you're fuck it, it's a podcast. You don't have to listen to it all in one sitting. There might be some noise in the background here of chatter and people talking. I'm not sure if it makes a difference to you. This is going to be a chaotic recording. I'm currently on a boat. I'm on a boat in West Cork, in Glen Gariff. Going into the mouth of the fucking Atlantic.

surrounded by beauty surrounded by nature I mean how do I describe the area to you the rain is beating down on top of me I'm looking at the Atlantic waves lapping up when I say the word harbour I'm referring to a natural harbour it's not a man-made harbour this is a glaciated harbour lots of tiny little islands and

this would have been the foot of a glacier and it ripped the landscape open, left space for loads of water and then a couple of little islands poking out so we're here in a natural glaciated harbour. But this natural glaciated harbor because it's protected from the Atlantic wind, protected from the Atlantic cold, has got a Mediterranean microclimate and that's what makes this area of West Cork so special. I was here last year This area was This was the Dubai This was the Dubai This was the Dubai of the 1700s

And the 1800s The British came here During colonisation And filled everywhere Filled the place What a magnificent gorgeous country houses I'm looking at them right now As I'm in the middle of the ocean

Staring at beautiful Palatian mansions up on hills Looking upon the harbour I've just noticed my first seal of the day. There's many native seals out here. We're inside Bantry Bay, but the

Glengariff Harbour itself is protected by islands and surrounding the mountains, the mountains of West Cork, and it reduces the exposure to the Atlantic swell and creates this sheltered intertidal habitat. It's known as

the seals love it here. It's a strange meeting of Atlantic marine and temperate rainforest ecosystems. The journey out to Garnish Island, which is where I'm heading. It's about a 20 minute journey by boat. It does feel like I'm on the river Styx. Going to enter hell. I'm going out to this island to interview Sean Ronane.

Apologies for the scattered nature of this podcast, but I'm spending all weekend in West Cork. And the drive down here, we were up the mountains. We got lost. Google thought that we were a lot of yanks and Google Maps sent us on a very, very strange journey up these mountains, and we came down to a Bohrhen, I suppose you'd call it a very, very old, strange road that didn't see a lot of traffic. And at the very bottom of this road, the bottom of a hill, there were thousands of frogs. Frog Valley, I don't know what they were doing, but we had to get out of the car

and push the frogs away with our feet so that we didn't crush them. The islands that I'm looking at here in the harbour, ah the mist, the mist lads. The mist is purple, I'm looking at a bull seal. I am looking across now at a large male bull seal basking on a fucking rock and all around him are islands with strange tropical plants that don't belong here but the Brits decided that it was a good idea.

This is a spiritual place. yonder, I'll be passing it very shortly, is the nest of one of... I think it's Ireland's only nesting white-tailed eagle. I'm still being distracted by that bull seal. He's a huge fucker, he looks like a lion. My God, I never thought I'd see one in the wild. Looks like a cross between an elephant and a slug. Some cormorants.

Some ink. seagulls, lads, in their natural habitat. All right, I have a huge amount of... I've nothing against seagulls, but I love seeing a seagull in its natural habitat. And the natural habitat of a seagull is on little islands. On little islands is where seagulls like to live. Seagulls have no business in cities.

Their indigenous habitat is islands. The other thing about this natural harbors, as I look around, I'm seeing beautiful explosions of pink, and purple, but the pink and purple that I'm seeing is... The pink and purple that I'm seeing is rhododendrums. Again, no business being here. They're beautiful. But they are acne on the landscape.

We're coming up to Garnish Island itself now. This is not natural. This is unnatural. The tree... The island itself is supposed to be covered with just moss and lichen. But the British family, that... I think it was the Eccles family.

I'm staying in a hotel called the Eccles Hotel. The Eccles Hotel was built in the 1740s. So I'm staying in a hotel that was built in the 1740s. And from about 1890 up to 1920, this hotel was used for the officer class of the British Army. So it was for very, very wealthy, posh British officers to stay in this magnificent hotel in order to treat their shell shock. shell shock. In the way that the IDF now go to Goa in India and listen to terrible trance music,

in the 1920s the poshs British soldiers were returning from World War I and curing their shell shock in this beautiful landscape. And as I was lying in my bed that an auxiliary or a black and tan lay in many years before, I was thinking about the Kilmichael Ambush, which my grandfather participated in. in it. And I'm lying in the bed of a British soldier that my grandfather might have shot a gun at. And I enjoy the poetry of that. We're now coming into the harbour here on Garnish Island. The island itself looks like it's wearing trousers. Very strange, not mangroves, but the trees, because of the tide, because the tide goes up and down,

the tree line on the islands has a very strict, straight, line and it makes the island itself look like it's wearing a pair of green trousers. This is going to be slightly chaotic, but sure, what are you going to do? It's on an island, you know what I mean? We got the weather for it as well. It was anyone here last year? Do you remember the rain?

Well, it was more than rain. What was happening is that it was pulling upon this what you call? Not a terrapin. A tarpin? What's it called? What's the full name of a tarp? Tarpaulin. Not a terrapin. the water was pooling on the tarpaulin

and then it was just coming down in one go and scaring the shit out of everybody, mostly me which was very difficult in the middle of a podcast. Who left a giant bunch of grapes? Who left the erotic grapes? Did you leave them?

Are they real grapes? Well, I know they're real but are they from a shop? They look like they're picked straight off the... Were these grown in Ireland? Go away out of a year. You're growing grapes. Don't they look fantastic? They actually look a bit like Ireland

or possibly Brazil. Wow, I've never seen... Well, they're not indigenous grapes, but I've never seen grapes that are grown in Ireland. Fantastic. Thank you so much for that. They're very... Theatrical looking. They're like...

Very... Actually, it's the setting because this is kind of a Roman garden, Greek garden type of thing. I went for another walk around. Did you all go for a walk around there? It's fucking fantastic. it's the brown sauce of architecture. And what I mean by that is, is,

so everything you see there, right, you've got, there's a little bit of Indian stuff going on, there's a little bit of, is that my vape fluid? Thank you so much, Eminem. I needed my vape fluid. The, so there's a little bit of Japanese stuff going on. There's some bonsai trees. There's a bit of a Chinese pagoda.

It's what the Brits would call Oriental, which even the word itself, for Oriental. I think it has something to, it had something to do with ships and the way that they orient themselves. And it was just that whole place over there, the Orient. We don't give a shit about what the countries are called, just the Orient. And this whole place is the memory of the Orient. And the reason it's brown sauce is, the history of fucking brown sauce comes from Yorkshire relish, right? So there was, it was about 1860, I think it was. there was a green grocers in Yorkshire

and back then a greengrocer was like it wasn't just like walking into Centra it was a shop that made their own produce and stuff and this Yorkshire greengrocer a fella used to walk in every week he was a British soldier who'd spend time over in India and he's back in Yorkshire and he'd call in and he'd say

I was eating this stuff over in fucking India called chutney and it was amazing and I can't stop thinking about it and there's no internet, there's nothing, I can't ring someone up, phones don't exist yet, I cannot get my hands on this chutney, and I don't think I ever will, because I'm back in Yorkshire,

and it's very difficult getting over to India, because I'm not a soldier anymore, and it's 1860. So the grocer says to him, describe it to me. So each week he comes in and starts describing the taste of chutney, going, it's a bit vinegary, it was a bit fruity,

it was a bit spicy as well. And the grocer tries to make him chutney from this fella's description, from this fella's memory, and eventually ends up with Yorkshire Relish, and that's what Yorkshire Relish is. It's one English person describing chutney to another English person, and this garden is that. But it is.

It's like, I think I was in Japan once. Are you sure it was Japan or India? I don't know, just that fucking oriental place, but can you build it like that and that, maybe a bit of that, and put that tree there and that plant, and you end up with this. It's Dubai. This is Edward,

It's Edwardian Dubai. So I have a cracker of a guest for you, right? But before I bring the guest out, I usually read a short story. You can hear me all right, you can. I usually read a short story before every live podcast. And as you know, I'm doing a play up in the Abbey Theatre at the moment. And what we're doing is taking a fuckload of my short stories

and trying to make it into a play effectively. And as a result, I've been revisiting some short stories. And there's one I've never. read out live and I'd like to chance reading out an excerpt of something I've never read out live purely because we're on an island. What are you going to do? Leave.

