The Blindboy Podcast - An Urgent reflection on Starlings with Seán Ronayne who is an Autistic Bird Expert

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

An urgent reflection on the behaviour of Starlings with Seán Ronayne who is an Autistic Bird Expert  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Caress the bare chest chastrel in the festering vestibule, you hoping onas. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first time here, consider going back to an earlier episode. To familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast, some people even go back to the start. There's 460 episodes. You can partake in that journey in a linear fashion if you choose. Or you can fucking pick an episode at random Whatever you want

It's up to you Or you could even start with this episode here I'm currently floundering around the bowels of my tour Waiting to be shot out by the rectum of life So I can have a rest I've been ill with chicken pox And I've been touring So I've got two weeks off

Before I'm back on the road I'm hoping this weekend Because it'll be a week into March which is safe enough weather-wise I'm going to plant some I'm going to plant some some early potatoes

in bags with my two little monkeys I have well-ratted manure and I have some peat-free compost I've never grown potatoes before but I'm very enthosed about doing it about these wonderful

potato growing bags They're just little canvas sacks with a flap on the side and you plant your seed potatoes and when they grow you open up the flap and reach in and pull out the potatoes. Going to become a vegetable growing man this summer using only containers. I have experience growing tomatoes

and growing hash but I don't have experience growing potatoes carrots broccoli, cabbage, cabbage So I'm really excited about the prospect of that. And my mother, my mother is making me eat humble pie because she used to grow cabbages and lettuce. She still does.

Grows cabbages and lettuce. In hanging baskets that she hangs off her washing line. And if you go to her house and she feeds you cabbage cabbage, you have to ask, was this cabbage grown beside your underpants on the washing line? So she's finding it very amusing now that I'm growing. she said to me you wait and see you'll have your cabbages and your broccoli

in the pots on the ground and one night the slugs will show up and they'll eat them all and you wait and see you'll be hanging your cabbages on the washing line too but you know what I won't because I remember

I remember being a teenager being about 16 and there was one night I was out of on the fucking street with a lot of my friends and it was dark, it was dark with just streetlights

and one of my buddies says is your jumper high vis the fuck has gone on with your jumper you're sparkling your jumper's reflecting a lot of light and I looked and the jumper that I was wearing was covered in all down the back of me covered in

slime trails that had dried in, dried in iridescent slime trails all down my back because my ma my ma had been drying my jumpers on the washing line between cabbages

so what had happened is the fucking slugs and snails in her garden had figured out they went right okay think you're smart of you they'd figured out that she was growing the cabbages on the washing line and some very adventurous slugs and snails in the night time

that climbed up the pole and then like a tight rope had made the journey across the washing line to get to the cabbage but I had a jumper in between

so the fucking snail or the slug had crawled over my jumper to get to the cabbage that my mother was hanging on the washing line and then I went out into the street with my back vandalized with snail slime

iridescent illuminating in the dark so I probably will end up hanging cabbages on a washing line but there won't be any clothes on the washing line at the same time. That's, I have a strange relationship with snails and slugs and the washing of clothes. That's not my only story about snails and slugs and trying to dry clothes. So one way to definitely not have a snail crawl all over your jumper when you're drying it

is to put it in a tumble dryer. And once, about six or seven years ago, I had a tumble dryer that just stopped working, stopped working, and I had to call out a repairman to get a look at my tumble dryer and figure out, like, what the fuck's going on, why is it broken? And when he opened it up, he said to me, a slug is after breaking your tumble dryer. And I'm like, what? It was one of those old tumble dryers where it goes out a hole in the wall, right? this event that literally goes outside. So he said that a slug, that's a slug had crawled in, the vent, right?

Because slugs are attracted to tumble dryers because they're warm and they're also moist because the condensation. So he said a slug had gotten into the tumble dryer and then crawled up to the circuit board, the electronics and that it's the slime trail of the slug. had connected two tracks in the circuit board that weren't meant to connect, that the slime had basically short-circuited the fucking tumble dryer, and that's why it broke, and that he could see the slime trails on the circuit board. So that's two very strange and separate situations where slugs

have interfered with my life when I'm just trying to dry my clothes. So I have a magnificent guest this week. This is this person's second time appearing in this podcast. I spoke to them at the weekend there, at a fantastic gig done in Killarney in the in in inick. Sean Ronane, he's an ornithologist, specialises in recording the calls of birds. And it's his goal to record every single bird species in Ireland.

He's serious business. Sean first came on this podcast, think two or three years ago. And we had a wonderful conversation because he's deeply passionate about birds. This is something that he's seriously, seriously interested in. And anyone who's as passionate as they are about a subject as he is is automatically fascinating. Sean's also, he's autistic and he's a similar flavor of autism as myself. We're quite similar.

and it's great chatting to another autistic person is fucking fantastic because this you get a thing that's referred to as double empathy when we chat to each other

we both know we're talking to an autistic especially when we're backstage by ourselves we both know we're chatting to another autistic person so there's no need to mask so both of us are just

chatting to each other no fucking eye contact both of us staring all over the room and just ranting at each other about our various interests no small talk none of that shit just this is we're grand

just fucking work away there's no judgment here we know the crack and double empathy it's a wonderful way of looking at communication it's a theory of communication right that the difficulties

that a rise for autistic people when we try to communicate with non-autistic people that it's not the autistic person's fault it's not the autistic person isn't the one with the deficit instead it's an equal a reciprocal mismatch in social understanding so autistic people can struggle with conversations

with neurotypical people Similarly, neurotypical people can struggle with conversations with autistic people. But when autistic people are around other autistic or neurodivorgent people, we don't get communication difficulties, we get a type of flow. In the same way that neurotypical people will get that from being around other neurotypical people. And that there is called double empathy. And it's a lovely theory. And it does, it rings through what my lived experience,

particularly a lot of people who I've really connected with over the years. People who I can just have a fucking wonderful chat with. Quite a lot of those people have since found out that they are neurodivergent. And I mean people, someone I could have met at a gig 10 years ago and just stayed chatting with them for ages in a pub. No awkwardness, no small. small talk, being able to discuss interests and for them to discuss interests with me, not feeling pressure to pretend to be quote unquote normal, not feeling concerned that I'm saying or doing

something eccentric, not feeling judged or that the person thinks I'm weird. I mean that's why I avoid. A lot of the time I avoid small talk with strangers because it's that fear of, at what point is this person going to go, wow, you're weird. This guy's cookey. This guy's crazy. That's not enjoyable when you're not trying to be cookey or crazy or just being yourself. But some people, some strangers, that just doesn't exist and there's conversational flow

and three separate instances over the years. Like I got a mail. It was about four months ago. I got a mail from someone going, how are you blind by? I met you years ago after a gig in Galway. We had a great chat in the smoking area. And then I will literally remember.

I'll remember that conversation going, oh, fuck at that person. We had a clash chat about dinosaurs. And I'll remember it because those moments stand out. When I meet a stranger and have conversational flow and it's really enjoyable, I remember that because it's rare. But six months ago, yeah, someone made me.

And they're like, oh, I'd met you years ago at a smoking area. Just want to let you know, I found out I'm autistic and your podcast has helped me. But that's double empathy. The idea that there's not a deficit, there's not a communication deficit on the part of the autistic people in society. Rather, a mutual misunderstanding between neurotypical people and autistic. people are noradivergent people. And it's just a theory, but it's one that I like and one that does ring

true to my lived experience. But Sean Ronnais, my guest, he's definitely someone I experienced this double empathy with. We just have great flow with conversations and we chat about bards. I mean, bards are his thing. Like he's, but I

have a, birds are his thing but I have a profound tolerance for bird conversations. As you can tell with the star, the The reason Sean came down to Kerry, because he's from Cork, to do this is because he's been listening to my podcast and he knows about my starling obsession. And he's an expert in this shit. So he had some very important starling information to tell me, which we do get around to. So the first half of this conversation, it's about birds, but it's also about me and Sean.

Just having a chat about what it means to be autistic and two autistic people speaking together. And then the second half, that's very bird focused. But look, Sean Ronane is a, he's an ornithologist. He's very passionate about what he does. He's an educator. He's an activist. He has, he's written a book about his journey of recording bird sounds. He's made a documentary.

Check out his website, Irishwildif Sounds.com. And also he does live, he does live events, live speaking events, which are wonderful. and you'll get all his dates and the venues there on his website. He's got one coming up in Cork that's sold out but in May he's in Kerry and then he's at the Hill of Ishnuk

for the Biotrana Festival on May 9th but check out his website Irish Wildlife Sounds.com and here's the chat that me and Sean Rune in How is this for a professionally run show? How are you getting on?

I've been looking forward to this I've been deep diving all sorts of mad bird songs I was listening back to the old the first episode that we did and I couldn't help but laugh we go off on mad tangents the two well two autistic people at the stage together and I was listening back to some of the tangents

we did the last time and we started to talk about cornquakes and you were saying something about cornquakes and in the middle of your sentence my grandfather was some limerick is like I do nextly yeah I don't even know why it came into my head oh I know why he came into my head

because my grandfather used to curse the corncrace and we were talking about that. What do you mean curse the corn cracks? Because nobody could get any sleep with him. Oh, not literally put a magical curse on him. Well, he was like fuck the corncracks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they, well, they don't sing like,

they kind of scream like true tonight. What is that beautiful that you could, in a situation where you could say fuck corn cracks and no one would mind? Whereas now if you said it, you'd go to jail. I've been speaking to a few people about their, you know, so many people have, recollections of corn craigs and it's it's it's absolutely gorgeous but you know what they're not

gone done no they're not like and there's a great conservation program going on in the north-west and they're bouncing back really well but um let me tell you something right i'm getting these stories from people there's some mad stories like i have one person who put out uh it was his grandfather told him the story and they put out their bed sheets to dry out in the grass for whatever reason and they lifted it up and there was like a like a herd of corn craigs came bursting out there's another guy who was like losing the plot because he hadn't slept all sorrow with them and he went out in the middle of the night blasting a shotgun screaming at the corn cracks.

But anyway, they're the kinds of tangents we went on. I was listening back in wolves as well. Just back to the corn cracks there. We haven't even started yet. Should I introduce myself? That's the other thing as well. A man just walked out talking about corn cracks and some of he mightn't heard me introduce them and are just like, what the fuck is this?

I love this though. Imagine a tourist just walked in. Imagine like a Japanese. tourist just walks in as I wonder what Irish people do on a side of the night. It's a fella with a bag in his head talking to another cunt about birds. I say we're going to be worse tonight. Do you know, I've actually had an ADHD

diagnosis since. I know. I'm after starting this medication. I'm on a new dose now and I feel like an astronaut tonight. I actually... You told me the name of it backstage and I looked it up and it is, it's speed. It's... Is it really? It's not far

off it. It's... Jesus. It is an amphetamine. mean, and then I said, do people use it recreationally? And they said, yes, they do. It's, it's, it's called concerta. You're not supposed to drink coffee or alcohol, whatever. And I had a cup of coffee yesterday. Oh my God. But anyway.

