The Blindboy Podcast - Speaking to an expert about birdsong

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Sean Ronanye is an Ornithologist from cork who is recording the sounds of every Irish bird Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Swown at the toe foot, my own Yogoni Onas, welcome to the Blind By podcast. If this is your first podcast, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. My voice is still gone this week. I got a bastard of a dose and I'm waiting for it to clear up. But fear not, for I have a wonderful guest. An incredibly interesting guest on this week's Pike guest. This man's name is Sean Ronan. He's an ornithologist. He studies birds, but

specifically he records the sounds of Irish birds. He's on a mission to record every single bird in Ireland and he's a fascinating person. Sean's unique passion for recording the sounds of Irish birds was the subject of a documentary this year, Birdsong. Absolutely fantastic documentary. If you're in Ireland you can see it on the RTE player and it's getting an international screening in November I believe. He also has a book coming out called Nature Boy on the 10th of October but I sat down I

had a chat with Sean in the Cork Opera House over the weekend. We had a fucking wonderful gig, an incredible gig, a lovely quiet Sunday night gig where I learned about bird song myself and all the audience. We learned about birds and different songs that they have and why they sing these songs and we listened to many examples of bird songs that Sean had recorded. So that's what I'm going to play for you this week while my voice recovers. While my voice recovers. I give it a few more days and it'll be grand, but I definitely want to rest my voice. I don't want to fatigue it. You see, if I record an

episode for you that's, let's say, an hour long, like last week, even though you're hearing an hour's worth of podcast, it's about 20 hours of recording or maybe even more because I edit my voice as I go along like a word processor. So speaking for 20 hours into a microphone when I'm supposed to be allowing my voice to recover, that's a bad idea and it's probably why my voices did shit this week. So I'm going to play a live podcast. So here you go. You marvelous tenus. My conversation with the ornithologist Sean Roney. Is quacking a type of bird song? Quacking? Like a duck.

It's a call. Like, I mean, the only birds that actually sing are passerines, small songbirds, the birds that are capable of perching, you know, the likes of Robin and Blackbird. Yeah. So perching and bird song are related. Yeah, and there are other... How do you define a park, Sean? I'm sorry. So birds that have a tour arrangement that allow them to grasp branches, you know. That's mad.

They have complex song. But there's other birds too that have vocalizations that resemble song but it isn't song, like waders. Yeah. What constitutes song and not song in the bird world? So technically it's just the passerines that are classified as songsters. The passerines. Yeah, so these are the perching birds,

the ones that I'm talking about. So the likes of robin and blackbird, meadow pipette, all of those. Yeah, so they'll have complex song, a little like our own song, really. I mean, I suppose our vocalizations are comparable in many ways, you know, between humans and birds. So like a call, for example, is just a very short vocalization, like you or I saying hello or how are you. And then, I I mean you can go into all sorts of depth with it but the song the song is much more complex depending on the species too. Do you ever think birds are trying to entertain each other like I

said to you before I brought you on I said like I know fuck all about bird song right and the little bit that I know is that if you said, if you put a gun to my head and said, what's Birdsong? Do you know what I'd say? It's mating calls, you know what I mean? Yeah. But I imagine it's more complex than that. Yeah, I mean, like, there's still so much to discover. Like, the more I studied and looked into birdsong, the more I realized how little I really knew, and how little people in general knew about birdsong. You know, it really is another world. And I've got a lot of examples to demonstrate that.

It's surprise after surprise. Like... Are you gasping to play as a bird song? Oh yeah. You look like a coyote spring. I've been working on this playlist for over a week. I can't wait to share it with you. Give us a crack, give us a crack or whatever you want.

What do you want? Will I just do a random one? Let me think about it. So, can it be a mystery sounder? Well, I tell you, I'll give you a backstory first. So all of these sounds that I've picked, they all have a unique, some rather mad backstory to it. And this, so like what I've been doing for the last four years now is to try to sound

record every bird in Ireland. And... When you say every bird in Ireland. And when you say every bird do you mean every kind of bird or literally every individual bird? Do you know, yeah I need to be careful, I need to be careful how I word that, you're the second person that's asked me that. Every regularly occurring bird species. So like that's, I mean I think there's well over 450 even 500 species documented in Ireland but a lot of those are vagrants like birds that are blown off course. I'm talking about the birds that are resident or the regular

migrants so which is roughly around 200 species. So for the last year of that we filmed it and it was down to the really difficult birds and they were difficult for many reasons, because they were really rare, because they were really far ranging, they were really silent, and sometimes all of those things combined, and this bird is all of those things combined.