But I just feel it's the right environment where I can chance it because I don't know if it works live or not. So it's a short story from my last book called Pamela Fags and oh God, it's

kind of biographical because a lot of it is about my own childhood, but it's about a chain-smoking solicitor called Pamela and her chaotic brother who calls into the office one day with a dirty suit, which is true that did happen. My brother called into my office with a dirty suit. So I'm going to begin halfway through the story and we'll see if it works. It might work and if it doesn't work. Fuck it, look at the British Dubai behind you. There was a loud knock on the door and I went to answer, assuming that it was Noel

reared and returning for his jacket. it wasn't nor Reardon. It was my brother Brendan. He pushed straight past me with a plastic bag in his hand and began smoking my cigarettes. He was uneasy, taking rapid puffs, blowing nostril smoke and tiptoe stepping over the mess on the floor like a flamingo. This is what he proceeded to tell me in more or less these words. He went back to the outlet store and retrieved his 50 euro deposit like I had asked into. I'd completely forgotten about all of this. If I'm being honest, it was a week ago and I have a job. but anyway he took the money to the security guard who worked in the multi-story car park

and the security guard looked at him like he had 12 arses and said, how in the fuck are we supposed to locate the owner of a 50-0? 50-Euro note. No one reported it missing. It's not in a wallet. There's no ID. It could be anyone's money. It might have even blown in from the road. If you want my advice, pal, just keep the 50-euro note. It's yours, man. And that was enough to clear my conscience, said Brendan.

his forehead sweat frizzled his corals and made him appear particularly clown-like he was still jittery with anxiety and then he infected me with his anxiety and I said a bit loud then what's the problem Brendan what are you doing in my office all upset he took another fag from the packet

and tried to light it with a stapler I thought it was one of them novelty lighters he said I lit his fag with my fag and called him a useless prick and he went on with his story recounting it like a little boy so he'd return to the outlet store today and said hello I was here last Friday

I'm ready to buy the suit that I put a deposit on the Hugo Boss one and then the outlet store were all like we sold the suit sir it's gone and then Brendan was like but I put a deposit on the suit you can't sell the fucking suit I'll put a deposit on it and then they said in response you did put a deposit on it but then you took the deposit back

and during that time we sold the suit suit. So he was like, I know I took the actual 50 euro note, but I still had a deposit on it. And then they were all, that's not how deposits work, sir. But we have another suit that's similar and it's much cheaper. Do you want that instead? Brendan was offered disappointed, but he swallowed his pride and bought the cheaper suit, and that was the end of his formal wear saga, or so I thought. Ah, you got a suit for the wedding. Well done, I said, relieved. What's your specific problem then, Brendan, what is bothering you? Why are you here in my office?

We had both worked each other up at this point. Brendan didn't say a word. He stood there with a big serious face on him and he reached into his plastic bag and held the trousers of the suit in the air like there were a severed head and said, sniff that, Pamela. Sniff the crotch, sniff it.

Tell me I'm not going mad. Go on, sniff that. He spoke the words in an affected English accent and I knew immediately what was happening. So I buried my face in the gusset of the suit pants and began inhaling. And there it was, the pain in my tummy. Actually, no, pause this. Before I continue sniffing the crotch of these suit pants,

I need to tell you some details about my childhood. I grew up in a house with four much older brothers. When I was five years of age, they were in their late teens and early twenties, a lot older, so they were forever attending Debs. There was a plethora of graduation ceremonies too, maybe a wedding or three, I can't fully recall. Numerous situations where my older brothers had occasion to rent suits or tuxedos. It was a significant part of my early years compared to other children. All incredibly stressful and unnecessarily dramatic events instigated and exacerbated by my daddy.

God rest him, who was very passionate about stains and orders. He was quite an eccentric man, you could say. My father would become deathly serious when there was a risk of rented formal wear smelling like someone else's sweat the sweat of a strange man so to speak he had two theories about this aptly named the first theory and the second theory

one of them I completely agree with and the other one is quite far-fetched and brings the pain in my stomach the first theory concerned dry cleaning which my father didn't consider to be real cleaning at all because in his words the fabric was merely adjutant by a solvent, as opposed to being deeply cleansed at a molecular level by a decart detergent. Dry cleaning, he maintained, was a form of masking, which could never truly eliminate the lipids

and proteins that were present in human sweat. So if there was even the tiniest hint of another human sweat on a rented suit or tuxedo, it must be returned. As soon as you put on that suit and attend the formal occasion, you were on serious trouble, he'd say, especially if you have a couple of pints to heat up the blood, or maybe chance a bit of dancing. The moisture and warmth of your own body will awaken the order of the previous wearer. The dormant stench blooms with the catalyst of your sweat and you'd start to really stink. It doesn't matter how thoroughly you've cleansed your own body or how much deodorant you've worn. It's not your sweat. It's someone else's sweat. Now you're the smelly person at the function. You smelling like someone else.

And that's just the truth of it. There is no acceptable aggregate of another person's sweat that can be permitted to acquiesce in a rented suit or tuxedo. Send it back and demand a fresh one. He'd repeat that throughout my childhood like a mantra to all my brothers. My father was correct about dry cleaning. However, it can be a risk, but it was his second theory that consumed him. My father formulated his second theory

while watching David Attenborough Nature documentaries. He grew tormented by footage of wild animals and how they would mark territory using scents or pheromones. Leveraging this knowledge, he asserted that humans subconsciously glean information about others' mental states, dispositions or personalities through scent and sweat. So if you arrive at a wedding

and the suit begins to smell like the sweat of another man, if that man was a bit of a prick, we'll say. Or if he was an aggressive man, other people will then act aggressively towards you. You can be as polite as you like, but the sweat will override all rationality. Or worse still, the smell of the other man's sweat can rise up into your own nose, and you will take on aspects of his personality and behave accordingly. All occurring beyond your awareness or control. Absolutely insane stuff.

Of course my mother disagreed. She reasoned that my father always drank too much and would consistently make an arse out of himself at formal occasions, and his still here he was just an excuse to avoid accepting responsibility for his drinking. You're poisoning the children with nonsense she'd scream. And he'd be on the verge of tears with her howling. Then how do you explain the job

interview with the porridge people, Marion? Was there any drink taken when I met the porridge people? Referencing an incident in his 30s where he self-sabotaged a potential role as a contamination chemist at Adlam's porridge because he believed his suit had previously been worn by a man

with low self-esteem. I don't even think my father had faith in the second theory himself. It was just something that he held on to, so my mother wouldn't win. He was saving face, and that was what I had for a childhood. My daddy would spend the day times dressed in a three-piece suit, cleaning the house impeccably, pretending he wasn't hung over. He'd rubbed the surfaces down with a rag of industrial alcohol so he couldn't smell it on his breath. My mother waiting to pounce.

I'd be getting pains in the pit of my belly watching them. I must have been six years old when my young. youngest brother Andy returned home one evening with a rented tuxedo for his depths. I remember him, dragging the smell of cold winter air in the door when it closed, and my father used a poker to anxiously molest the fire, and waited in the living room with a grave set of eyes on him. I didn't understand how fucking stupid it all was back then. My father used to put on like a kind of an English accent in these situations,

and he'd tap on the coffee table with his wedding ring and say, did you inspect the undercarriage? Did you inspect the undercarriage of those trousers, Andrew? Brandished the garment hither. And then he would take the suit between the tips of his fingers like it might bite him and sniff all around the crotch and underarm in a loud, performative way

that communicated a level of expertise and experience. Puffing his nostrils, we'd all be watching. He'd make us go quiet too. He'd say, I'm currently receiving alfactory information and I require serenity, which made no sense at all, who need silence to smell? All of my brothers staring at him

with big red clown heads, believing in his theory, waiting for his judgment, I need alternative counsel, he'd say. And the suit was passed along to my brothers in order of age, and they would each have their turn snorting at the fabric.

Occasionally the suit was impeccably dry-cleaned and neither my father nor my brothers could agree on whether they detected an order of sweat or not. Furious arguments arose in those situations and my mother would get involved. It must be pointed out that she refused to participate

in the act of suit sniffing. Instead she'd scream. You're all mad! I'm not smelling that fucking suit. I'll wash it. I'll wash the fucking suit with hot water and soap. Just stop talking about it! My father would reject this offer. Get the child.

Get the child. Bring forth the child. He'd say. oh, Dickensian, I was the child. He would hold the crotch of the trousers in front of my nose and instruct me to inhale and report my findings. An extension of his pheromone theory was that I had the most acute sense of smell because I was a child.

And as a prepubescent girl, I possessed no context for the order of adult male perspiration and thus could not be enchanted by its persuasive effluvium. His words. All of this meant that my assessment was the final ruling. If I said yes, I can smell something bad,

my father and brothers would cheer and my mother would let me know that she expected better from me. If I said no, I smell nothing. My father'd be heartbroken and he'd disappear for two days. My mother would scold him and call him a whino. I remember it all being a terrible amount of pressure.

I usually lied, depending on who I didn't want to upset that day. So where was I? In my office. In my office, yes. Brendan stood there with a big serious looking face on him. He reached into the plastic bag and held the pants of the suit in the air like a severed head and said, sniff that, Pamelaus, sniff the crotch, sniff it, and tell me I'm not going mad, go on, sniff that. He spoke the words with the same affected English accent as my father, and I knew immediately what was happening.

I felt that old funny pain in my stomach. I instinctively began to sniff the crotch of his outlet store suit and searched for testicular musk around the gusset. Sniff, sniff, sniff. But my experience had altered somehow. There was nothing. Not that I couldn't smell sweat specifically. I couldn't smell anything at all. Not a thing.

It must be the fags. The years of smoking fags had done away with my sense of smell. To tell you the truth, I felt a relief. I can't smell sweat, Brendan. But if you think you can smell sweat, then return the suit. I told them, I smell balls, Pamela. That's some other fella's balls. Some fucker bought the suit and then returned it

after he had his way with the crotch. A full weekends worth the balls too. All this trick in the book, them gangsters in the outlet store, sold it to me as if it was new, he whimpered. Well then, Brendan, as per the sale of good and supply of services Act 1990, you are legally entitled to return this suit.