But the thing is, because the question I asked you, I thought that I was going to get an ADHD diagnosis when I went. Because the thing is with me, and it's a common thing with ADHD people, is, if I'm doing work, I kind of need the deadline. I kind of, instead of working rationally and chipping away, I need the adrenaline of the deadline. And apparently that's quite easy. It's more like the fear, the terror.

I need the terror of the... But it's on a neurological level I heard, it's the sudden release of adrenaline gets your brain into the state where it can concentrate. And without that rush of hormone, you're just scattered beyond that. Yeah, yeah. Apparently that's, it's a useful piece.

of information because without that piece of information, you can start saying to yourself, I'm a lazy fucker, I'm terrible. Yeah. Where it's like you can't do much about this. It's your brain. Yeah, you're basically, you're chasing dopamine because your brain doesn't produce it like like other people. So you chase it and you can, you can chase it in healthy ways or you can chase it in unhealthy

ways, healthy ways being, you know, going manic in the gym or, you know, on a bike or running, whatever. and then unhealthy comfort eating instant dopamine hits like chocolate pizza beer where you went to coffee and cigarettes and all this carry on oh yeah I you know what I gave up I gave up alcohol cigarettes and meat

in the same day and I was backpacking in Southeast Asia and it was that's an awful decision what a place to do it and it was absolute torture I remember it but I also remember I also remember like we were

we were doing this mad thing. When I say we, by the way, it's my partner, Alba, she's here with the little one, but they're in bed. And like, we're talking hope, man.

I wouldn't want your child hearing that story. You're just, yeah, I forget, I've seen to hear it, I forget that I've written an autobiography and sometimes people come up to me on the street and say it really personal

and things to me, like, I thought that was beautiful. I'm thinking, how'd you know that? Do you know? But anyway, we were trying to live off this 50 cent a day food budget

in Southeast Asia. And they kind of, did you ever eat meat for under 50 cent? It was like... In Ireland, no, but like... There were like... There were noodle dishes what seemed like rubbery testicles inside them.

So that was another... Fan of the awful, aren't there? Yeah. That made it easier to become vegetarian, to be fair. Was this? I don't even know. No, we've got... No, we've got...

No, I just don't... Like, have he... Like, it's... You've tasted, like, in test times and stuff. Have you had a crack of it? tripe and drachine. Like, what people are into is the taste of poo.

Oh, Jesus. No, but seriously, no disrespect. I'm not into it, but like, it is literally the taste of shit and people who enjoy that, it's like,

mm, that's what I want. Yeah, I remember my dad you see it a lot of liver. That's the taste of piss. Not like, or no, not as kidneys, sorry. No, no, liver, it tastes like,

I used to put a lot of coins in my mouth when I was a kid. And liver, liver tastes like that. It's like a penny cousin. It is that. Yeah.

And then kidneys is weewe. Yeah. All right. Well, I haven't met with me. James Joyce in Udice's, he's got beautiful

descriptions of food. And one of the descriptions is the character of Leopold Bloom, who's, I think, Joyce was doing this to show that Bloom is Jewish, but he's not practicing Jewish.

So he's frying kidneys. And it's a wonderful description of eating the kidneys. And what he's waiting for is for the kidney to explode in his mouth and for him to taste old pigs piss.

Oh my God. That sounds lovely. That's what people are into, lads. Do you like shellfish or you're fully vegan, are you? I had an awful experience

with shellfish. I remember... What type? Speaking of Barcelona, right? Jeez, I went to... Myself and Alva, right? We went to meet her friends that had come from Poland

and we set aside this day, especially to meet up and have this meal. Didn't I eat shellfish? And I started to say to Alba, Alba, I'm not feeling too good. And I'm always trying to get out to social situation.

She's like, Sean, come on now. just, you know, have a bit of chit-chat. And I said, no, Alba, I'm being serious. And she honestly thought I was pulling the leg. And next thing I got up in the middle of the restaurant and started vomiting standing up. Oh no. But it didn't.

But it didn't stop. And we got into the car and I went, and I went back to, standing up. I went back to El Pratt where Alba's from and they were driving full speed and coming back. And I would rolling down the window,

going through this, the Zabber Crossing, projectile vomiting as he went. So that was the end then. Shelfish, that happened before, like, before the meat. I know Catalan is not Spain, but I have a similar... Like, I also have problematic shellfish and Spanish things. But it's...

Did I tell you this story before? I don't know. I... So I don't eat shellfish because my mother's allergic. So I don't know if I'm allergic, but I don't want a chance that it's not worth... Yes, yeah. It's not worth finding out. So I'm just like, not...

No thanks, lads. I don't want shellfish. But when I was writing my book, I go to this city in Spain, Calcutta. I read about that. I was writing my... Yeah, yeah.

And I'd be going to all these different cafes with my laptop, right? I do that too. It's a lovely thing to do with it. Yeah, it's lovely. But it's a small enough city. So when you're there all the time with a laptop writing,

all the waiters were like, oh, we notice you come here a lot to write. What are you writing? But they're fucking Spanish. So I just go, oh, you know, a fiction. And then the fucking waiters. or here's fishing, right?

So he's like, oh, fishing. So he gets it into his fucking head that I'm like some food reviewer that I review fish specifically. And this cafe was very proud of their fucking prawns. So Conti comes down to me. With a lot of free prawns. And I go, oh, thanks, because I don't want to be rude.

But now I've got these non-consensual prawns. What am I going to do with these prawns? I'm not fucking eating them, but I don't want to say no. And he doesn't speak great English. and I speak no Spanish and he thinks I write fishing stuff so I'm like right okay what am I going to do

there's lots of cats everywhere so I see the fucking cats and I'm there with the prawns going mmm lovely and then and I start handing the prawns to the cats right and they start eating them so now the prawns are gone

but in the meantime your man had told all the other waiters and the other restaurants that I was a fishing reviewer so I couldn't go fucking anywhere without non-consensual free prongs. So I... It ended up with me getting followed by cats all over fucking... The prawns had gone

and the cats were just fucking following me, this gang of cats. These strange things seem to happen to you a lot. These kind of weird things happen to me a lot too. No, I wondered about that, right? I reckon these things happen to all people but because we're autistic, we're better at remembering them or framing them. Or it could also be...

be because one thing I mentioned about with autism, something that annoys me is being eccentric, right? But like, I don't want to be like that. If I'm trying to be normal, I'd be more mental. Me too. Exactly. And it can be grand,

but sometimes it can be not nice because people laugh at you all the time. And I consistently get myself into ridiculous situations because of my autism. Now, I don't know was that how autistic is that situation I suppose it is

because the non-autistic thing to do is oh no I'm sorry sir I didn't say fiction I didn't say fishing I said fiction fiction that would be the non-autistic thing to do instead I went uh-oh awkward someone's talking to me

he thinks it's fishing better do nothing about it and then arrive at a strange intervention that involves cats yeah I don't know like because I probably put it on the same like, you know, can I tell you a story? Gwen. This is a kind of a means of an introduction

of some sort, so I suppose. I love birds. Like, and I love, and I love all sorts of nature, really. And, like, I guess, look. 15 minutes in. As we're on, you know, as we're in this topic, like, I may as well go there.

Like, from my, I never really got past the first date, like, and it was the icon contact and I also, I didn't know what to say to them other than talk about birds, like really mad facts about birds. Like, do you know a Goldcrest, the smallest bird in Europe, weighs five to six, the same as five to six paper clips and that it migrates from, you know, Norway to Ireland. They weren't going on a date with an ornithologist or is just a fella called Sean from Kork. Oh, they didn't know what hit them. It didn't go for Ireland. But like, then, then I met Alva. then I met Alva

and Alva was the first person who really actually listened to me I don't know why you like and so we would go into this but like I would always insist on like this is the perfect angle for me I would always insist on sitting

next to the person so I didn't have to look him in the eye and so we'd be sitting forward having these conversations while we were facing forward and people would be like oh my God what's wrong with this guy and how would you manufacture less

where like I would just say You'd have to go on dates on a train? I would say... No, I would say... Sorry, do you mind if I actually sit next to you? And they'd be like, okay? That's a big one on a first day.

It's what I used to do, because if I didn't do that, I would just shut down. Would you tell them why? I didn't know why. I didn't know why. I was... That's mad. I was diagnosed at the age of 32, like... That's fucking mad.

Can you go on a day? Can I sit beside you? Like, you know... That's a business. Not mad, is that not mad? Oh, I used to do it, like, and you know what? Would they ask you? Why? I don't remember, to be honest with you.

I think I blocked it out. Sorry. I have the most wonderful conversations with strangers and the passenger seats of cars, but then when I get out and we have to face each other, I shut down, like, and I don't know how to operate anymore, like, do you know? Seriously, yeah. It's the same. I know the crack. I know exactly what you were saying. Yeah, we had a fierce conversation there,

both looking at opposite sides of the roof at the back didn't we? Oh my God. And we were flowing. But I don't even know how we got on to this. Like, I'm supposed to talk about birds, aren't I? You could talk about whatever to fuck you went. But, yeah, like, and so the diagnosis was amazing, like,

and, yeah, it was such a journey. It was such a, like, a journey of understanding. Because obviously, like, all of these strange things were happening. strange in terms of like everybody else wasn't doing that and so it made me kind of stand out and maybe not fit in and getting the diagnosis like

I was able to understand okay like oh that that's why I used to do that thing or used to do that thing and so I had to ask Alba was like Alba can you teach me how to look into people's eyes without looking like a stalker or without looking like you know somebody who's a you know

really shifty and yeah and so Alba had to literally teach me the etiquette of eye contact like you know and I'd say like are you supposed to look into the centre of the eye how long you're supposed to look do I have to count and she said look just count and every now and then flick your eyes away and come back again

you know do you still do you so when you were chatting to be backstage I could tell you you're just your grand it's like it's blind by it's fine so you're not around the gap yeah but in certain situations do you still deploy the eye contact what do you mean now like

but it was like it depended on you're meeting. Are you going to go, this is going to be an eye contact situation? Aren't you go straight in? I'm going to stare at the wall. I don't know. Do I think about it? Like, it's different. You know when I know somebody and if I'm really comfortable with them? Yeah. Like I hadn't seen you in a while earlier and that's

why it was, we ended up hugging and I blurted out. I told them it's because I pissed on my hands. I'll not say what I said, but it was the most inappropriate thing to say to somebody that you haven't seen in such a long time. And he was like, well, I immediately knew, all right, okay, there's not going to be small

talk here. You're going to go to 100. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, that's what happens with me. Like when I meet someone and it's like, there's a silence and I don't know what it says. And like, what do I say? And then something comes in it and it could be could be anything like, you know? And that, that's what happens. And I've thought about the so I also am not a fan of eye contact, right?

Yeah. I find that if I'm not making eye contact, then I can look at the inside of my thought's better. That's pretty much it. Oh yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's, I'm getting her a talk and when I'm not looking at a person. But then when I'm looking at the person, it's like, it's a bit like that clock there, you know what I mean? You were saying as well, you're shit at reading clocks, aren't you?