It's golden eagle, so golden eagle. Wow, an Irish golden eagle. Yeah, they're massive, and it was actually the first one I'd seen. They're really big. They're really impressive. How many even of them are there in Ireland? So I don't know the exact number.

They're not doing as well as white-tailed eagle. White-tailed eagle, they're breeding it, and they're establishing new territories. At the golden eagle, they're just kind of stuck in Donegal. They're not doing as well. I think it's just, is it 12 pairs, or am I inventing that? Harry, are you there? All right, thanks. These Golden Eagles, are they unbroken, or have we reintroduced them at any point? So, they became extinct, and they were reintroduced them at any point? So they became extinct and they were reintroduced.

So did they count as actual Irish golden eagles? I guess it depends. After a number of generations, birders, like people who look at birds for fun, some people keep lists, you know, like really intensive lists, and I think the rule is after the third generation You can count them as an Irish. Where do our golden eagles come from though? Where were they sourced from? I think they're brought in from Norway. Go away out of it. Yeah But yeah, like so they're just clinging on now

like they're up in Donegal and like the bird the golden eagles in Donegal can suddenly get up and decide to go to Scotland for a feed, you know? And they're really silent too. So normally you'd only hear them when they're on the nest and we didn't have access to that and you wouldn't want to be recording them on the nest either because of the fact that they're so rare. So what happened was there was actually a dead deer

and one had been coming down to scavenge on this dead deer in this valley, this amazing valley in Donegal. You should have heard the sound in there. It was just, it was so iconic. It was echoing off. There was two, how would you describe it? It was like a gorge with two massive cliffs and there was a little waterfall coming out. It was the perfect setting for a golden eagle. Did you feel that there was a relationship between the sound of this bird and its environment

and how that sound works with the environment? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I... Like a golden eagle in a garage. It doesn't sound shit, but a golden, you know what I mean? It definitely belonged there, sonically and visually. I mean, yeah. Like if you can picture it now,

like it was in the uplands at Onigawala, it was just totally windswept and wild and rugged. But like, and yeah, so there's this deer carcass and the bird wasn't there. So what I did is I actually hid a microphone, not in the deer carcass, but very close to it. And I set up a camera next to it as well. This was under license by the way.

Don't go sticking microphones in dead deer But uh, yeah, so we left it there for I think it was six six weeks and because I had this like motion-activated camera The easiest way for me to figure out if I had it would be to check Did a golden eagle trigger this camera and if did then, I didn't have to spend however many weeks listening to six weeks of audio to find this Golden Eagle. Well, you visualize it, you look at the spectrogram,

you don't listen to six weeks of audio. So you can spot a Golden Eagle's call just by looking at it on the spectrogram. Yeah, so this process is very visual, especially when you're going through weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of nonstop data, because that microphone will turn on at sunrise automatically and it'll turn off at sunset and it was like that every day for six weeks. So when I took this back I had six weeks solid of the soundscape

from that spot. And you're looking, you're looking for what's strange here. Yeah, it's a, and I'll tell you some funny stories about that process later, but I actually had given up this and I was going to delete it, because when I checked the camera, all that were on it were other deer and ravens. And when I had a bit more time, I said, look, I'll go through it anyway and see what I get on it.

And I eventually got it, and it was such a surprise. So what's actually happening? And I know now why the golden eagle wasn't on the camera. A peregrine had taken up residence in this gully and it was nesting on the cliffs and peregrines are vicious and they'll see off birds much bigger than themselves. And like, you know, golden eagle is like a flying barn door. You know, it's enormous, like they're big birds.

And so essentially when the golden eagle came in, the peregrine attacked it. So what happened is the eagle never went down to the camera. So what I'm going to play now is a peregrine attacking a golden eagle. And it's really weird because the peregrine, you know, it's a small bird, but that's the aggressor and you can hear like this really husky aggressive chatter and then you hear this thing and it's like a meek yapping terrier that's the golden eagle. That's the golden eagle. Yeah.