The fact that the suit is pre-worn is a breach of implied condition under Section 14, 2 of the Act, which states that goods must be sold and of merchantable quality. Therefore, you have a rightful claim to redress, Brendan. He crumpled the trousers back in the

to the plastic bag and smoked another one of my fags. I joined him. So you will send them a letter for me. He said, I laughed. If you weren't my brother, I'd happily waste your money, Brendan. Just go back into the shop and demand a brand new suit that doesn't smell like arseholes or whatever. They'd probably get all embarrassed and we'll replace it. They might even throw in a little dicky bow. I can't do that, he said. Looking down at my fire retardant carpet. It's half four. The shop is closed for the weekend now and the cunt of an architect's wedding is tomorrow. I gestured towards the office door and said, Just wear the fucking suit to the wedding, Brendan.

Just wear the fucking suit and cop on to yourself. Give the cratcher once over in the sink and go at it with a hairdryor if you're paranoid. Brendan took on a childlike gait. He looked directly into my eyes and said, but that is second theory. What if I take on the personality of the previous wearer and disgrace myself at my wedding in front of my ex?

The pain in my tummy dissolved into anger and I said, The man was a roaring alcoholic, Brendan. He was lying to himself. There's no second theory. Wear the suit and go to the fucking wedding and don't be getting rat-hearsed. And whatever you do, don't be ringing ma about it tonight

because she's in her 80s and she doesn't need more crotch discourse at this hour of her life. You're right, Pamela, he said. That's a little excerpt. I enjoy that story. What actually happens with that is, so first off, most of that

was my actual childhood. like not the trauma parts so like that is true like in my house growing up my brothers were older they were always going to Debs and look anyone who's worn a rented tuxedo

you know what I'm talking about you put that fucking tuxedo on you think it's clean you go to the wedding and you start to smell like sweat and it's like I can deal with smelling like sweat I can deal with this

I've smelt like sweat before but not this sweat this isn't my sweat do you know that's when you smell like another person's sweat So that was a big deal in my house growing up And yeah my brothers would be coming home with suits And my dad had an impeccable nose on him

And he'd be sniffing crotches and suits And then if a fight broke out Nothing serious I was walking out of bed at about six or seven years of age Because of my young nose And it would be straight up He doesn't know what adult sweat smells like But give the crotch to him

So but for me it wasn't like Terribly traumatic I remember it is quite happy and fun but for that character I wanted to make it trauma I wanted to make it trauma and I wanted to make it I don't know

she's smoking fags and then you go the reason she got so addicted to fags is because what it did to her smell and then later on in the story actually another part of that fucking story

is based on my life as well she's a solicitor who's shit at her job and she takes on clients who like the cases will never go to court she just likes making money from the legal leg of

you know what I mean? So she takes those cases and she has an old man called Noel Reardon who kind of fancies her and he's being sued by the... No, he's suing the Limerick Greyhound Association because they've accused them of feeding tea bags to Greyhounds. Which happened to my uncle.

My uncle used to have greyhounds and he was dosing him with tea bags. Was it a caffeine? Yeah. But anyway, what happens in the story is the owl fella dies, he's about 80 and old greyhound man

and he leaves his jacket in her office and then later that day he dies in the night and she goes to Limerick Greyhound Stadium with her brother Brendan who's just come from the wedding and then she ends up taking on the personality of that old man

and calling the committee bastards, you bastards and bitches I didn't and then she ends up taking on his personality but she doesn't really what she's actually doing is taking on her dad's alcoholism so they're turning that into a play up in the Abbey. What we're doing with the play?

Fuck me. Yeah, it's mostly stories from my last book and then one story from my first book which is called Ars Children which I cannot wait to see on the stage of the Abbey Theatre because this story is about Amon Devalera

discovering that Holy Mary's womb is in his bowels and then Michael Collins has to ride him up the arse to get him pregnant with these arse children they're called they're these weird basketball shaped lumps of skin

with West Cork accents that are master assassins and Michael Collins gives birth to them from no no Eam and De Valeri gives birth to them from Holy Mary's womb in his bowels and then the arse children are the ones who actually

take out the Cairo gang in Dublin in 1921 so that's going to be on the stage of Abbey Theatre. Which is what should be on in the Abbey Theatre. But that's the thing. The Abbey is all about starting riots. That's the crack.

Like, it's about... It's about offending people. It's about asking people, why are you offended? And for me, the why are you offended there is... It's the homophobia part. It's what if... So what if fucking Michael Conn... I'm not saying Michael Collins rode Eminem and Devalero up the arse.

I'm just saying, but what if? Who cares? Who cares? What are you offended about here exactly? The Catholics might get offended. But even who cares about that? Who says Holy Mary's womb can't show up in someone's fucking bowels? Like, who makes the rules? But, like, if anyone

was to challenge me on that, I'm having an argument with myself, no. But, like, I know that's absurd, right? That's absurd. But, like, I'll tell you, what else is absurd? Do you know what the Catholic Church's explanation is for the rings of Saturn? So, fucking Christ, right?

Christ was definitely a real person. We can agree that Christ was... There was someone called Christ, okay? And Christ was born, he was born Jewish. And every Jewish kid got fucking circumcised. So Jesus Christ, the human being, most fucking definitely got circumcised. That is a given. We know that happened.

But Christ is also, like, not human. Every part of him is totally sacrosan, right? So the Catholic Church was thrown into this terrible situation in the 12th century where a couple of people claim to have Christ's foreskin because they're like, it was cut off and I have it in a box, right? A relic, because that's a thing within Catholicism. We've got a saint's bones,

we've got fucking St. Valentine's heart is up there in Dublin. So the greatest relic of all is going to be Christ's foreskin. So in the 12th century, it was given to King Charlemagne of France in a box. And they're like, Charlemagne, buddy, it's Christ's foreskin. So Charlemagne is like, well, this is the best relic of all. I've got a piece of Christ's cock and they took it really seriously

okay but then other competing foreskin started to arrive around Europe as relics and the thing is with relics this is what you have to realise about relics and Catholicism relics in medieval times they were a bit like putting Facebook up in Dublin

do you know what I mean? They were for tourism if a village or a city or a place with a cathedral could get a fucking relic that meant non-stop tourism and that meant the economy, it meant money. So relics were really important. So if you had Christ's fucking foreskin, there's going to be billionaires

in the 12th century equivalent. So the church anyway, we're like, fuck, there's competing foreskins. What are we going to do? So they said, there's no foreskin of Christ. What do you mean? There's no foreskin of Christ.

And this is the official Catholic explanation. They said, Christ, Christ died at the age of 32. Yes, his foreskin was cut off. but it danced around the earth for 32 years and then became the rings of Saturn and that's the explanation for Christ's foreskin, right? So,

Amen devil Eric can have Holy Mary's wounds in his bowels if you want. Sorry for offending you all here in British Dubai. Isn't it gorgeous? Is that the sun yonder? Is the sun over there, is it? There's a fucking... A beautiful... If you go off that way and out past the mouth there at the end,

Atlantic, there's a rock. Someone might know the name of it. Is it called Bull Rock? So Bull Rock is incredible. So in Irish mythology, it's there in the fucking Dinh Shankus, I think, which I think is the 11th century. This, so it's a rock

and it has like a natural archway, right? And in the mythology, it's called a chok dune, right? Which it means house, house of the dead one or something like that. And what we reckon is, it was kind of like Hades, like a river sticks type of thing, that that rock was where,

because we didn't really have heaven or hell in Irish mythology, but it's where certain souls went to live in the house of the dead. And apparently at a certain time of the year, you can look at that rock from the Bear Peninsula and the sun goes down perfectly with that arch and kind of winks. You know what I mean? Like a little Atlantic New Grange type of thing. Okay, how much did I fucking talk for there now?

Okay, Grand, I have a magnificent guest. He needs no introduction, but I'll do it anyway, for autistic formalities. Sean Ronane, who is a bird expert. Come on out, Sean. Would you like to partake in an indigenous grate? What's the story? They were given as a gift. I thought they were yours.

I'm quite like the fact that the sunlight is on him, and they might turn into raisins before I've already eyes. I'm after being stung in the eye by a wasp. You got stung by a wasp in the eye? Look at us. Oh, no, you did not. not just there. I did.

My greatest fear. I found it. Oh, nice one. Thanks. How often do you get stung by wasps? I try not to do it too often, Nick. How did you manage that? That's actually, I must have put some type of fucking widows curse on you,

even though I'm not a widow, but you know what I mean? I don't know what happened, because I'm all for wasps and bees at the moment and hoverflies and, I don't know. Are you aware of, um... Do you know why wasps are like pricks now? like right now I've heard you speaking about that well it's interesting

because it goes into addiction theory so the thing is with the I'm going to expand this for them now because I'm sure you know a thing or two

about wasps what wasps like I love wasps I used to not like wasps but they don't they do a small bit of pollination

but it's not their main thing they do with the odd bit but it's not like this I'm not into this it's like someone who have a point every so often they're not serious drinkers

they're They're carnivorous. They're carnivorous. So the wasps do. These lot of caterpillars. A wasp, they eat meat. A wasp will fucking, there'll be a dead rat in the ground and the wasp will go. I need that rat's anus for dinner.

I actually saw a wasp eating a wren the other day. That's what they do. But they get the meat. But the wasp, the wasp isn't necessarily eating the meat. It's holding on to the meat. But then the wasp goes back to the wasp nest. And then in the nest, there's the baby wasps, right? the wasp gives the meat to the baby wasp

the baby wasp the larvae eats it and then excretes a sugary substance that's what the wasp eats so when the wasp goes back to its colony it's like I'm eating a rat's arse but in exchange for this rat's arse I'm getting some delicious tasty sugar this is amazing wasp goes there

but then about now the colony collapses and all those baby fucking wasps grow into adult wasps and then you have all these wasps flying around who no longer have a source of this sugar. They don't have it anymore. And they're kind of strung out.