Yeah, I'm the same. It's embarrassing. And if, like, I sometimes like people buy me a wristwatch and I, I slowly hide it away. Because if I'm afraid that somebody's going to ask me the time, because, you know, it might only be a few seconds, but, you know, the average person can tell, like, what's he doing? Like, why is he looking at it so long? I'm I'm figure as you said I'm figuring out the time I'm working it out I'm not it's now an instant oh it's half seven

it's what what's that you know one thing I'll say to the audience here because no one knows about these things because there's 40% of people are nowhere divergent in some way so a lot of people have difficulty reading clocks and shit

there's a thing you can get and their cheapest fuck it's called a time timer and I use them and it's changed my fucking life so it's it looks like a clap but there's no numbers on it

and what it is instead is my one is the color blue so if I'm doing a bit of work if I sit down to write we'll say and I want to concentrate on my work and there's a clock in front of me like that I want to know the time when I'm writing right and writing

and then my head goes up and now I'm not reading the time and figuring it out and that takes about a second that little bit of figuring it out takes my mind away from my work so I replaced it with a time timer now it's like oh I've got that much

blue left. Do you get me? So I it's it's it I know it's an hour but it's there's that much blue left. So I just go up down. There's no fucking numbers. They're brilliant time timers that's called. Yeah. There's no processing. I said was there's no calculate yet like like. Do you have any um bird sounds to show me? Too many. Can where I've been working on this playlist for a for a whole week like the last? Sean records birds for a living. Yeah. I do like and and that that wasn't intentional by the way. It just kind of happened, and I love it. Like, I mean, I was listening to them anyway. I suppose I better tell them how it happened.

We moved to Catalonia. Alva wanted to move to Barcelona because she was sick of the rain in Cork. And we went over. And, you know, me being me, I needed to learn all of the birds' sounds of Catalonia because I needed to become fluent in that language. And that was the language I focused on. I became fluent in bird in about six months, like, and I still only know a few phrases in Catalan and Spanish.

But this is when I bought my first sound recorder. I bought my first sound recorder an Olympus LS12 secondhand online and this allowed me to sound record mystery birds when I was out in the boat

and I'm going to show you one of those, right? So I don't know if you've ever been to Barcelona but just as you come into the airport look down and you'll see all of these big lagoons and it's full of birds and that's where I spent

every day of my life until I became fluent in bird because I needed to work like so these are some of the early mystery birds that I figure out there. They're not all birds actually. Now if somebody has heard this, you can't answer. All right, already?

So to me, that sounds like a dinosaur hiding in the reed bed. And it's actually a thing called a purple swamp hen, which is, well, it's purple, it likes swamps, marshes, and it looks like a chicken. Now, this next one, it took me a long time to figure it out. It sounded like a bunch of people struggling to open a bottle of wine in the reed bed. Right? And then, come here, I'm thinking.

another track here what's going on here i can hear tonyos in the background oh we're in Romania hold on and coming back so here's the other one right this is a sound i used to i used to be terrified of it because i'd hear it in the dark of the night i would be the last person they'd have to kick me out of the nature reserve and i would hear this do you ever hear a pheasant suddenly jumping out of cover it scares the hell out of you well it's like that but a lot worse wow that's a road that's a pheasant no no no no I was just making a comparison. Oh, sorry, what's that?

They give me a similar fright, pheasant and road deer. It's a road deer. It's Bambi, basically, like, you know. By the way, I brought cormorans for you today. You were looking for them the last time. I have a lot of cormorant sounds here. I love the look of a cormorant,

but I'm not familiar with their sound. Will we have a listen? Yes. Yeah, I'm all of us staring at them. Carmarins are... I hope it doesn't let me down. Oh, come here. The cormat will never let you down.

So I've got a few things here now. Right? I've got... Do you know, it's remind me of when Charlie Chapcom was a silent film star for ages and people loved them and then as soon as they heard his voice with the talkies, he lost his career. I don't hope carmerants aren't going to do that to me.

This will be... This will level them up again, right? So I've got carmering calls, carmering coughs and carmer and pooping. I've called it. It's all right. We'll do the call first. Jesus, and I just realized... It sounds like it hates being a carmrant. Doesn't it? That animal is not happy with it.

being alive. That's just like kill me, kill me, kill me, please what am I? That's what they sound like. It hasn't disappointed me, it's not, doesn't sound sneaky or pathetic. That's one rendition. This is another rendition. Sometimes they sound like this, right?

Like a goat. Do you know what I love about it? What? Like, so my visual understanding of, I love watching the concept. just going into the water and the way they don't create ripples there's a ripple

there's a ripple in that oh yeah yeah yeah it's lovely what can I hear the shitting carmen please yeah so we've got here's the shitting carmert now we'll have to be quiet for this one I'll turn up the father of this right I already know

shitting from a height too from a branch you wouldn't want to be under that was that the sound of its rectum oh yeah a fierce it was a A bit of a scutter, like a diuretic carmarant. Come here. We've won more.

Here's a carmarin coughing. And they do a lot of coughing. And I don't know why, but I think it's because they get either fish bones or fish scales caught in their throat. Wow. Yeah. It sounds like an old man.

Like Hawking. That made me lose a bit of respect to the carmerant there. Really? Yeah. Oh, we'll just say it was a, we'll just say it was a raven then. Are you into carmerants? Do you like him? Love him, yeah.

I'm not sure if they're into me like, but I recorded them for the first time only like a year ago. They're amazing things. Yeah. So like one of my favorite places, nature was always an escape for me, Roachers Point. Roachers Point guards the motor car carver.

It's gorgeous. And I always wanted to escape road noise even as a kid without realizing that I was autistic. And so I would go there and you have this amazing peninsula and you have a cliff and you climb down the cliff. And once you get down there, everything from behind you, like all of the shipping noise and it's all blocked out. And all you have are these cormorants, yodling from the rocks and coffin and just all of these amazing birds.

Like, everyone on the spectrum is different, right? So do you get upset by unpleasant noises, by cacophony? Yeah. Uncomfortable. I get very annoyed. And what is that? Is it like? Like it like, it becomes.

it becomes too much like from you eventually. And does it feel like one of the things that triggers me is just human beings. Like as in, but specifically

I don't know like I can't deal if there's people in my house. Oh yeah. Like if someone's coming to fix things in the house and it's not, I feel

it was today there was an electrician in the house and lovely and everything right. And I'm trying my best but it literally feels like someone's beating me. Yeah.

That is what it feels like. I just, I just, and is that, is that like with you? I just go and start talking to them about birds. But, but is noises that when you say annoying,

yeah, so no noise is a big issue with me. And it was obviously all my life. And, um, like it used to cause some extreme reactions with me and, and like, I used to get,

like, just even black out, like, not physically, but I would lose memory from the situation because I was so stressed with it. What big triggers for you? Kind of bassy sounds. Basie noises are noisy neighbours.

And I had one neighbour who had a truck rumble. Oh man, he had a home cinema system on the wall. And I used to be able to hear the lyrics of his song in the shower and in bed as well. And yeah, I tried everything and I couldn't block it out. Thank God he moved out in the end. But I use noise cancelling headphones now. And it's actually, this isn't a dramatic thing to say. it's life-changing.

I don't know if you use them. I'm incredible. So I'm sensory-seeking. With me and the spectrum is sensory-seeking with sound. So I actually quite enjoy quite a lot of sound. And I don't mind lights either, but my thing is people.

Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. I hate that. I sound like a cunt. Sound terrible. I know. I just, like, I have the same thing with people.

I'm just, it's not that I don't like them. It's just that, I always end up talking to them about birds or something that they might consider it to be a bit unusual. Well, there's that as well to send as the social rejection of being weird. Yeah, and I know that I'm going to do that. Like I said to you earlier, like, I could have a phone call about, I don't know,

someone could be calling me to renew my car insurance and I could start talking to them about Bernols, about the latest calls that I heard of Bernholds. And I can't help myself. I love it so much and I'm so excited. I feel like they need to hear it, you know? And I do it all the time. And I'll be walking past.

She's like, Sean, who are you talking? They're there. And I said, well, I'm renewing the insurance. And you're talking to her about barn owls. Will you ever leave her alone? Do you? And that's a... Do you often find that people are receptive to it or...

Do you know, I guess, since people know who I am now, like I get away with a lot more, you know? I talk the arsoff people know who birds and I can get away with it, you know? You have people walking up to asking your bird questions. Yeah, yeah. And it's lovely. Like, you know, and I guess at first it was a little bit strange. I told you like

after we did the film Bird song RT appointed a psychologist in advance in the anticipation for the change because I never thought about that aspect of it

you know about kind of being recognised and you know a much much smaller level to you I have a bag of my head no one fucking oh yeah I don't recognise you

I like you with Kirk the other day and I didn't know who you were but yeah what was I saying you were talking about oh fuck it I forgot as well now.

Oh, this is, this happened the last time too, didn't it? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, the psychiatrist and RTE. Dr. Mali Koyle and she was so lovely and so amazing.

And she was like, she kind of prepares your mind for, you know, the kind of flood of comments, which, which did happen. Like, it was, it was so beautiful.

It was also kind of addictive, you know, because, you know, when someone is saying something nice to you, yeah, you want to see it and you want to see it again. And, like, I found myself even refreshing my phone,

like, which is not good. And then she was all, also like helping me with negative comments because you could get a thousand good comments and one negative comment from someone or even a comment that you perceived to be negative and was kind of word that strangely can just destroy your day like but she was uh you know they were they were great in that sense like and they kind of set everything up to safeguard me from the worst of that like and that was that was amazing like but like even when birdsong went out like it was such a niche thing but i think there was more of do you know what actually it was a beautiful documentary though it was very very well

made and it was RTE in fairness put out a lot of shit and like they do like like promo this was really good yeah yeah no oh yeah oh yeah I know what I mean yeah like no this was like in I saw it and I went I can't believe this is an RT1 yeah it was so slow and lovely and was like this doesn't belong in this format yeah yeah no it's a compliment it was really I know I like I you can compliment because I didn't make it like you know I was just I was just there talking about birds. The compliment goes to Kathleen and Ross and everybody like, you know, who are amazing.

Jeez, what was I going to say? I had at least three different unrelated things to say to you and they've all gone... Do you know what? I'm after realising that my... So the clock is not only an hour behind, it's an hour and ten minutes behind. So according to this clock, you should have had an interval ten minutes ago. Can I just say one thing when we come back? I actually have some very specific things

that I'm very excited to tell you so I'm going to... We should try and stop rambling maybe a little bit. I can't wait to tell you this man. Seriously, I almost... Go on, tell me one thing. I can't, because once I start... I'm fucking smoking a faggot at the interval now because it is.

Well, we do a mystery sound before we go. Yes. We'll do a mystery sound, go on. This is mad altogether. Jesus, what did I... What did I call this again? Oh, Jesus. Look at this, look.

Are you ready for this? What is this? this. I heard this in the middle of the night and I thought that I was going to have to call the guards. What is that? Is that a fucking fox with a cough? It's not a fox. Who? I think you might be on to something

there. Is it... It's not a mammal. I thought it was actually a woman in trouble screaming in this quarry that I was walking in. And I had to look around and say, what the what is it? It's a fucking swan? No! And I'm after recording it several times. Did you see that mad book I have there?

It's like, it's the most amazing book. It was made in the 80 and it's still the most concise book. Is that normal swan noises? No, that's romantic swan sound. So that's swan, right? Wow. That's what, let me do it one more. That swan is actually displaying, right?