They're addicted to this sugar. And the people who does have it is us. So that's why the wasps are cunty right now. But they might have smelt a fucking bit of aftershave that you had on or whatever. Something about your eyes. Maybe I have meaty eyes. And how are you feeling about getting stung at the eyeball by a wasp? That's great, to be honest with you.

I didn't even know. My eye felt a bit tight. And then I looked in the mirror and it looks like there's a red grape on my eye. Here's just, like, I don't want to

fucking jinx myself now right, because I'm pretty good at not getting stung by wasps. Like, seriously, I had a couple of incidents at the weekend. This has given me

very strange, Deja Vu. I listened to a prank call by you when I was a teenager about keeping a pet wasp in a matchbox. Do you remember that? I'm obsessed with wasps. See, I've never been stung

so I don't know if an allergic case. You said it was a rare type of Himalayan wasp that answers to a note of E. Yeah. E. I was traumatising my fucking children at the weekend, unfortunately, right? You're traumatising your children?

Well, overreacting to wasps in front of a fucking three-year-old. So my dad was very, very anxious and I learned anxiety off my dad, you know. And I'm trying to break that cycle. But I was there in B&Q with my children at the weekend and then fucking a wasp, well, two wasps, and with all due respect, it came from my head. And I screamed. My three-year-olds going, oh, the adult is screaming. The adult is screaming at insects.

So that's a core memory there. That's learned now. That's a nice bit of trauma there. I actually... They're going to be 30. I did the same thing with Laya, except for me it was a spider. Do you know there's a new spider discovered in Ireland

only in Limerick City? What? And that's not the first thing you didn't tell me. You met me a fucking hour ago and you didn't tell me that immediately. Come here, man. What the fuck? There's so many things I'm keeping in my backpack

I need this. Come on to fuck. I have a list of things here for you. No, no, no, no, no. No, no. I actually, right, seriously, and it looks like the evil villain from a Marvel comic. It's jet black. It's probably lovely, no, in fairness. What's its name?

It's name. I've written it down, right? I'm going to read you the Latin name first because that looks a bit sexier. Segestria Florentina. Get into a nightclub with that name. The English name is, it's very apt. Green-fanged tube web spider. And apparently it has a bite like a deep injection.

Yeah. But like... Were you talking to Colley about this? No, no. When did you... How did you hear this? When did you hear it? I'm going through a kind of a spider obsession at the moment

and I just started photographing spiders for the last two weeks and I just started reading up about it. It was discovered in 2023 and it's only known from Limerick City. So it lives in the cracks of mortar between red brick and like under the capstones of walls. It's a giant, it looks like a giant tube, right? And they've got these trap wires coming out. for it weights with its leg on the trapware and if you touch it, it comes out and it gets you.

Yeah. Because that's an interesting thing. When I first went to Australia in 2011, they've got crazy things. They've mad things over there, but what I found interesting from talking to lads there was so they've got a redback, right? And if you get bitten by a redback, you have a half an hour to get to the hospital

or else you're in serious trouble. You could get a heart attack. And the Irish lads kept getting fucking bitten by redbacks and they couldn't understand why. and it's because of the culture of brickeys. So the brickeys in Ireland, they're on the fucking size. They don't need gloves.

They're not using gloves. But Australian lads are using gloves because of the spiders. So the Irish fellas were putting their hands into where the redbacks live and kept getting fucking bitten about the redbacks. So now Irish people are going to start wearing gloves.

All right. You had a nice little trauma response to a gnat. There was a little midger on the back of you there and you flinched. No, no, I got a drop of water on my nose. I think I've a theory about how you got stung on the eye there. I'd love to know him.

Well, like... If we look at those photographs... You hang around with cameras and microphones and you probably allow insects crawl all over you all the time in order to listen to a bird. Well, that's true. I didn't introduce him at all or what he does. He's just about...

Shall look, we'll get there. We usually do. I was out last night until half 11 looking at moths on a cliff and then I got a text to say, you've two shows tomorrow, you know. I was like, oh yeah, fuck. So we went home, went to bed,

got up at half five, went back out to look at Mots, and then came here. But I'm sure I'd more to say about that spider. I need... You should go looking for it. I would... I'd think about its existence.

It's a bit... You know what? But I need to get on to Kali about it. We could do a road trip. Collie would love to see it, I'm sure. But it's... Oh yeah, that's what it was. It's the biggest...

The biggest funnel web spider. It's a tank. It's a... funnel web. It goes, like it has this hole a big, it looks.

They're cunts, man, they're over in America the funnel waves. Yeah. They're going to people's beds and bite their toes. Yeah,

yeah. This one knows fairly sound I heard. Like, you have to, you have to step on the trap wire to lure it out at night time. Look at it though.

Like, look at that wasp, it's following me. That's probably him. I'd be very upset now if he gets... I heard you talking about a Spanish long wasp there as well.

Because I'm going back, I forget which episodes I've listened to. I have seen some long wasps in You were doing a live recording somewhere. You were on about a long... Oh, Jesus, I was doing a live recording in Spain

and there was a very long wasp. Do you know what that probably was? One of those Asian hornets? Maybe, but also there's another thing, and I have a photograph of it, there's parasitic wasps and they have these huge long ovipositors. Maybe it was that.

It's an interesting thing. We used to say wasp in Limerick and we stopped but cork people held onto it. I say wasp, but you say wasp. I say wasp. I have a record. of a wasp here. Do you want to hear it? Go on, yeah.

Hold on. I'm going to have to talk about something when I look for it and it's going to take away. This isn't even his fucking territory. He's just after going autistic about insects recently. Oh yeah. His thing is birds like. So he just decided to become Mr. Insect recently.

I love a bit of everything really. Look, I'll come back to the wasp. I'm going to multitask. I'm brilliant to that. This vape actually is good at keeping wasps away. It's like a little holy Mary's halo. Oh, come here. I have something else to tell you.

Maybe you got stung because I was blasted. faming. About the wasp. Hang on a second. Let me get it. This is the sound of a wasp eaten the hollow stem of a hogweed plant.

Have you ever heard that? Giant hogweed. Oh, just a normal one. So this is a recording I've always wanted to capture. So look, do you ever see a wasp's nest? It looks like a giant pinata, like a paper mashet pinata.

They make that through mixing their saliva with the chewed up dry hogweed stem. Yeah. And so you can hear it. It's a really, really distinctive sound. It sounds like somebody's eating crackers in the bushes. But there's nobody there.

So you have to get down your hands and knees and eventually you find this wasp gnawn on the hogweed. So this is it. These are the kind of things I occupy my life with like this. So I have to ask, Grace, were you in the middle of trying to listen to a bird

and then you, that's just an accidental artifact? Like were you out, listen, were you going, I'm on a wasp listening day today, or are you on a bird listening day? Like, I'm not, it's like, I love everything, really. It's not, it's not just birds. Birds is just my, are just my favourite thing. I've always liked wasps and slugs and all sorts of stuff. If you studied birds, though. I did, like, officially, like in college, but I mean, most of the stuff I learned about birds was just out in, out in the garden, out in Cuskinney and just being out there, do you know? And the stuff that I studied was more of a kind of a formality. like, you know, survey techniques, like, you know, the sounds of birds and the behaviour and mimicry and all of that. That was just all just obsession, like deep obsession, you know. But what was I out there for? Oh no, I was out looking for spiders out there. That's what I was doing.

Come here, I have something to say to before I forget it. Go on. I find it very distracting when I listen to your outdoor recorded podcasts because I can hear birds in the background. And I'm identifying the birds. And I have something to tell you. I was going to message you of it but I thought she said I'll wait until this

there was one where you were in Berlin was it Berlin? Fairly recently and you were saying you had to be careful about speaking about a certain topic and whatnot

when it was very serious When you say it here Free Palestine Yeah Like it was a You know It was a very serious conversation And in the background

All I could hear was a black red start It was following around It was singing through the entire episode Yeah Do you know what that is? Go on Massad

It's a It actually It actually is a bird connected to war. It is connected to war, in a sense, right? Where am I here? My notes are all over the place. Oh, yeah. So, Black Red Star, right? Normally you find it up in the tops of the Pyrenees or the Alps.

It's a bird of, like, extreme places, like, well away from people. They love scree slopes. But, like, in recent years, when they start to expand their range, they've turned up in urban habitats. And after the blitz in London, in World War II, all of the destroyed buildings represented scree and rubble like they get in the Pyrenees and the Elts

and they colonised London after that and they nicknamed it the bombsite bird yeah and I could hear it there's that connection like when you were in Berlin you know so that's like the poppy

the red poppy only grew it's a rudder of the planet would grow on disturbed art that was bombed yeah exactly do want to hear it going yeah it's actually really beautiful and it does this really strange thing like first of all they're really

memetic. It can imitate all kinds of different things. But they all do this really strange thing where in the middle of the song they suddenly stop and it sounds like somebody standing and swivelling in gravel. It's really... Listen, you'll hear it. So this actually was recorded

in a place called call the pal. Is that all there? Call is like a pass. It's Catalan. It's a pass. It's like this lovely pass right up in the Pyrenees and it's full of birds. Anyway, this is it. I was sleeping in a Pugio 206. That's the gravelly part.

And the whistling in the background, that's a marmot. Anyway. Just something I want to observe there, right? So where we are right now, like this fucking island is none of these, not none of them, but I would say 98% of the plants here

are not indigenous, right? So we are in a deeply unnatural landscape. This island should be, you know the islands you saw when you're coming out on the boat and they're just covered in moss? That's what this is supposed to be like. but every, all the beauty that you see, this was British gardeners just going,

mad shit is growing here because it's protected by the Atlantic. So we're in a deeply unnatural environment, right? The birds here are aware, probably that it's an unnatural environment. Do you think they might have gotten less freaked out by you playing a Catalan bird because they're like, well, everything's nuts here anyway?

Because remember the thing you told me about how it can be dodgy to play the sounds of birds in the wild? What's the name that you had for us? Playback. It's a survey method, but sometimes people kind of abuse it. Like, you can coax a bird or you can bully a bird. Well, I mean, it's like you're chatting to it. You know, like, so birds, like, why do birds sing? They sing to attract a mate, but they also sing to intimidate it would be, you know, blowing, you know. So if they have like a really powerful, complex song, it's a sign of, you know, fitness of sexual health. And so if it's like this great song, another male will think, oh, Jesus. And if it's singing like that and we fight, I'm probably going to lose, you know? So there's that. But anyway, people...

That's like when we were kids and you fancy all the girls and then all the Spanish students come. And you're like, fuck. Yeah. So like, yeah, exactly. I guess so. Yeah. Like the people with the most impressive, beautiful sounding accents, I guess, if you look at it that way, are going to be more attractive. Yeah, I mean, you can always, you can definitely, yeah.

compare. But there was some... You hear those birds that are doing their thing now, right? Oh yeah. Do you think they would have stopped for a bit now because you played that recording

and said, well, I actually do have something to play and we should put on some safety goggles when I do play it. But I'll say that's later. You're going to get us a tank to sparrows now. Let me tell you something, right? Oh, that fucking eagle.

Yeah, let's fuck the birds on the one island that has two fucking eagles. Let's do that. I have the eagle. I have it. Don't be... Well, you're the bird expert. What would happen if you started?

Like, there's two... They're the real deal of those fellas on this island. They're under the canopy or Grand. You'll see two talents coming through the roof. No, but some people might have heard this. How much overlap is there

between my talk earlier and this? Like, how much can I get away with playing again? All right, Grant. Grant, so let me tell you something, right? There's a guy, right? You're going to love this. There's a guy who studied owls in the UK. I forget his name now.

And there's one owl in particular. No, it wasn't in the UK. He went further afield. So there's one in the UK called Tawnyo. But there's a relatively. of that. Yeah, it's a URL owl and it's really hyper-aggressive

when it's on the nest when it has young. And the way to survey them, because they're rare and because they're nocturnal creatures, how are we going to serve them? This was before the time of infrared cameras and all that, playback and you wait for a response

so you wait for a hoot back. The only thing with these is because they're so aggressive, they can attack you. And so this guy was attacked by one. And, you know, towards the end of his career, he wrote,

biography on his on his life's work. Do you know what he call that? Go on. An eye for an owl. It took his eye out. For real. He had an eye taken out

by one of these owls true playback. So there are there are definitely risks. Well, you shouldn't, like, it's illegal, first of all. You can't. You can't.

What were you doing to get stung in the eye by that wasp? I didn't even realize I just felt my eye getting tight all of a sudden. I said, there's something wrong on my eye. But I'm guessing it was a what?

because there was one around me a little bit earlier so it's the only thing I can think of I think I'd notice if there was a was a wasp on my eye man but look at that

it's like it's enormous what else could have done that it was hardly a midgie do you think so go on anyway he wrote a book called an eye for an owl

no because he was using playback and the owl came out and plucked his eye out like it took his eye clean out so there are definite risks like with playing birdsong that's what I'm saying put on your safety guy

else. But no. Were you playing the eagle earlier? No, no, no. Look, we're outside the breeding season now so it's pretty safe.

Did you get a squinted at the Eagles? I haven't seen them. Are you interested in the Eagles or are you on the insect vibe at the moment? Oh no, yeah. No, I love them.

I love them, yeah. I keep getting flashes on my playlist here and there's one title that keeps hitting me and says aggressive fart. I'll play for you later. But anyway, the Eagles

in Killarney National Park I recorded them. they used to duet. They duet every morning right across on the microphone on a place called Ronan's Island. Did you hear about that? Did I tell you about that, no?

So I did like a bioacoustic survey with Calarney National Park and we put recorders running for I think it was a year and different habitats to sample them because the beauty about leaving recorders like this is like the amount of effort that it puts in it can be replicated

it like you know you're not going to be out 24 hours a day for six months at a time but this this recorder can capture all that data and so it's an amazing way to to study big places like that so one of the places that they put the recorder was called Ronane's Island and they didn't knowing that that's my surname like and so obviously I was curious and I started to look into it and it turns out there was a guy there by the name of Philip Ronane Philip Ronane was he was friends with Isaac Newton he was this um he was a mathematician and he was a mathematician and he was he he kind of found it difficult to understand and understand people and to move through society. And he found his way in nature. And so he made all this money doing whatever he did with maths. And he retired and bought this island out in Clary National Park, built a cottage in the 1700s, the ruins of which are still visible. And it was named after him. Yeah.

So my friend Harry was saying, like he was at, this total recluse, like, and if people would row out to the island, which they did, they were curious about this hermit, he would launch stones at them. Like, there's writings about him, and he used to, like, roar abuse

and launch stones, and he was like, Man Friday. So, anyway, my friend, Howard was saying, like, that would have been you, like, that would have been you, like, you know? But, like, there's more to it then, like, because Ronane isn't a very common name.

Like, Ronane is a name. I'm going to turn there, because my wonky eyes getting all the sun. Ronane isn't a common name, like, it's from East Corkan and West Waterford and so we did a bit of digging turns out Philip Rune was born in Cove

that's my hometown and we're the only Rune's there so I think he's actually related to me yeah except I'm not good at maths and I'm definitely not an aristocrat yeah we both like eagles

that's fucking mad that shit could pass genetically that's well you don't know what the all autism like do you know I'm autistic maybe they don't know that you know he's autistic

on she oh yeah all right yeah the to us yeah actually I meant that the last time I had you on the last time I had you on I was fine

I announced it and I said Sean Ronan the autistic bird expert right and a lot of people got pissed off oh that's grand but you are and they were saying to me he's just a fucking he's just he's a bird expert

there's no need to bring the autistic into it and what where I'm coming from is well I'm proud of it like you know it did but it was harder for you to get to where you are. It was harder for you to fucking... Like, my thing, I'm an autistic fucking writer. I don't have a leave insert. I was shit

in school. I was the last person in school who they would think would end up in the abbey theatre writing. It was harder for me to fucking get there. It was harder for you to go through your ADHD as well, which is worse. Yeah, that's a recent achievement. But to be able to do what you've done and to get where you are despite those

barriers means I'm fucking proud to be this way and if I said you're an autistic bard expert I'm like fucking class, brilliant. Yeah, I'm sure that that's the way it was intended. And I'm thinking about artistic kids who are interested in birds. Oh and I can never do that because I don't know how I'm going to go to school or this fucking uniform. I go, well, this fucking cunt did it is.

Yeah. You know what I mean? It's the ADHD. I was telling you, it's the ADHD is the killer for me. Like, I'm brutal. I'm always, I'm always forgetting stuff. Can I tell you a story there? You just took a writtle in there before we came on stage.

I did you. Is that hitting you? Yeah, it just makes me focused. You know? What if? Imagine, right? Just, just, just, what if putting the Ritalin in your body

did something to your blood that made your eyelid attracted the wasps? But you know, that's the way, that's the way this shit works, though, isn't it? That's science. I know, yeah, it's very inign. You pot the Rital in,

and then you come out with a fucking eyeball on you. I feel like I need a cocktail stick to pop it now. No, it feels worse than it looks. All right, grand. I hope it wasn't in those promo photos we did with the back. No, they weren't. at that point.

Sure, I don't... Listen, you're worried about does my eye look stupid why I stand beside a man with a bag in his head. You know what I mean?

I'm glad... I hope I don't look like a cunt here. I was going to ask you. Come here, we're doing that tangent thing again and I have so many things I want to tell you

and then we end up on so many tangents I forget all the things that I wanted to finish. I'm going to have to start writing them down. You fucking did. Where's my nose? Where's it gone?

Oh yeah, all right. All right. Hold this thought a second. Oh yeah. What I wanted to ask you was earlier was, do you find it hard to smile on Q? But then I thought, you're wearing a fucking bag. No, I do.

Like, to be honest, part of the reason, like, there's many reasons I have the bag, but one of them is to hide the impropriety of my face. I look furiously angry a lot of the time. You'd never know about it because I have a bag of my head. I look fucking pure angry all the time. I used to get in trouble. He used to think I want to fight him.

And I'm just thinking about fucking, thinking about wasps. I tend to kind of like adopt this. kind of a garmless look. A dormant look. A garmless. I get pure fucking anger when I'm thinking about something.

Like, did you, I went on, I went on with Brendan O'Connor there the other day and I have to tell him, like, I'll not, say it now,

but like, in order for me to smile, somebody has to whisper something into my ear to make me laugh. So Alba has a certain thing that she ought, which is,

should I say it? Go, listen, I've said worse shit before you come out. Look, Alba says something. Tell it what she says, Man, why? I told her.