Let's go again. Ah yeah. That's, look, look at this. But that's what it's doing, isn't it? Is it a male or a female swan? It's the male, it's the male displaying, yeah. I did a lot of other weird things as well What does a swan display look like?

Is it commonity? Is it... It was dark, like, I didn't actually see it. I just found out through, you know, reading that book and putting it together. So swan's display sexually in the dark? It seems like it, yeah. A lot of things happen in the dark

that I didn't realize. Seriously, like, come here, do you want to hear a flock of flamingos flying over a woodland when an owl is calling in the middle of the night? Go on, go on. The eyegner trying to sell a few pints I hope I haven't lost it now after I sold it.

Oh, come here. Listen to this right. This is a flock of flamingos flying over the Catalan pre-Pyrineas, the foothills of the Pyrenees of the Pyrenees in Catalonia. In the middle of the night as a tawnyol call. God, what's happening to my words?

A tawnyall calls. Right, here. So they're migrating, right? Here they come. There's the worry. They come the wing beats. Now they go. Look at high speed train.

Flamingos migrating over a mountain forest in Catalonia in the middle of the night with an owl calling. Myself and Sean will be back out in about 10 or 15 minutes. You go and have a wonderful pint and a piss. All right, Douglas. All right, let's have our little little ocarina pause now.

I could. Oh, I like talking over that babble there. That's nice. It felt like being at a... at a golf tournament there. We'll have a little break here for some advertising. And I do have an ocarina present and I could play it for the ocarina pause but I don't want to instead. So I mentioned at the start of the podcast, I'm really looking forward to growing some potatoes this weekend. And I've kind of been thinking about nothing but potatoes.

I got this massive book. It's called The History and Social Inspecial. influence of the potato. It's about 2,000 pages long. It's fucking huge. This is the Bible of Pado's very heavy book. And I'm going to hit myself into the head with this book and you're going to hear some adverts for some bullshit. Okay. So this is the hitting myself into the head with the history and social influence of the Pidato book by Radcliffe Salomon. I believe it was written in the 1950s, I think. I'm going to hit myself into the first. fucking head with this book and you're going to hear an advert for some bullshit, all right?

Oh. Oh, and knock myself. Be a good way to knock myself out. I'd like that. Imagine that. Just like two minutes of silence because I go unconscious from hitting myself into a book about, hitting myself into the head with a book about the history of the potato. But three really solid chapters on the famine inside there.

I'm probably going to have a potato podcast coming up after reading this book. It's powerful. stuff. All right. That was the Okarina pause. Support for this podcast comes from

you, the listener via the Patreon page, Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment,

entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please consider supporting it directly.

This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is what I do. This podcast is how I pay.

for all my equipment, how I pay my bills, how I rent out my office. I'm eight years into this podcast. I fucking adore it. I love this work. My goal is to make it to 10 years. I really want to make it to 10 years with this podcast and I want to show up every single fucking week to make that happen. But I don't miss a week. Even when I'm on tour, when I have chicken pox, when I'm exhausted. It's very important to me that I put my podcast out on a Wednesday for the humility of it and the gratitude. I'm grateful that pursuing my passion and curiosity is something that I can deliver each week and earn a living from. That's what I'm grateful for and I'll never take it for granted. So all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. And if you can't

afford that, for whatever reason if you don't have that money, don't worry about it. Listen for free. Listen for fucking free. Because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. I get to earn a living. Wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. And also it keeps this podcast independent. I am not beholden to advertisers. They can go fuck themselves. No advertiser comes in here and tells me what to speak about or what my is, they advertise here completely on my terms. Being listener funded gives me that type of autonomy. All right, upcoming gigs, because I'm a busy buy. March 14th, which is two weeks away. I'm up in Carlo. That's sold out. 26th of March. Bit of Cork. The Cork Opera House, Cork Podcast Festival.

That's nearly sold out there. Very few tickets left for that. That's, I'd say 50 tickets left for that. Check out the Cork Podcast Festival in general. Joe and Ed who run that are lovely wonderful people, great fucking promoters. They do a lot of gigs for the love of putting gigs on and I love promoters like that. Then in April, the 4th of April, up to Castle Blaney. Castle Blaney all the way up there in Monaghan.

Let's go. Then I'm back down in Limerick, right beside Yarty's couch on the fucking 9th of April I'm in Limerick City at the University Concert Hall that's a hometown gig for me again I played that venue last year I never thought it was possible

that I'd be able to gig the University Concert Hall in my own city but here we are and it's right beside Yarty's Couch the spiritual home of this podcast Yarty's Couch if you don't know is it's a stretch of river in Limerick City where eight years ago

I meditated and received visions from an otter. And now it's on Google Maps. I love that. I love that. I love that on this podcast eight years ago. I named a little spot on the river where I used to meditate. And I named it after an otter called Yurti Ahern, who lives down there. And now it's there on Google Maps as Yarty's couch with reviews and people go and visit it.

And like, I came up with that in 2018, but if you go half an hour up the river from Yarty's couch, you'll see a spot called Fintin's grave up near Lock Dark. And that is thousands of years old. That's connected with Irish mythology and a man called Fintin who came to Ireland 10,000 years before the biblical flood and he turned into a salmon and lived up there in Fenton's grave and I adored that Yarty's couch and Finton's grave are there beside each other on the map. Part of the same collective folk mythology. Anyway I'm gigging at the University Concert Hall Limerick on the 9th of April and that's there right beside Yarty's couch so that's a very

very special place for me to be doing a podcast. And the university concert hall, my dad, after he retired, he worked as a security guard in that building, in that building where I'm doing that gig. When I was a little kid, I remember my dad coming home and I'd be worried about him and scared about him being the night watchman on this giant, an empty theatre. So, to be doing a gig in a theatre where my dad worked for like, I think seven or eight years as a security guard. I'd just like to imagine his presence there. He never got to see my career. He never got to see anything that I did.

I was too young when he died. And just, yeah, there's two things this year that I know that if he was alive would have made him very, very proud. The first one is my dad spent most of his life working in Aer Lingus which at the time was the Irish National Airline but it was Steyroney's and he was a union

organiser and he took great pride in his job in his place of employment because it was stay run pension there was a pension with the job he was involved in the unions and Aer Lingus meant a lot to him. And this year, Aer Lingus are

showing my documentary blind by the land of slaves and scholars. They're showing that on their on all their fucking flights. So I know that would have made my dad incredibly proud. And then the other thing is for me to be playing in the venue where he

used to be a security guard. I'd love to have been able to make my dad proud. But he's dead. And he never got to see anything that I did. all he saw was me failing my leave insert so those two things not even in a supernatural way they just they have a lot of meaning for me

to do things which I know he would be very proud of if he was alive carries great meaning for me right 20th of April Vicker Street alright come along to that you know my Vicar Street gigs are fantastic crack then the 25th of April

I've got that Galway gig the one that was rescheduled There's still a few tickets left for that I'm gonna take it easy this summer I'm not gonna do a lot of gigs this summer I want time off I want monkey time this summer So I'm gonna be in Berlin

In July Where is it? No fucking June I'm in Berlin in June At the Babylon Theatre Two nights 19th and 20 First night is sold out Still a few tickets left for the second night then in July

I'm at the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield That's in Is it Sheffield City Hall Where the fuck is it I don't know You'll figure it out

That's on the 5th of July I believe There in Sheffield And then October Big massive tour there Um Which Big tour of England

Scotland and Wales Which is almost sold out Even though it's a good bit of way But it's almost sold out Right Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, Glasgow Gateshead and Nottingham. That's my fucking English tour, Scotland and Wales. And you get those tickets at Fane.co.com. UK forward slash blindby.

And let's get back to the chat now with Sean Ronane. This second part is... This is a long podcast this week. But fuck it, who cares? You can listen to it in the installments if you want. It's up to you. this second part is very bird focused. I think the clock has been fixed now.

You were chatting backstage about the scientific argument against feeding birds, that we shouldn't be feeding birds. Oh yeah, I know. That's not a popular thing to talk about. You know, there was a guy went viral on Instagram talking about it recently and the hate that he got. And I feel so bad for him, but there actually is, scientific reasoning behind it, sadly.

So, like, you know, there's a number of reasons that come up. One is that bringing a load of birds into one, you know, small, little point, it's, you know, it's a breeding centre for disease, essentially. And so diseases can come and be passed amongst the birds. So you're basically, you put all this seed out and now you have a load of fucking crows, you've a little of vincches and they're, they, they, they, shouldn't be beside each other. Yeah, they're together in our natural numbers.

It's like when we go on to an airplane, you often come home sick like when you send the kid to the crash the same thing. And so it spreads disease quite rapidly. Another reason is that it changes the species dynamics. So basically bird feeders favor kind of generalist, almost aggressive, bold birds. and the other species then don't do so well. And so the numbers of the other birds will spike

and the shire, often less common species, will decline because they can't compete. So big, confident birds are like, I'm going to eat the peanuts out of that thing I am, I can do that. Yeah, and like even Blu-Tit, do you know Blu-Tit? Blu-Tit is one of the most aggressive birds you can ever come across. So I don't ring, but I have friends who ring, so they catch birds and they put little rings on them

and then they can study them so they can find out how long they've lived if they're recaptured, where they've travelled to, so on and so on. And the bird that they were most afraid of catching aside from the likes of a sparrowhawk was blue tit because they would lock on the little bits of skin on the edge of your fingernails

or the webs between your fingers. So yeah, they're a really mega aggressive generalist bird that does really well as a result of bird feeders. So, and I, what I was thinking was, um, so if,

like you still want to have a relationship with birds in your garden, right? And you don't want to put out the seeds. If, like, I, I planted a wildflower garden and it was only six foot by six foot. But after a year when the, and it was indigenous native wildflower, right?

Yeah. Because that's the thing. I'm always saying this, right? When you go into fucking B&Q or you go into Woody's, and you go, oh, I'm going to do a good thing now and I'm going to get some wildflower seed. You have to make sure

that it's indigenous Irish wildflower. I was in fucking, it was in Woodies the other day and I looked at the back of the, it was called Irish wildflower seeds. And then I looked up every single flower. Only two of them were indigenous.

The rest of them were from Europe. So there's, I think it's called Irish wildflowerseeds. I think that's the website. He is the real deal. So if you get him off him, And sometimes I've got Irish wildflowers.

That's the one. That's legitimate native fucking wildflow. So I got those and I put them up my back garden and after a year I was seeing insects. I had never seen before in my life. You know?

But I know that those insects are food. So if I have that, then the birds are going to come. They're going to eat those insects and they will eat the indigenous seed. So that's surely a good way to feed birds. That's the way to do it. like and I guess I guess putting out peanuts and seeds it's an instant hit like you know it's like having

that bar of chocolate but having having investing the time into putting out the the wildflowers and having them grow and so on and come into seed it's a longer investment but in the long run it's better like and like we did the same we didn't we didn't plan them we were lucky in that there was kind of a there was a native bank of seed in the soiled scene and a lot of things came up like there was fox glove came up there were different kinds of willow herbs and there were, you remember those things that we used to throw each other when we were kids sticky backs.