Alva are you there? Oh, she's gone, right? You know what? It's not your wife. She'd be worried about. It's the child. Look, she says it because I told her to say it, right?

I say something absolutely outrageous in this formal setting to make me laugh because I can't smile on cue and she says, eat ass in my ear. So, if you ever see me, like, in a photo shoot and I'm like, looking really happy, it's because Alba has whispered that in my ear.

Yeah. or I'll have a little voice no if she's not there and I'll play it but here come here what was the thing I was going to say so my thing is I was forgetting things

like I'll lose my phone and find it in the freezer and then I'll find it in the freezer and then I'll lose the ice cubes and find them in the oven or something like that but like Alva's friend went away on holiday there

and she was away for a while and there was a delivery there was a package on the doorstep and I've been there for a while so she was like she called Alba Alva can you go collect the parcel off my door because I don't want the neighbourhood knowing that I'm not home, you know, in case someone breaks in. I was like, you know what, Alba? I'm going to change

a microphone. I'll get it. So I went down and I followed the address. I got it. The next, everything else was a blur. Because I think I got distracted by thinking about the spiders that I wanted to find out in Nocadoon. And I got home, went up to bed. And Alba was like, where's the parcel? I was like, I left in the front seat downstairs. I was like, okay, get it in the morning. So went down. No, son. of it and we spent hours like driving her own car, T-Tool and Middleton looking for this package

and I was like, yeah, but look I think it was just a few T-shirts it'll be brand and she's like, yeah, I know, but she's going to think that, oh my God, she's going to think I'm a you know, a lunatic and I was like no, just tell her it was me and we were so nervous like how are we going to tell her what are going to do if she came

back and we're like listen, we've got something to tell you there with the person and she's like, oh yeah, it was at the front door, why didn't you take it? Oh my God But the thing is I did take it And it took me a while

To think about it I put it on the roof of the car Oh And they drove around And someone found it And then delivered it back to the door So that's That's not just

But this happens every day But you were asking me earlier Like am I ADHD Like when I went for the autism diagnosis I was like I think I'm ADHD And then they went You're definitely not ADHD

ADHD it's autism right So what that thing is It's a noradivergent thing It's called object permanence So like, I said in our podcast recently I worked in an office right and I got in trouble in the office recently

because I eat yogurts three times a day right and I was fucking throwing the yogurts into the bin with the spoon and I caused complete depletion of the spoon ecosystem in the fucking office all the teaspoons were gone because I'd been throwing them in the bin

and the secretaries had to bring it to put a message out to the entire office like who's throwing the fucking spoons in the bin I had to own up and just go look I'm artistic. I've been throwing the spoons in the bin. I am only aware of it now that you fucking pointed it out. But that's object permanence, right? And the big problem with that, it's not. Objects are fine. I was able to go on. Now, I went to a Chinese website and ordered like something like 25 spoons, right? But then to replenish the office store of spoons, but when they fucking, they were cheap and I'm like, this feels wrong. These shouldn't be so cheap. And then the fucking spoons arrived in the post and they were tiny. They were tiny Chinese spoons, right? Tiny. And then I put them into the fucking, like,

I made the problem worse. So now everyone's going around with these tiny spoons burning their fingers and their coffees. But object permanence, where that becomes difficult, it's not when it's object, it's when it's people. So as you get, this is what I find. So, like, I've no friends, right? I have no fucking friends.

Like, I did have friends in my 20s because I was part of a friend's group. But then when you get into it, your fucking thirties, the act of having friends in your thirties means actively staying in fucking touch with people. And if someone isn't around and they're not like my immediate people, I fucking forget about them. So I cannot text someone for three years. And then in nautypical rules, that means you're not friends anymore. So that's the tough part of it's when that object permanent starts to affect people and then you lose contact with everyone. And it's like, why did I do

that? Because I'm thinking about spiders, because I'm thinking about bird shit. I've got two things. to say it to you. I'm trying to keep him here. Go on? I'm interrupting. Was it relevant to the topic? I think so. Going so. I peece sitting down, right? And I can bring this, I can bring this back, okay? And this is...

I peace sitting down. Not because I like to treat myself for anything, but because, you know, like, there's a lot of splash back. And so I piece sitting down, and I was like, oh, well, you're a piece sitting there with a splash and all over the place. I used to forget to move the seat and all that so now I peece sitting down but lately I know I'm peeing sitting down but somehow the toilet seat is ending up

and I don't know what I'm doing yet but I think I think I've been for the sitting on the toilet with the toilet seat down and you fall into the toilet what? No that hasn't happened me but like well it has but I don't like

pissing sitting down my problem is pissing into the sink no No, but I was going to... No, but what I think was happened, right, is I think I've gotten into a strange routine of, even though I'm peeing, as I'm standing up and I'm cleaning the toilet

seat above and below, and then I'm putting it up neatly. I think that's what's happening. This is related to what we were talking about. It is, well, you're obviously thinking about something while you're doing it. I'm going to put a camera trap in the toilet to monitor... To monitor... Not a hidden camera, to monitor myself, like,

you know, to... Not a hidden camera. It will, because you'll forget about it. To catch... I'm going to go into the toilet every night. You end up being a peeping Tom in yourself. No, no, no, no. I'm going to go into the toilet

every night and wink it myself. What was the other thing I had to say? Oh, it doesn't matter. We were talking about object permanence. So there was the issue with the parcel on the roof of the car, pissing sitting down. Pissing sitting down is good at night time if, actually, yeah, I am...

So I piss into the sink, right? Because it's easier. I need to stop doing that. And then my other fucking huge thing with pissing into a milk bottle beside my bed. But if you're stuck, like... But this...

Have you heard this story? Our baton's been renovated at the moment, actually. So where do you piss? Out the window. I'm only joking. I once... I pissed out of a helicopter and leash, and Leash.

And the county of Leash out of a helicopter once. Come here, can I tell you... On the way to a Jedward gig. Can I tell you a slightly unrelated thing before I forget it? Right? You know, do you know, birdwashers can have like a...

this name as like, you know, it's like a hobby that you take up when you retire. It's seen as like a nerdy thing. Can I let me tell you something, right? It's not like that really. I have, I'm not going to name any names now because this is so, well, you'll tell me

if it's wild or not. There's some people I know, right, in the Burlington community who have these competitions. And so it's all related to taking a dump, really. So one of them is they have this competition to see how high they can take a dump from into a river.

and then they measure it. The winner is the one with the greatest plot factor. Right? But they're recording the sound, is it? Yeah, they're recording the sound. Oh, you're not involved in this now. What a way to die.

But I think, look, none of us are getting out of this alive, like, so he may as well have a bit of crack. But he died trying to shit out of a tree to impress his friends. But that's not all they do with them, right? So I always thought it was a myth that you can light your farts on fire.

Yeah, it's nice. No, it's not. It's not. And I saw this play out on the table of Kieran Danny Mike's in Cape Clear Island in a lock-in, and they would stand on the, they would stand on the tabletop and, and, you know, you know, kind of put open. And they have these, like, they're, they're, essentially, they're pros, like, you can't wear polystyrene pants. No. It'll actually melt.

Yeah, it'll actually melt. It'll melt the arse, like, when you blow it. So, and then there's a, there's one person, like, there's the lighter, and then there's the fatter. And then they would get up and they'd go, light me up. And it would be like a flame chore. Yeah. Like this. Yeah.

I did a lot of that and got involved in a lot of that. In school, like. Yeah. But eventually the fellas who were good at it, you have to be comfortable with proximity to male anus. Yeah. Because it's like you can't do it in school pants. You can't so an effect of fart lighting. School pants are gone.

Red them out. It's just, it's going to melt on to your earth. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. Jesus. This is unlike us talking about this kind of stuff.

But anyway, I better get back to this list. Yeah. You've no more facts about that spider from Limerick, do you? No, I don't think so. What's his name again? I do have another spider fact, though.

Go on, please. So I was talking to Collie, right? That's why I've been in spider mode now for a... This is our artistic friend, Collie, who's into spiders. I haven't... Ah, that was the other thing I was going to say.

I only have one friend. I only have, well, you know, I have friends, acquaintances, but I have one like really close friend. And like you were saying, like, you don't... Is that a friend or is it someone you work with because that's another autistic thing? So when I say I don't have friends, right?

I do have like friends, but I can only be friends with him if we're working. No, no, we ring each other and rent about birds for hours every day. So that's not a friend. Is he, how professional is he in the bird world? No, but like, I like birds before it was a professional. for me. You know, it was just something I loved.

You know what I mean? Does he record birds? I feel strange when people say, I've had your job. Well, he does, yeah. He does. Yeah, so under the rules of autistic. If I had this argument with the psychologist who was diagnosing me, see, that's the thing. So is Harry my colleague? But that's the thing.

He was asking me, like, who were your friends? And I was listing them out? And it's like, when was the last person you were with this person? And my main one would be my buddy James, who I write all on my TV shows with. And was the reverb on that? The whole fucking time. No, okay, I heard an echo.

I heard an echo. I heard it earlier and I... Yeah, it would sound like when I put the recording out that I'm lying about where I am. Because they would have you recorded that in a church, not on Garnish Island, you couldn't. I was, the psychologist was like, look, list out who you're friends with, list out who you like spending time with. And every time it's like, I enjoy spending time with this person, but only when we're writing television together. So it's like, that's quite artistic. what I mean is do you ever just ring someone up and go, let's hang out.

And I'm like, why the fuck would I do that? I don't do that anyway. No. So like, why would I possibly want that? Why would I want to go and hang out? Do you want to have a coffee? What the fuck does that mean? Well, I might have a coffee with Harry sometimes,

but we'll be showing each other pictures of birds and spiders and talking about where we're going to go next to photograph birds and spiders. I'm going to have to break up with him now because he's my colleague, though. You're my friend, but I only talk to you when we're doing a podcast together. Yeah. And we talk about artistic things, I guess. We've been mail each other a lot about bird sounds. Actually, the last thing I mailed you about was, yeah, it was very depressing. I want to find out about this. Oh, I know what you're going to say. I wanted to know if it was click base. Someone, a recording of, this is the sound of wildlife in 1920. Here it is in 1960. Here it is in 2006.

and literally each time there's less and less birds. And it was so devastating I thought it was bullshit. Check out the work of Bernie Crouse. Like he's a legend.

He's like the godfather of wildlife sound. But he was like a serious musician and worked with musicians too like in the production side of things. But yeah like he was the one who coined the terms biophony, geophony and anthropophony.

Have you heard of those? No. So like biophony is the sound of living creatures. Geophony is the sound of, you know, inanimate things in nature, like the sound of a river or thunder or things like that. And then anthropophony is the sounds of us and our stuff. Yeah, was he coined that like, but anyway, like he's big into long form soundscape recordings and he really, like, he has a number of sites where he's been going to for 40 years, like, you know, again and again and again and again. And like to listen to his first recording,

there and his most recent recording there is like shocking. In some places, in fact, he's just doing it for the sake. If it's like the trees are gone and there could be a skyscraper there or whatever, like, you know, and it's a, it's quite profound. Like, you know, I just discovered an interesting piece of entrop... And what you got it? Anthropophony. I just discovered one right there, which, if you got a man from the 16th century, one of those English guns here, he'd have a heart attack. Listen to the sound of this. It is the, this, when I engage my vape and turn the battery on, the electrical interference that it causes what's top of the

microphone. Listen to this. Oh my God. That's entropophony. But it is. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you think a Victorian is going to have that with a cigar? Do you remember the... No, I'm smoking the internet. I charged this off my laptop. I'm smoking the internet. Do you? Do you remember the dial-up internet? And you should be able to predict when somebody was going to call you. Yeah. That used to be able to hear that. Um, come here. I have a load of sounds to play. Can I play some sounds. Give us some good shit. Right. I know that there are some people who are here earlier. So I'm going to play something different, right? But I might play some of the other stuff later as well.

Okay, this is the one that's been staring me in the face for a while. So I'm going to have to go with this. So this is very relevant to where we are now. So this is a common seal, a harbour seal. So these are the seals that you saw outside. So they're ferocious, farts. They fart a lot like. So here's a combination of one farting and sneezing at the same time. It isn't only us. I actually have, right? Because now I've got 40,000 wildlife sounds. And so because I've so many, I have to be descriptive.

Or otherwise, I'll lose a particular recording. So I have to, like, think of imaginative ways to describe the farts of these seals. Like, you know, so I can pick one out from the other. Aggressive fart is the best one. I've got vicious fart in there as well. Oh, come here. I found something as well.

I wrote this down because I never would have remembered it otherwise. Do you know that common seals can play the drums? no. So there's a whole paper on it and it's called rhythmic percussive signaling in common seals. Yeah. So they play drumbeats on their chest with their And is it in time? Is it

like, could you hear it as music or? You'd have the music clear. Let's see. It sounds pretty good to me like I didn't even realise that that's what it was. It's when I was researching this. I thought Jesus, what's that? And then I saw that I actually had it. So here, I just had it down as fin slaps at the time. But it's definitely

musical like, I think, anyway. Is that the one? Oh no, this is it. I named it odd fin slapping. What do you reckon? Yeah. It seems to be in time, is it? Yeah, so this is a thing.

So they actually create music with their fins to impress the females. You know, so it's not just... Like humans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just playing the spoons. Oh, man, this is leading me into this is leading me into so many things here now, right?

So that's the seal done now, right? So this is the next one. I don't know if I sent you this or not. before. Right. So this is another thing. Some of the people that were in the other show will have heard this. Please don't say it, right? Or that's a bit quiet, is it? I'll get a better one. Hang on. What did I call that? Lovely Robbins singing there. They're really mimetic, you know? How do you mean with that? Like, they imitate the sounds of other things in their environment.

Go away, Robert. Yeah, Robbins are really good mimics. And you can tell if a Robin is a migrant that's come from first. a field. Like, how else would you know? Like, that's the amazing thing about mimicry. You can... I've got something to show you about that. Is that Robin showing off? Is that... Robin, like, this garden. I've been to India. I've been to China. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, well, not so much of that. It's more like, um, you know, it knows that the more complex and impressive the song is, uh, the more likely it's going to attract a mate. And so eventually it runs out of its own ideas. So it starts to sample. It starts to sample other artists. You know what I mean? It's like that. Look at the dragonfly. Oh, I've heard bad things about those

migrant hawker who was it Ed who's running the festival got bitten by dragonfly last week and I didn't know that was possible

and he only told me this evening so that's another insect to be afraid of here's the other one yeah maybe it was the dragonfly bit me

although I think I would have seen that one all right all right do you know what that is go on frog hopper

the little insect yeah in the cuckoo spit so that's another one that juets so that's the male could I hear that with my ear

or is that your brilliant microphone no microphone only okay yeah Yeah. So it's a vibrational song, if you will, like. So imagine this is the hollow stem of a plant. It, like, vibrates really quickly. It vibrates out the tune. And then it travels down the hollow stem. And if she is there and she hears it and she's impressed, she responds with her own tune. They duet and they meet in the middle. So he has a sound system. Yeah, exactly. It's like an amplifier. Yeah. That is amazing. Yeah, yeah. That's really cool. Here, we have 10 minutes to do audience questions. is there a microphone? Look at that dog getting a good fucking belly of. Fair play.

Does anyone have a question about anything in the whole world? We can throw on a mic or on the gaff. Go on there, Eminem. Just throw it up to the first hand that you see. Thank you. I have a question about Merlin Bird ID, an app that I used to help me learn bird sounds.

Yeah. I found that it completely ignores the song of gulls and won't distinguish them or even say that it's hearing a bird. And I wondered if there's any reason that it does that or there's less distinctive calls. To me, they will sound really distinctive. I'm sorry, but that's my little girl imitating the sound of a cuckoo over there. That was brilliant. I was.

She is. Brilliant. So I was listening to it. So gulls. gulls are, the thing about gulls is that they're extremely subtle in their differences so like they have like they have calls, flight calls

but then they also have long calls which is the term for song in gulls and they're just so similar and I'm guessing it just it isn't accurate enough to to dare and separate them yet I would imagine that's what it is Merlin is a great thing like because

it brings people into that into that world, like, you know, but you do need to take it with a pinch of salt because it always wants to give you an answer and it's because it's programmed in North America. I think now you can actually put in it, you can tell it, tell it where you are based and it'll rule out those things. But also like, I think that, you know, if you're using it, you know, to solve a mystery now and then, great, but sometimes people go out and they just let that guide them true nature. And I think it takes away from the whole point of being out there. Like, you know, I think the most beautiful thing about being out in nature is to get away from the technology that just smothers us in our day-to-day lives.

But it is great. Who owns... What is Marlin doing with the data of all that Bard Song? So it's Cornell. It's Cornell. It's a universal. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. So it's a legit...

Is that ethical then you think they're... I haven't really looked into the depths of it. Because you saw it today. I don't know if you saw it, but today there's headlines saying that they're trying to... use AI for us to literally talk to animals based on their calls. Ah yeah, I don't like that. Yeah.

I think, I don't know. How, like, how far can... But say, what are you going to ask? Imagine asking an animal, like, we spend all this money, data centers, destroying the environment. Let's, let's ask the animals what's up. And then they turn around and go,

you've destroyed the place. You've fucking... That's what I want to say. You've destroyed the place. Yeah. With the data centers to try and understand me, I'm telling you, the place is ruined. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, there's... definitely things that you can understand from their, from their conversations by really like digging deep. Like again, going back to mimicry, it's something that I'm working on a lot right now. So I spoke about a bird earlier, like it's a rare bird in cork in a, they nest kind of, well, in a scrape on the ground, often in abandoned quarries. And I had a suspicion, like they're just coming up now, like they're just kind of colonising. They're kind of a more southery species. And I suspected that they would eventually turn up in this place. And one year I heard a blackbird imitating the display of this bird.

And I thought, where did you hear that? And because of that, I focused my search in the quarry and found them. Wow. So you can really, if you really dig into mimicry, and this is something that AI can't do. And if you really dig into it, you can learn, like, amazing things. So that's what I'm working on in the background now. So one bird will tell you about a new insect, a new moths,

because they're mimicking these new sounds in the same way that birds will do change. chainsaws, cars, all that carry on. Yeah, like, common white trout now is my thing, like, it's my deep, deep dive obsession. And I've recorded, I think, nearly 100 individuals now, and I record them for a minimum 48 hours. Like, they're not seeing for 48 hours, but

the recorder will be there. And it usually takes about 45 minutes of song to get their full repertoire out, you know? And that is, especially when they arrive up from Africa and the spring, when they've just arrived in, it's laced with mimicry. And like you can literally take the mimicry, especially if it's mimicry of a sedentary bird, one which doesn't migrate. You can use that as an exact coordinate from where it's passed through.