Yeah. They love them as well. And they stick onto birds, don't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a method of seed dispersal essentially, you know. So anyway, like we've had so many birds just coming to those seeds and taking the insects. And I think that's the

solution. But I know, my buddy, Collie, you've never met Callie, have you? No, not yet. I'd love to meet Collie. Collie, I've had him on the podcast about four times. He's the chief biodiversity officer up in Trinity College. and he's obsessed with ponds and he's trying to get everyone to build a pond

and what he'll say is like a pond if you don't have space for a pond a fucking wheelbarrow full of water that you leave alone becomes a pond of sorts but you get all these little aphids

and dragonfly larvae that's all stuff and one thing as well because something that was racking my brains for ages is I said to collie okay if I build a small pond, he said

fish will arrive there eventually. And I was like, fuck off. But you know what I mean? I'm like, go in, how the fuck? If I build a pond in Limerick City is a fish going to arrive inside there and he's there, it will, it will. Do you know how the fish will get in there? I think I know. Can I let me guess. So a mallard, a mallard or a heron

will be in a bigger pond and the eggs will attach to the leg. It will fly and it will land in and the fish eggs will come. Bards cleaning themselves in the pond will bring the fish eggs. That's what they do. That's amazing. Here's the other thing, right? Ireland has lost 90% of its wetlands

in the last 300 years, which is more than any other country in the entire world. So I think we owe it to bring some ponds and wetlands back. You know, we've lost a lot of species with our wetlands as well. Have you heard about the Czechoslovakian beavers recently,

you know? No, this is amazing. So in the Czech Republic, no, seriously, in the Czech Republic, this was only a month ago. So they had this huge Czech Republic as a gorgeous country. And they had this massive, massive area, which they had used it as a military testing ground during the Cold War. So it was like half the size of cork. And then the military were like, we're not testing here anymore. So the government of the Czech Republic were like, okay, let's rewild this massive area.

area, and this was 2018. So they decided, okay, we're going to do it. How much is it going to cost? Bureaucracy gets in the way. So 2018, they're like, we're supposed to rewild this massive area, but this politician says no, or there's not enough money, so nothing happens. And then while the politicians are arguing about rewilding this wetland, they effectively left it alone.

And one family of beavers, one fucking family of indigenous. is Czechoslovakian beavers. So that was about 18 members. They went back to check it a month ago. They had built dams and rewilded the entire area themselves. They had restored the wetlands and it's reckoned

that that one family of beavers did what would have cost the Czechoslovakian government 10 million euros. And it was just like, let the beavers do it. Now we can't do that in Ireland because we don't have beavers, but in countries where you do,

And it was, it's just beautiful to hear something like that. You know, they had, the beavers know the crack, leave them off. Yeah, they're, their natural ecosystem engineers. They're like, because that was something that I often wonder is, what's the point of humans? Now, I was asking, uh, Professor, Professor Jane Stout, Professor Jane Stout, who is the, she started the, Ireland pollinator plan. She's the reason that, you'd county councils aren't, um, fuck, are letting the, the, the, the, the roundabouts grow and stuff like that.

And I asked her, I'm like, what's the fucking point to humans? Because we're nature. Like, we're animals. And the point of us is, we're a bit like beavers. We change ecosystems. We're one of the few animals

that can go into an ecosystem and change things. We've just gone a bit too far. Yeah, a little bit. Come here. But it is one of the things, like I'm not into God, right? But one of the things

that does keep me awake at night is I think, why the fuck would nature create us if we can fuck everything up? So we must have been created by either a god or an alien. I think don't people say that we're an anomaly

like something went a bit wrong. We're like a mad ape. Or we were put here by artificial intelligence and the point of us is to be the sex organs for the machines. So our very point

is to get to a point that we can create AI kills all of us and then the AI wins. My mind is going in 100 tangents here. Listen, the real reason you came down to Kerry is because you had some very serious things to tell me about Starlings. Yeah, yeah. And I use the serious things that I wanted to tell you about Starlings to go on 100 tangents, which should all light up nicely.

So where do we begin with Starlings? I don't know where to begin. I'm going to ask you one question about Starlings. Go on, yeah. So I have a big thing with Starlings more than a fucking big thing. I'm after causing international tourism in Limerick. There's a street that I've renamed the Bardshit district

and people travel from fucking Australia, South America, everything, just to slip on bird shit in Limerick. The council fucking hate me. They're going to Charlie Kirk me, I'm telling you. And I managed to cause, they're after cutting the trees to try and prevent the Starlings from coming back and I know the pricks.

I was trying to get him to turn the street into to put biosways, they're artificial wetlands because I found out the history of the starlings of Limerick where the starlings are in the city used to be a riparian zone. So the purpose of those starlings is that they would eat food in other parts come to this wetland,

which is now a city, and then they would shit. And the purpose of their shit was to go into the riparian zone. It would flood, and then the nitrogen from their shit would get carried up and brought into wetlands

and that's the purpose of those starlings in Limerick within biodiversity we've built the city there so now the shit goes nowhere it just you slip on it but what was I going to say but here's the thing

I know that starlings are mimickers is it possible that when I walk around the bird shit district and listen to Starlings that I might be hearing noises or sounds

from 100 or 150 years ago okay so that's exactly what I want to talk to go on But is that mad? Is that mad? No, it's not mad. Yes! All right.

I've got so many starting stories. Like Albat thought I was losing the plot. All I've been talking about is Starlings for the last week. Right, so let's go with this one first. Chris Watson, right? The sound record is for David Attenborough. Just an absolute pioneer in the field of wildlife sound recording tells a great story. And you can hear it online where he goes to, I think it's called call.

It's an island in Scotland. and he goes to sound record there and he finds an old Bothy, like an old stone house that's long abandoned. And there's this starling still nesting in the eve of the house and it's singing and it's singing a memetic song, which they do by nature. And in this memetic song,

he hears the sound of a two-stroke engine, a very distinctive sound. Underneath the starling is a rusted old two-stroke engine, right? And so what he's concluded is this is generational, mimicry. So in other words, the engine has long since ceased to be, but the parents remember it or the grandparents, they pass it on. The younger ones learn the song from their parents and they learn the song of the two-stroke engine and it gets passed down through generations. I have found this in Ireland, not in Starlings, but in other species. So one example is, so the last species to have

gone extinct in Ireland is corn bunting. It was abundant. It was all. over the country. And it was alive in my lifetime, but I was too young to, you know, to clock it. And they're gone now. But there's another mimetic bird. By the way, many songbirds are mimetic. Mimicry is a wild. Like, it's what I'm working on in the moment. So this is a bird called Winchette. It migrates to Africa and it comes back. A great place to see them is Wicklow. And I recorded this windshed in Wicklow and it does its song. And all of a sudden, I hear corn bunting. I hear corn bunting in the song, right? Yeah, yeah. And like the only way, well, it's possible that it learned it somewhere else, but I don't think so. I believe that it remembers from a few generations back

corn buntings and that's reflected in the song like, you know, so we're hearing the sound of an extinct bird. Yep. Yeah, so you're hearing whispers of the past through the song and the bird, like, you know, it's a, because I can play it. Will I play it actually? Go on, yeah, please. I think I have it. I've got 28,000 sounds. I've got 28,000 sounds like. in this laptop. It's okay. Just give me a second there now. So this bird is called a what?

Oh, here we go. Look, it's called a Wynchat. It's absolutely class. So this one now, this is the bird. This is the bird that's mimicking. So this is corn bunting, right? Here we go. This is the song of a corn bunting.

I obviously didn't record it in Ireland because I would have had to have been two years of age going out with a microphone. This is a Catalan corn bunting. Let's go to the Wynchat, right? Now, this is a Wynchat that I recorded in Whitlaw. So first you'll just hear

an actual typical burst of Winchat song and then I'll isolate the part where it imitates a corn bunting and then I'll play a real corn bunting. That's just one verse. They have verses, structured verses just like humans.

There's another verse. So I'll pull out the part where it mimics a cornbunting and I'll play a real cornbunting. Windchat? Cornbunting. Wow. But that's oral storytelling.

Oh, it is, yeah. And it gets, it gets wilder than that. I'm not allowed to speak about everything at the moment, but I can show you some... I can show you some things, right? Oh, where do I go now? Okay. So let's talk about migration.

So starlings are prominent migrants. And so a lot of the starlings that we get in the winter will have come from Scandinavia, mostly. They can come from as far as Siberia, even. And I have a friend, Alan Dalton. if you're interested If anyone is listening Look up Alan Dalton

By the way He's a manic sound recordist Like me But he's in Sweden So he is a friend Who counts birds migrating in Sweden That's a thing there Because everything leaves in the winter

So even wrens fly out over the sea Out over the sea crossing to Scotland And over to us tiny wrens And so they count everything with little clickers And let me just make sure I've got my numbers right Oh yeah So

autumn from 2024, this guy, Raul, which is, and his friend, counted 221, 221,000 starlings flying out over the sea in the southern tip of Sweden, heading to Denmark and heading to mainland Europe. Some of those birds destined for us. On a peak, the peak day, he had 52,000 birds going out over the sea in one day, including one flock of 10,000 starlings going out, right? So these birds, they're coming. to us like and when we see those enormous murmurations the biggest murmuration in Ireland is about

quarter of a million burns you'll have a lot of Scandinavian voices in those in those in those birds like um so like just going back to the same place like falsobrates in the southern tip of sweden they have gold crests flying out of the sea that's the one that i said it weighs the same as about five or six paper clips absolutely tiny and they go out over the sea I lived in Thumbarland for a while and so I used to actually intercept those birds I would witness those birds coming in to see visible migration even if you aren't somebody who's massively into birds or nature there's something really special about it to witness a spectacle like that where you're seeing tens of thousands of birds that are on a coordinated migration from one country to another or one

continent to another and I used to love it in November like you'd get tens of thousands of thrushes blackbirds song crushes red wings field fairs coming in off the sea and sometimes you'd even see the tiny little gold crest coming in off the north sea some days it was heartbreaking because they were exhausted they're after undertaking an enormous journey and after coming all that way sometimes you'd see them dipping down down down down and i'd have a telescope and then they'd just plop into the waves and they'd never make it they almost made it um sometimes you'd get them at your feet they're so tired they don't have the energy

to run away anymore you'd have goldcress running around your feet I've had goldcress running over my boots over there another bird that turns up with this movement

is that part of their crack though are they supposed to get eaten or they're supposed to die yeah I mean I guess I guess there's a fish that exists on a fall of goldress

so all of this biological matter like species that live down in the deep sea their nutrients have to come from somewhere so insects drown all the time. Birds drown all the time.

A whale, do you ever see? When a whale dies, it can create an ecosystem in two, three hundred years. Absolutely, yeah. So I'm sure they feed into that. But one of the birds that travels with them is Woodcock. Do you know Snipe? You might even know Woodcock. Woodcock is like a giant version of a snipe almost and they're highly migratory. In the past we didn't understand bird migration and people used to think, okay, Goldcrest arrives at the same time as Woodcock. but Goldcrest is tiny. You couldn't possibly fly across the sea. Ah, it sits on the back of the woodcock. So people used to call Goldcrests, Woodcock pilots. And there are amazing drawings of woodcocks wearing the old aviation goggles

with gold crests on the back. But so anyway, so the Starlings, they're all part of this big movement, right? And at the moment, I actually am genuinely very interested in Starlings at the moment and I've been recording them. love the way you have to say that like we think you're lying. No, no, because

they might think that I just do it because you want to talk about the starrings. I was actually listening to the Mac for the last few months and I've been really interested in the mimicry and I've been getting all sorts like so Starling mimicking curlew, mimicking Red Fox. Actually,

let me go back and further. The first time I sound recorded a starling was in Mallow and North Cork and there was a starling nesting in the in the in the roof. And I was recording birds migrating at night time, but also I was kind of hitting two birds at one stone and allowing the recorder to run into the morning and get the song of the Starling. Here's this thing about Starlings, they're lifelong learners, which means they have the ability to constantly learn and constantly improve and update their song. And so I wanted to know,

if I listen to this starting every day for a year, would I experience and hear the updates in its song and that's exactly what happened? So when the foxes started to get busy and start to scream in the garden. A few weeks later, the starling started to scream like a fox. When different birds started to migrate back north of Scandinavia, golden plover, snipe, things like that, eventually it learned those calls. And then one morning, this starling started to speak to me in a cork accent. I think you might have heard it before and it started to, it started to say, come here, come here. And what was after happening was I was letting my dog out. And I was calling Toby back in, come here. this Starling did it.

Will I play it for the benefit of the people that haven't heard it? Yes. So, yeah, like, I actually thought I was hearing things. I thought I had spoken over the track, but in actual fact, no, it's the Starling. So it'll play a few times. Whenever Starlings imitate human speech, they give it in a robotic manner.

They sound a bit like R2D2. So this is like me, but slightly robotic. Come here, it says it twice. Come here, come here. Isn't that mad like? So, anyway, currently, I'm very, interested in one particular group of starlings that can sail that I've been listening to. And all of a sudden, this sound jumped out. And it's a sound I'd only heard in one location in Ireland before my life.

And let me play it for you and see if you recognise it. So here it is. Look, it's a special sound. Does anybody know what that is? So it's a very distinctive sound. That is what a red kite sounds like, right? And there's a starling in the old head that's been mimicking red kite. let me find it there here it is here's the starlings rendition right and so red kites

there's only I think there's less than 200 birds in Ireland so they're not common and a starling from Wicklow would not migrate south to cork in the winter because the weather conditions are virtually the same so I knew that this starling had come from somewhere further afield

and I thought back to all of the migration in Sweden and I googled I googled red kite Sweden. I was thinking, is it there? It turns out that it is there. And even better. So the area where my friend counts the birds going out to sea, it's in Scania County. I won't try to pronounce it properly because I couldn't.

It's in the very south of Sweden. Their county bird is red kite, right? So I think that there's a good chance that the starling that I recorded in the old head of cansail has migrated to Cork from Sweden and is calling like

red kike because I heard it in Falsabra. Yeah. So. Like, this is astounding, right? But why? What's the point to Starlins? Like, why did they mimic?

Yeah, so there's loads of reasons behind mimicry depending on the context and the species. But the primary one is, essentially, right, the more complex and varied a bird's song is, the more sexually attractive it is to the other half. Because I can demonstrate, hey, I've got a great memory.

I've got a great voice. I can do all this stuff. I need good genetics to do that. And this is just an indication of how strong and healthy I am. And if you, you know, pair up at me, these good genes will be passed on to our young. And that's what it is. Do you ever wonder about, have you looked into the human brain? And then what?

Like, so we're humans and we're interested in this. but was there an evolutionary benefit for humans? Like, do you ever hear of Augrey, no? No. Augrey was an ancient Roman religious practice where they would try and predict the future based on the behaviour of birds. Oh, yeah, I did hear it.

And he was a serious business, you know? And there was probably a lot of usefulness in it. And if you're very attuned to birds, it's going to tell you something about biodiversity which will probably benefit our health in some way when it comes to when to plant crops. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

Like, what do you think? Like, why do we give a fuck about this stuff? What is about the human brain? Well, like, Burtzan calms us down. When Bardson disappears, we get anxious. For me, it's my autistic thing. Well, that's not. But for sure, like,

there are many scientific studies done which show that listening to the sounds of nature, they completely calm us down. Look, let's think about it. right, we've evolved with those sounds of nature over many thousands of years. The sounds which we're exposed to now on a daily basis

the hustle and bustle, the drone of a motorway, the jackhammer, the beeping, that's something unnatural. It's something that causes a cortisol spike. It's something that we've only been exposed to

in the last, what, 200 years compared to many, many thousands. Of course, of course, our are, you know, we're going to feel uncomfortable hearing that. And I heard too, like, the level of noise that we just take for granted by simply being in a city anywhere. The level of noise that we take for granted,

that if you put someone from the 16th or 15th century into that, they go, what the fuck is this? That's how I feel. That's how I feel when I go out there. I can't handle it. I get very stressed. I become very irate. I can become very snappy

To somebody who doesn't know Emotionally disregulates you Yeah To somebody who doesn't know me They'd be thinking Why are you speaking like that There's no need to go on like that But actually

Do you know It's causing me to be behaviour radically I have to get out Alva understands that And she like She knows when I'm kind of getting Really stressed in a situation Like really busy places

Like really I also don't like touch I don't like people touching me You know, when that happens. I feel like a locust, like, you know, when the, when, when you're in that over-stimulating environment, because here, the thing with being autistic, like, you and me are about, like, level one. Mm-hmm. And when autistic people are put in situations where we can't mask anymore. Yeah.

And we're overstimulated. Yeah. Then that's when, like today, when I was saying there was someone in fixing the electricity in the house, I become way more artistic. Oh, right. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. My capacity to appear to be normal, to maintain eye contact, to do small talk, that disappears

when I'm under stress. For you, it's noise. For me, it's proximity to lots of people or, you know, for someone else, it's lights. It's noise and, yeah, like big crowds, especially when people are kind of bumping off me, like, you know. Does that have to be associated them with noise too? No, but the two together are even more intense. What about the continual chatter of loads of people?

people in a crowded space. Yeah, I don't like it. So this is where the noise cancelling headphones, like Alba bought them for me. Really, she's the most thoughtful person, like, honestly, because she doesn't, she doesn't fully understand what this is, but she can see the impact that it has. And you know, some people might think, oh, come on, man, you're being, you're being dramatic. I'm not, like, and she knows that and she sees it and she reacts to it. And she's always thinking ahead, like, you know, how.

When did you start using the noise counsellors? She bought them for me. Just, she bought them for me maybe a month ago. And it was a... Wow, so in one month you've known... And are you walking around the city just listening to nothing? Or are you playing something or just... The thing is, like, you can still hear voices.

You can sit here. It just cuts out like the kind of... Yeah. The drone, like the white noise, the... And it kind of... It frees my head up, like... Have you had any near misses crossing the road, though? that's why I had to stop using them

I got a bus A bus went so close I felt it on the tip of my noise Really? I can't remember the last time You gotta be real careful crossing roads With the noise cancelers seriously Yeah oh Jesus No that's because I'm like I

Also enjoy noise cancelling headphones Not to the extent that you need them Yeah But I enjoy them And I just had one A few little city things on the road Yeah yeah Fuck that

Yeah I've actually got some more starring stuff for you Yeah, so, come here. There's another species of starling, right? Very closely related called, called spot. See, this is what Alba has to put up, but no. Alba's delighted that I'm talking to someone else about birds for an hour. Go on, go on away with flying by there for a while.

No, but there's another species called spotless starling, which is the European, the Mediterranean equivalent. It's called spotless sterling because it doesn't have spots. whereas European does but they're also mimics but their mimicry is even more impressive come here I was going through audio there this is just a bit of crack now right

let me explain a few things I just came up with a tangent there so when you're out sound recording right people obviously see me with something that looks like a satellite dish in my hand and they're drawn to you and the last thing you want is someone coming up to you talking to you when you're trying to sound record

yeah purple sandpiper for the listen to this listen to this this is Alva. This is the stuff that she does for me. When I was away working when I had a kind of a more normal job, I guess. She would put out my microphone on our balcony because we lived in Catalina then and she would set it up for me to let it

run so I'd have birds sound to edit at nighttime when I came home. Here's Alba, look. Allah. That's it. Enjoy. Is that a human being or a bird? No, that's Alba. That's Alva. But no, she was chatting into the microphone and said enough for me.

Now this is another one, right? And I have no idea what I was talking about originally, but this is a great time to play this. So I was trying to sound record a bird called Purple Sandpiper, which is kind of rare. They don't really say a lot. Dunleary is a great place to them. And the moment had just arrived.

The bird had just come up to me. Perfect. Here it is. And it was going to be a new bird for me. This is what I got. Are you listening for? I actually have an album of those kind of... He was really put out by whatever the fuck you were listening to.

Can me what kind of accent is that actually? I've been pondering over that lately. That's da. That's the sound of a da'a. It sounds like a Glenn Ro accent to me. Go for it. Let's go again. How are you listening?

He's not happy with what you're doing. That was really telly-offy. I was crawling around with a sound. I dished in my hand and a set of headphones on. Did you speak to the man? I had to stop and I said, well, I was trying to sound record the purple sandpipers, but they're floored away now. I know, people, he meant well.

But anyway, back to the spotless starling. So this is where the tangent came from, right? Here's another one, right? Except I'm in Catalonia, you know. I'm in this, if you ever go to Catalonia, right, go to this place. It's called Sierraana. And it's like this stone village on top of a cliff. It's incredible.

But they don't see too many people with parabolas and headphones on, obviously. And I was there to sound record a Starling that was, but that was mimicking a car alarm. And so I was camped outside this woman's house pointing at her. Did someone have to tell you about it? Like, how did you know about that? How do you find out there's a stone village in the middle of nowhere and there's a... I was there for a specific reason. I was there for a bird called Wall Creeper, which is very elusive.

And it had never been sound recorded. That's another story. like this car alarm starting was a side quest that was a side quest yeah I got sidetracked I went on a tangent with the with the starling I was like oh what's that

so I went into this village and I'm setting up and like it's a real rural quiet village and you know people doing everyday things in there and here I am outside this woman's house with a satellite dish looking up at her aerial this is this is her right

I'll translate it afterwards she's speaking in Catalan to me I should know buzzard nymakry there by the way Here she comes. She's banging on the window at me. Hey! There he comes. Good day.

Hello. Bon die. Ola. So, Bon die. So, Bonilla is a good day in Catalan. I sheepish, she said, Ola, because it's all I knew. And then she said,

Kest that's miran. And what are you looking at? A little owl. And then I hung up because I didn't know what to say. That's the most of it. shit I've heard in my life. You hung up in a conversation in real life.

Yeah, yeah. Jesus. Yeah, I meant I turned off the sound recorder. All right. Come here. That's a new one now. Meeting someone in the street, sorry, I'm going to have to hang out now and walk away. I'd do that. I'd do that. I've got something beautiful to show you, and I've got something

funny to show you, right? Here is the car alarm. Thankfully, I can't use some sign language as I pointing at the bird, and she was like, okay, and she left me off. So here is a starling, a spotless starling mimicking a car alarm. Isn't that good? So the same starling mimicking a chicken.