And so by getting enough white trots, I now have the visual map of where it migrates from what they told me, from Senegal to Ireland and back. Fuck, man. And that's all the storytelling. It's exactly what it is. That's or a storytelling. That's how we remembered fucking giant epics before we could write them down. Yeah. And like sometimes like I can listen to a.

Like on Ballycotton, I listened to a whitechote there this spring, and it was just bringing me to the wetlands of Catalonia where Alba's from, like, imitating Marsh Harrier, tawny owl, European beater, Flamingo, doing all sorts of stuff. Like, it's, there's another world in their way in to be uncovered.

And I think that it's beyond the area, like because the mimicry is often not exactly accurate. It's like, you know, if somebody hears a song on the radio and then they hum it and sing it to themselves. It's like that, you know, know. You know what it's doing, but it's not, it's not the exact match. So your expertise would say means that you can pick out that nuance. Yeah, yeah. You can match it up and, um, like, and with that

then, like, you can get an idea of the habitat that it's been in and you can look at other species that would be in that habitat to help you verify one that may be a little bit on the age. But I use kind of confidence intervals too. Like, you know, are there any birds singing the songs of extinct birds? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, extinct in a national context. Okay, yeah. So I've recorded Windchat, which is a migratory bird. It winters down in Africa related to Stone Chat.

And I recorded one in Coronation Plantation in Wicklow. And it's imitating the song of corn bunting, which was the last bird to go extinct in Ireland. And so, like, they can pass down. Like, mimicry can be generational as well, right? So they can pass it down. And, you know, like, even though the bird is long gone, the young are still learning it from the adults. but it can become degraded like a Chinese whisper.

There's another mad one of a starling that was imitating the sound of a two-stroke engine in a bothy in Scotland and the ruins of the engine were below the bothy from where it was singing.

It was generational mimicry. Mimicry is wild, I'm telling you. I'm going to disappear for a while and come back with some mimicry. The thing that I'm fucking upset with it, right, is... So where we are right now, all of these islands were

this was the end of a glaciated valley right so the glacier flooded when the glacier melted it flooded this whole area and that's what these islands were it was the bottom of a glacier and the glaciers melted in Ireland 15,000 years ago right I'm fucking convinced

that flood mythology whether it be in the epic of Gilgamesh right which would have been written down four and a half thousand years ago the Bible, Noah, written down three and a half thousand years ago. And then in Ireland, in our mythology, we have, it's in the Lower Gavala,

Aaron, like just in Nimerick by the river Shannon where I am, right? I can go to an area and this area is called Fintin's Grave, right? And that's there in the Dinshankas from like the 10th century. And Fenton was, the story is,

because it's been corrupted with Christianity, but there was a great flood and no, Noah warned people about this flood and they left before the flood happened and came to Ireland, right? And one of these people was a fella called Fintin. Fintin then transformed into a salmon for a thousand years and lived in that mountain as a salmon. But like then I can go half an hour up and there's a site called Hermitage. And that there is where we found the earliest human settlement evidence in Ireland.

It's 11,000 years old. So the people there likely witnessed When the last ice age ended There were deluges Like what you saw in was that on the pal do you say So with Nepal what happened is that A glacier fucking melted and you saw a deluge Human beings saw that

20,000 years ago, 15,000 years ago And like those birds minicking and getting things wrong That's what I think our flood methodology is It's someone remembered this great deluge event and it stuck with us through methodology through the stories that you see

when this shit was happening you know and we do the same shit yeah what about that mad one as well with the people in Australia who could recall an exact watering hole

that was no under that's the best ones that's because the indigenous Australian people they have unbroken oral in methodology that they reckon could be 30 to 60,000 years old

so it was the indigenous people of Melbourne I think it was and they had songlines so their stories that they can tell that they don't need writing for.

And the way that they would tell their story is that it's a very, very long walk. And they're telling this epic tale and then it ends at the coast. Their story doesn't end at the coast. Their story is like, no, off there in the middle of the ocean, there's actually watering holes. And then geologists went and studied it

and they found, holy fuck, they're right. So they may have had a story that's older than the landscape. You know what I mean? Which is, ah, it's beautiful, you know? We can take one more question. you pick Eminem. We finish with one sound, does it?

Yeah, we'll be late. End with a sound. I have a question about, like, it's sort of related to, like, I do gardening. So, like, I'm always, like, wondering about plants and, like, places like these, because obviously you're saying this is super alien environments, right? And with, you know, with introducing things like this,

or, like, you look around here, like, rododendrons everywhere. And then, obviously, when you should use plants, you drive house. Yeah. it drives out like species and things like that. But do you ever get a case of when you introduce things like species of plants that you get birds

that you wouldn't see kind of coming in and things like that? Yeah, I mean, let me think. So like off the top of my head, not birds now, but you know, budlia, you know, buddlia? Like that's like, that's, well, actually, I didn't think of a bird example too. Like buddlya, butterfly bush is technically an invasive species like. But it's so good for, for butterflies

and bees. Not so much in the larval stage though, but like, you know, in terms of pollination and, you know, a nectar source, it's amazing. Then, right, there's the dreaded conifer plantations, you know. Look, they're smothering the landscape and generally they're terrible for biodiversity, especially because they're planted in straight lines really close together, which forces them to grow tall and straight, highly acidic, so on and so on, but they're actually very beneficial for a few species. But I mean, a few species is, you know, not as good as planting a forest.

That's good for many, many species. Crossbill, coltit, gold crest, woodcock, have actually done pretty well because of conifer plantations. Crossbill was once a kind of a sporadic nomad that turned up now and then. Now it breeds. Like, it's a common breeding bird.

Well, not common, but widespread. Could you then end up with too much crossbill because there's too much conifer? No, like the thing about crossbills is they're eruptive so they can, like if they have a really good year they'll wander like they'll explode and they'll wander to other places like that's how we used to get them before we had all of the conifers like explosive eruptive movements like

and they'd feed them what they could and back then because there were no conifers they probably kept going the other thing about crossbills like there's another world there so crossbills have their own call types and they can I think there's 29 dialects distinguished and you can tell what part of the world the crossbell has come from based on the way it's calling.

So we have a UK and Irish type. So the one that ended up coming to Ireland clearly came from the UK because it had the same call type. That's another mad thing. When I'm looking at mimicry, if I see Crossbill and the mimicry, I can get an exact pinpoint

because I'll say, okay, what type of call type of Crossbill is this White Trout mimicking? Okay, so this Crossville is the call type from Northwest Spain. Okay, so this White Trull has been in North West Spain. You know? It's nuance after nuance

with mimicry, like, and it's, I'm gone way off. course, aren't they? No, we're still on the topic of Bard Song. So we're Grant. Do you know what? We got a leg it so that these people can catch their boats. So you play one last sound.

One last tune. Put on your helmets. I'd love to be lashes out of Ron Levine. All right, we're just... Just one. An evil, do you eh? That's a bit distant, so we're good. Get the egg, it's now pissed off now while everyone's about to get a

a boat. Generational stick nests. They can be passed down for many, many generations. Generational stick nests. The eagles pass down their nests for, for, I think there's, so, the equivalent in America, bald eagle, I think their nest documented over a hundred years old, like antique nests that were passed down from the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandparents. Just a quick one there, right, so when you were saying, Pajon, we're grand to play that sound right, because it's not breeding season. But if it was breeding season here with these two eagles, you know, on the island, would you be a bit more cautious about playing? Ah, yeah. But like, um, I, I think they're, they're not close us anyway, and it's kind of distant,

but definitely not. Like, it's, it's illegal, it's disturbance. And so what could happen, like, that bird could suddenly get up to defend its territory. It could knock the eggs out of the nest in a panic. You know, can have serious repercussions. Like, um, I worked in the Farron islands. I worked, is that my little one crying? Oh, is it? All right. I thought it was an eagle. Sorry. Maybe the wasp got hurt. No, but when I worked in the Farnell Islands in England, helicopters sometimes used to come in and do maneuvers from the army.

They had to write to them. They were panicking the seabirds and the adults were fleeing and they were knocking the young which couldn't swim off the cliffs and they were drowning. So you need to be very careful and mindful with... I'm sure the British Army will listen to you. Yeah. Did it?

Go away out of it, did they? Tell them about the north. It was a seabird sanctuary. yeah yeah but yeah I hope you enjoyed our tensions

yeah listen thank you so much everyone for coming along thank you for getting on a boat and coming to an island the dog is barking too go on

dog bless everybody Sean I was her I'm taking these breaks man there you are that's important theatre

can I I enjoyed the bollocks off all of that. That was so much crank. And I loved listening back to it too. I really enjoyed that. And I loved the dog. And the dog. He stayed quiet for the whole thing and barks at the end when everyone's clapping.

It was a dog bless. That was beautiful. He spent the whole podcast lying in the middle aisle. Pined in his middle aisle. bollocks and an anis at me. But, uh, thank you to my guest, Sean Roneen. I have so much crack with Sean. It's, I love chatting to him.

Check out his books. Check out his documentaries. Check out his podcast, the Sean chorus. I'll catch you next week. I don't know what with. We'll figure out a hot take. In the meantime, Jenia fleck to her rain,

wink at a worm, blow kisses at a snail, Dark bless