And I think I've got one more. Oh, right, you might not know this bird, but it's the most beautiful bird and you should know it. Right. It's called Google it afterwards. It's called golden oriole. It looks stunning. It looks like a vivid banana in a tree, right? But they've got the most amazing song as well.

First of all, here, will I do the Golden Oriole first or the mimicry first? I'll do the Golden Oriole first. Oh, I can't find it. Here it is. Now, listen to this and tell me that this isn't beautiful. My God. This is Catalonia in the height of spring. That's golden oil there.

That's lovely. Yeah. And that purring, that's a turtle dove. Now, remember that sound. Now, here is a starling doing the Golden Oriole. There, that's it. And so when I'm in the Bardshed district, the Starlings marmereid in the sky,

they go into the trees, and then just as the sun comes down, there's a cacophony, you're in the street, and it is nothing but like starlings all around you. The sound of them chirping and then shitting, and then splatting, splatting, shitting and splatting. But there's thousands of them. Like, obviously I cannot pick out individual voices

in that thousands. But are they mimicking in that cacophony or is it something to do when they're on their own? No. So they wouldn't go into the effort of doing really kind of stylish, mimetic song in that because a lot of it will be lost. So they do a thing called flock song.

And I think it's just like a team bonding exercise where all of the birds sing together. It's quite common. But did they make a noise when they're murmuring? Mirmary shape. So when they're murmurating, they're literally shitting themselves

because they're doing that because there's, there's, you know, a peregrine falcon chasing them and they're trying to make themselves look like a larger bird. And so they're not going to waste energy on singing when they're about to be killed

or eaten alive, you know? So they tend to be quite silent in that regard. Do you know something very interesting? I remember like, so I don't know if you've seen Birdsong or not but one of the scenes in Birdsong was filming a murmuration of Starlings

in Locke-Ell, Westmead. quarter of a million birds like and like it looks it almost looks like CGI or AI or something like that I can assure you it's not you can go there and see it it's unbelievable and there was a comment and somebody was saying like this is definitely AI and how is it possible they're not flying into each other quarter of a million birds and and I'll tell you how so there was an amazing study done right where they had multiple cameras down and they were able to 3D model the one of these murmurations and they were able to kind of slow everything down

and break it down and they realise that each starling is watching roughly it's six to seven closest neighbours and so like if you think about it we're in a busy train station we're not watching the entire flock of humans so we don't go out with each other

you're looking at the few people closest to you so that doesn't happen and that's exactly what the star is doing and so is everyone else you know and they're moving a little bit faster their brains are moving faster and so they work in sync like you know you get the odd person on a train station that will clock heads and that's going to be. with another person, but it's rare. Like, it's the same with the Starling.

Because I, I saw too, that they were trying to look at memorations and that they compared it to when a large audience start clapping. So when everyone claps, it's chaotic and then a rhythm forms. And it's just humans do it, you know? It's an empathy thing. Something I, one of the maddest things I noticed during the pandemic was,

so when the pandemic was over and then you had those, remember the weird gigs that you were allowed go to where people were put into pods. So I did one of them in Kilmainham Jail so it was this huge fucking field and there was like maybe 500 people there but did this massive field and they're all in

people like six people to this table six people to that table and there's a few meters between everybody and what I found amazing was there were certain jokes that I knew if I told it to a crowd like this I just know from experience everyone laughs at once

but when people were social distanced jokes didn't work yeah the empathy that the things that we were doing to prevent a virus spreading that prevented the empathy of laughter so I'd say a joke and it's like there's a laughter over there

but if there's a room like this everyone just laughs at once as an empathy thing that's a social activity too isn't it laughing like, you know, like if you're at home and you're, you know, I could be watching a hilarious stand-up comedy and I'm not going to laugh as hard as I would if I was present. Exactly, that's what I was going to say.

You'd seem a bit mad if you were roaring out laughing at home to yourself. Come here, I have another Starlink story, Fee. We're here to do Starlings, aren't we? We can do whatever the fuck we want. Do you want to hear another Starling story? Right. And we're going to go to Romania now, right? This is actually quite funny.

and so we go to Romania because we had done a few human holidays for a while and I'm saying but human holidays I mean like we went to see you know things made by humans and I wanted to see things in nature so Alva was like right it's your turn we'll do a nature holiday where do you want to go and I was like can we go to the place where we're far as far away as possible from people road noise plain noise so it's just pure wild silence and she's like okay so we went to two destinations in Romania, the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube Delta. And so it happened to me, my birthday when we were in the Danube Delta. And she was like, Sean, what do you want to do? And I said,

what do you think? And so we hired a two, a two, she knew, we hired a two person kayak, right? And I said, right, with this now, we're going to, we're going to kayak into the heart of the Danube Delta. I was looking at the maps. There's no roads from many kilometers. There's no boats in there. It's going to be amazing. We're going to leave a microphone there. And in 48 hours, we'll come back and we collect the microphone, we'll have 48 hours of pure wild sound and God knows what

will turn up in it. She's like, okay, how long do you think it will take the kayak in there? And I said, around two hours and Jesus Christ, Alvinary divorced me.

We were kayaking for 12 hours. Oh my God. And she said, Sean, you bastard, you tricked me. And I said, Alva, I'm serious, I didn't have a clue.

I didn't know it was going to take this long. But anyway, we go in there, right? Now this will get to Starlings eventually. Is that two separate kayaks like? No,

we were in the one kayak but do you know you have to kayak at the same strength but Alba was so fucking angry she was kayaking like a demon so we were going around in circles because I couldn't keep up with her and but anyway we leave

we leave this microphone out there right and it was just incredible so when you go out there like all of a sudden you've got these willows that are just seemingly growing out of nowhere and the willows are just coming up out of the delta and arching over and it sounds like it's perpetually raining.

It's not. So the willows are constantly taking water up and so they have excess water and then they excrete it back out. So the willows are literally weeping water and it sounds like a constant trickle of water. Is that where weeping

willow comes from? I think I think it must it would be strange if it didn't. The plant weeps over the maybe it is. Oh yeah, that's a good one, yeah. So here we go look. Listen to this though. This is just so beautiful. Like you don't even need to know the names of the birds, the frogs here, but just, you know, you can instantly

feel this, like, and you can hear the, the weeping willows, too. Goes out of the clock on me with the pap. Oh, my. So I have, I have 48 hours of this, this lovely stuff, right? Have you listened to all 48 hours of it? Of course I have. But that was only one microphone. I had multiple microphones out.

Do you walk around the town listening to bird sounds? In the town, um, the pens, like. sometimes, sometimes not. But hang on, there's actually there's more to this. I was going to say, oh yeah, the Starlings. So, you know, if you think about Starlings, right, where do we see them?

We almost always see them closely associated to our stuff. Starlings are in cities. You'll see them associated with farm buildings. They've become attached to us in a sense and they use our buildings to nest in. Starlings also like really short grass one of the primary food items

they get our leather jackets the larvae of the you know the crane flies sometimes people call them daddy long legs they love those and so all of a sudden dig up gardens yeah starlings

and dig the fuck of your garden yeah yeah but like here I was in the middle of this wilderness in a delta and there were starlings there and I thought whoa hold on a second

what are you doing here and I was watching them and you know what they were doing so this place had I think is it six or seven species of woodpecker in this in this del And woodpeckers, they excavate a new nest every year.

It's a pair building exercise. They do it together. And then next year they get a new one because there's a big parasite load. So they just build another one. So what happens? They create homes for birds that otherwise wouldn't have had a home. They're ecosystem engineers. And so all of a sudden, these starlings had big holes that they could nest in.

And that's naturally where they would have been, you know, in many places. And I wonder, now that we have woodpeckers, will we start to get starlings nesting in the woods too, you know? What, we've got woodpeckers now? Yeah, they've arrived around 2007. On purpose or? Yeah, yeah. So basically what happened?

Did we introduce them? No, no, no, no. So what happened, right? I remember when it was happening. My friend was out in Cape Clare Island and he found a woodpecker there and it was the first record for Karkin, God, was it ever? Then another one turned up on Great Salty Island and they started to turn up in coastal locations like this and went quiet front.

a while. They were breeding, but nobody said it because they wanted to protect them. All of a sudden, they're everywhere. So now... Are they invasive?

Are they a problem? No, no, no. So an invasive species is a species which has been introduced and is problematic. This is neither. It's a... Unless you listen to the,

you know, the madness that they've been spouting on national media of late where, you know, there was a problem where some woodpeckers pecked out a US... An ESV pole and Wicklow. But look,

the thing about woodpeckers is that they peck wood. And, you know, we dominate the landscape with our stuff. And woodpeckers are going to do that. So we need to find a way to live with it. Why did they come here? Like, why? So why, 2007?

What happened? That's a love of Rihanna. Brexit. They had enough of it. No, so basically they think that the population had come to a certain capacity. They were doing really well in the UK. And when that happens, you get natural kind of scouts. Colonization.

Yeah, yeah. So they came over. Yeah, and I think they did DNA testing and concluded that they were from the British population. Yeah, and so they're everywhere now. But here's the amazing thing about woodpeckers, right? They're in Limber two. You've got to listen to them. You're going to love them, right? How big are they in real life?

They're about the size of a large blackbird, a bit bigger than a blackbird, I'd say. Yeah. And are they, unfortunately, my vision of a woodpecker has been marred by cartoons. So, so, so, so, think of a blackbird, lots of white and, and really lovely red on the head. A bit like, a bit like the same colour as your hat. Oh, I know them. They're sharp. And are they long sharp beats?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got a big, big powerful beak. And so. And if you heard them pecking wood. You've got to hear it. Yes, please. You'll hear it. I can give you some locations.

So that they're widespread now, right? But this is the time of year when they start to drum. It sounds like a machine gun. And get this, right? The different woodpeckers. have different preferences for resonances in the wood and they have favourite trees that they like to drum on and they experiment between different trees.

So why are they doing it? Are they looking for something or is it just, this is what I do? So that is their display. The drumming, go away. It's so, listen to this, right?

I have a woodpecker in my local patch and it likes two different trees and the trees sound different and it swaps between one tree to the other to change up the sound. Watch this. Here's tree number one. This is the same tree.

No, three number two. Wow. Isn't that mad? Is that a sexual selection thing again? Um, I don't know, to be honest with you. I think it's just personal taste. Do you know, so, so, so birds are just dinosaurs, right? Uh-huh.

Do you ever go fucking hell where they're dinosaurs pecking things, or what the dinosaurs sound like? I mean, that's what birds are. Yeah, I mean, I don't. don't go as far back as dinosaurs, I think. But I do, I do... Oh, that lays me onto something. I do, I do like to reimagine sounds of the past.

I heard the T-Rex honed like a goose. I heard that too. Can I show you something class here? Right? Oh, you're going to like this, I think. Can I tell you a story about Philip Roneen? Go on, yeah. Right?

So I put out some sound recorders in Clareney National Park. Oh, geez, we're in Clarnie. We are, yeah. I put out some sound records in Clarion National Park and right do you know, do you know in the lakes there there's an island called, there's an island called

Ronane's Island, right? That's my surname and so one of the the recorders was put out there and they did it for laugh because it's my surname and I was intrigued and I was like, what's the story there? And they said well there was this guy, Philip Ronane who was an aristocrat he was a really well-known

mathematician. He was friends with Isaac Newton. He didn't do so well in the human world. He found it hard to socialise with people and didn't really understand people. And so he had made his money and he had enough of people. So he decided to move out to this island. And so it became Ronane's Island. He built this hut that he lived in. The foundations can still be seen there. This was, he was born in 1683, by the way. So this was kind of the early 1700s. He moved out to the island and he lived off fishing, hunting, gathering berries. He had the fresh water there and so on and so on. And he was based to like he didn't want to be visited by anyone. And whenever somebody came out to the island, he would run out

and he would be shouting, expleters and throwing stones at them. He was like Man Friday a bit. And actually my friend Harry would say, Sean, that would have been you if Alba didn't discover you. But I wanted to know more about this guy and I started to look into him. And it turns out that Philip Ronane was born in Cove, which is my hometown. Right. And so I did a bit of research. and I think that the guy is actually related to me. I'm obviously not an aristocrat and I'm awful at maths. And so I became invested in this place and I loved hearing the sounds of this, this potential ancestor of mine, what he would have heard.

And I started to think like the last wolf was eradicated in Ireland in 1786. And he was there, he was there in the early 1700s. So there's a good chance that he would have overlapped and heard wolves. So I adopted this lovely technique that Chris Watson used in the British art gallery, art museum, whereby they wanted to increase engagement at each painting by painting the sound of the pictures. So they would look at an old painting and he would understand, okay, there's an oak tree there. There would be maybe a pied flycatcher scene there. I understand what the rustle of those leaves would sound like there's a stream there

and he layered all the sounds back in and recreated the sound of this painting and the, you know, interaction just shot through the roof. And so I do this sometimes and it's a lot of fun. And so I have an old painting of Rune's Island from that era. And I took the lapping waves against the island

and I put in a wolf sound which I got for my friend Melissa Pons. She's a brilliant sound recordist. And so this is what Philip almost certainly heard at one point trying to get to sleep at Ronny's Island. They're just really confident dogs, aren't they? Oh yeah.

Where I am. My dog sounds a bit like them, but he's there. Before I do audience questions, one question I'd love to ask you is... Oh, yeah? Could you ever deploy the recordings, like, into an ecosystem to benefit another animal? Um... I don't know. I mean, it's generally frustrating.

around upon. Is this? That's fucking what it too much. Yeah. So do you know, like, it's referred to as playback and you can elicit an aggressive response

from another bird. Like, you know, you'll be attacked by a chaffinch or a blue tit if you play their song. Like, they'll come at you, thinking your arrival. Robbins can fight to the death. Like, do you ever see a bald robin?

They pull the feathers out of each other. And so you can, you know, that's a stressful experience, obviously, you know. And so that's not something. that I want to create. Do you know, I was actually speaking to a great hit the other day. I didn't think that I was going to elicit a response because I thought that my rendition was very bad.

I was just out with my little daughter, Laya, and I'm teaching her birdsong. She's only 16 months late, but she enjoys it. And so this great it was singing, and Grated has a really distinctive song, and it's one of the easiest ones to teach kids because it tends to go, teacher, teacher, teacher, so it's easy to remember, you know. And so this great tit starts doing this teacher, teacher, teacher song And I start responding, teacher, teach, teach, and next thing the great tick comes down And it's like, iron up me and liar, you know?

So yeah, yeah, so generally playback is frowned upon. The only time it's really used is like, imagine you were going through like a dense marsh in the middle of the night and you wanted to find is Baylon's craik a really secret of nocturnal species breeding here. You might play it under license to see if you get a response because it's the only kind of on metal license on the license yeah

so like for birds on our film we had to get licenses for everything like you know yeah were you playing stuff no no no no no playback because I don't

the other reason I don't like it is because the response that you get back isn't natural like you know it wouldn't have been saying when it's saying it's like

afield you know yeah and whereas if you're in in the natural way like man I really wanted to play some jazz Jackals free. Can I play some jackals?

It's the last thing. Okay. Are they Jackals like the dog animal? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jackals in the Danube Delta. And they also had a grizzly, no, not a grizzly bear. There was jackets there. They've only just arrived. Golden Jackal. They've marched across. They're spreading. Like Mongolia or so? I think they come up from Africa, Asia. I can't

remember. Oh, they're in Asia. We'll have to look that up. But anyway, here they are, look, golden jackal. I'll do that. And I'll very cheekily. They're hyena-ish. They are, yeah. They're Gorgeous stuff. Did they laugh? They look...

Yeah. They look like a cross between a hyena, a wolf and a fox. Here we're going on. Cool, isn't it? That's very intimidating. Oh, they're kind of slim,

like. This is intimidating, right? Have you ever been in a wood where you're not the top predator where something can actually eat? No. That's like not something. Like, what's going to eat us here?

A cow? Like, well, a red deer is pretty formidable. But, like, we're in the wood there and you go through these pastures, you're in the foothills of the Carpathians. This is very wild. Oh, like, it's one of the last remaining true wilderness.

It's not even like a national park. It's just like this is. It actually is. It's just a very big one, like, very big one. So you're going up, and I remember like going through these pastures, and there are shepherds there. You know, that's one of the things that they do. And their sheep roam over vast areas.

And they need to protect their sheep from bears. So they, I don't remember the breed, but they have this dog. It's the most terrifying fucking dog you'll ever see. And they come for you. They'll come down

the mountain after you and they're like a little horse or something like you know. But anyway, you get past them, you get into the forest and I remember like...

And are the dogs accompanied by humans or do they just hang around the sheep? Well, you hope that they're accompanied by humans because they'll take them away and if they're not, you're in trouble like

because they're serious... And they don't see enough other humans. They're not... And their instinct is to protect the herd, like, so they see you as a threat and they come feel like, you have to bring a stick, like, not to hit them, but just to ward them off. Like, they're serious dogs, like, but you get up there then, and you're walking through the

wood and I remember seeing a bear shit, like, and it's like, it looks a bit like a cow shit, but in a place where a cow definitely wouldn't be, like, you know? And I remember seeing that and I was like, oh my God. And I was saying that they don't fuck around. No, and I was saying to have like, look at that, look at Alba. And she was like, Sean, do you want me to continue? Do you want to go back? I say,

car I want to say, so we go in and we set up this microphone and we get out of there the next morning right, we come back,

we collect the microphone and this is what was on it. Like, this is the dawn chorus from that spot. Two bears, like, what are they saying?

I said it, I said it to one of the, I showed it to one of the guides and he said that it sounded like a kind of a, like, a sexual display. Like the male,

the male was showing off to the female. Not, there's a tasty cartman. in the mountains. No, no, thank God. Here, I hope that clock is right. I want to take some questions from the audience.

2000s R&B singer Usher has, there's Usher, ladies and gentlemen. Over yonder there. This is so the lights aren't in my eyes. It's not a strange. Hello, we should have. Oh, sir. Sunglasses.

Good night, Sean. I have a question for you. Are you there? So because of climate change, have you noticed a change in the sound of birds, of a pattern of sound? Behavior, of course, it might be noticeable, but on the sounds itself. I mean, I guess if you look at the soundscape as a whole, there have been some species which have turned up as a result of climate change

and which are continuing to turn up. So if you look at the dawn chorus as a collective, then yeah. So like Great Spotted Woodpecker, well, it's not climate driven, but there are some kind of other species that would be less tolerant of cold that have turned up and are now established as breeding birds and their song is a component of the soundscape now. So you've got bearded reedling, which is a gorgeous thing. You've got bearded of reeling.

Chetty's warbler has colonized. What else is there? There are other birds which are knocking on the door. I think it's only a matter of time before we get the likes of night heron, potentially breeding and blackwing stilt. Like if you look those up, they're real gorgeous.

So the water birds that you get in the Mediterranean. So yeah, for sure, like you can definitely detect audibly the changes as a result of this. But as you said earlier, right, like, so playback is frowned upon, right? Because it's unnatural. But the presence of these birds is also unnatural. Like, can this give other,

the indigenous birds panic attacks or something. Yeah, sometimes you see it. So I remember once, like there's one kind of element of ornithology burning called twitching. And it refers to the fact that people get so excited when they see a rare bird that they start to twitch. And so I used to do a little bit of that.

I didn't twitch like, but I used to do a bit of that when I was a teenager. Just the trill of seeing something that normally you'd have to go to Siberia, but here it is out the back. back garden and cork like, you know? So there was a bird called a Rye Neck, which is a type of

woodpecker actually that you get in continental Europe and it had turned up, it was looking a bit lost and the local jackdaws were freaking out. They had never seen it before and they deemed it to be a threat. Whereas if that was back in Poland where they're abundant

that interaction wouldn't have happened like you know, so they, like birds do pick up on these things. Albino birds get an awful time of it like, you know. Albinobino birds. Albinobirds. Does this raise the

carthal of all the crows? Well, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But like a mad thing can happen. Like, one of the maddest things I found out last year was, um, I started getting into snails for a while. I have a snail book I can give it to you if you want. The snails and the calcium in a bird's egg can come from the amount of snails that

it's eaten. Yeah, yeah. Snails disappear. Birds give birth the shit eggs. Here. Do you know, this? fun, right? Do you know song trush? Yeah, songtrush. One of its favorite food items are snails. And they don't, they tend not to eat the shell. But what they do do is, right, they have favoured stone anvils and they

whack the snail off the stone. And they, you know, I guess they're almost autistic in a way and that they have this pattern. They keep going to the same place, eating the same thing. And you can find a mountain of snail shells next to their favorite store. Yeah. And that's how you, you can walk through a landscape and say, oh, song trush lives here just by seeing that like you know. And you know the way snails would be hanging around a wall.

Yeah. They are absorbing calcium from stone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The calcium that's stuck in stones. Yeah, yeah. Ends up in a bird's egg. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Isn't that beautiful? It is. I mean, there's so many kind of intricate little things going on that we, uh, we, we don't acknowledge like, you know.

And you can use the presence of snails to know whether a soil is alkali or acid. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's why that that fucking snail, the one down Dune Beg that Trump wants to have a crack at. Vertigo snails. Very important. Yeah, yeah. It tells you about the time and it tells you about the heat for health of that wetland. They need really undisturbed, unpolluted wetlands. Like, yeah, they're really rare. I want to say thank you so much, Sean. If we don't watch ourselves, man, we talk all night. Yeah.

That was an incredible amazing chat. Thank you so much, Sean Ronane. Thanks for having it. Thank you for ye for being so lovely. and for giving us an amazing night. I've really, really enjoyed that. Dog, bless, this was the Blindby podcast. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. Yes, it was. I agree with you there, Blind Boy.

Welcome to the end of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed that. I'll be back next week. Possibly with something potato related. I can just feed it in my bones. In the meantime, rubber dog. genuflect to a swan Wink at a maggot

Dog bless Thank you.