That little bleat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that was like, that was one of the, in my mind, I had a number of birds that, to be honest with you, when I set myself the challenge to some record every bird in Ireland, I didn't think I was going to be able to do it. And that was one of the birds that was kind of blocking me and I was thinking like, what happens when I get to that? So to finally have captured that. Did you do it? Did you get all, do you think you got them all? So I've recorded 198 species and I have around, of the targets that I set myself I have three left and I'll do them next year. It's just been a bit mad this year. I'm assuming these three that are left are hard fuckers to catch.

There's a number of reasons, they all have their own reasons, right? Who are they? Who are they? You've got, right, you've got Grey Partridge and that's only in one Irish site. And it's actually easy and I just kind of left it aside knowing it's easy and with all the filming and whatever different things that were going on, I just didn't get a chance to get to those so they'll be done straight away next year. Then the other one is, oh, it's really difficult, it's a thing called red breasted merganser, it's a type of duck, it's a marine duck, so they spend their days out in the water.

An ocean duck. Yeah, it's a sawbill. I never knew there was ocean ducks. Yeah, yeah, so like if you look at the beak, it has like a serrated beak and it's for catching fish, you know, and eating fish, And so they spend, they're amazing, because they've got these big crests and this long saw, serrated beak. It looks like a saw, like.

But because they're sea ducks, like they spend the majority of the time too far away from shore, and they're also silent. And I actually was doing a survey recently in Cork Harbor, and sure two of them came up and surfaced next to me and started displaying in front of me and the microphone was in the van like so it's like they're taunting me but the last one the last one of the tree and I think I think I know subconsciously where I left this until the end it's a bird called great scua and

great scua are kleptoparasitic right so that means do means, do you know what they do? They're like pirates, right? They don't want to feed for themselves. They're seabirds. They're like a big aggressive brown gull. They wait for another bird to catch food and they'll chase it down and they'll just basically batter it until it drops the food. And if it has already swallowed the food, it will attack it until it regurgitates the food and then it will take that as well. But they nest on offshore islands and far flung peninsulas and they attack you as well. So when you get close to them they come at you and they dive bomb you. So I just need to...

You're gonna get attacked when you're trying to record them. Definitely. Wow. Yeah. I read that when you were a tiny baby you used to get very upset and then your dad would bring you into the woods and the sound of birds would calm you down. That's right. Yeah. So, Coskini, does anyone, is anyone from Cove? Oh cool. Coskini Nature Reserve, that's where Cove? Oh cool. Cuskine Nature Reserve, that's where my dad would bring me. He's there somewhere but I can't see him, he's hiding.

So we used to go out there because I was a nightmare and he'd bring me out in the pram and as soon as we'd go out there I would just change, I would completely calm down. And like in the beginning, I wasn't able to speak obviously, but he would imitate the sounds and I would just laugh at him and then eventually when I learned to speak I would I would name the sounds that he was imitating so like and even my earliest memory was I was very young like

it's weird I can think way back to like when I was like young, like, it's weird, I can think way back to like, when I was like two or something. I'm the same, yeah. Really? And I remember being in a beige Ford Escort going around the back of the island in Cove, and my father's father pointing out a magpie to me. And a magpie, it's a common bird, but look, there's so much beauty in all of these common species that we often overlook and I remember looking at it so vividly and looking up at the tree and like, so they're

black and white, but they're not black and white. When they move you see this purple and green iridescence shimmering. But do you know the thing about magpies too? So they're corvids, they're members of the crow family. And I guess crows in general are thought of as kind of raucous, not very nice sounding birds, right? Magpie actually have complex song and they have a number of different songs, my favorite of which, I think I have it actually, is called Whisper Song. Another misconception with birds is that only males sing and this is down to with birds is that only males sing. And this is down to, observe a bias, because it was mostly males in the workplace,

and it was when more women started working in ornithology, they realized that actually female birds sing as well. Magpie is an example of that. And so, whisper song, right? It's this beautiful thing. Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing a little bit, but still, when they're building the nest together, the male and the female whisper this song to one another as they're building their home, you know?

I think there's something quite beautiful about that. It's like two people playing for a mortgage. Yeah, but the magpie sounds a lot happier though. Yeah, Jordan the Celtic Tiger. Maybe, yeah. With her hands in her mouth. Well, I play it. Go on, go for it. The Magpie singing. The Magpie mortgage. All those like laser, laser like clicks. It's really difficult.

So something I heard about bird song once, right, Now I know fuck all, but something I heard once was that humans are forever trying to rationalize Bard's song. Our brains could never handle the randomness of Bard's song, so we'd always try to rationalize it, and this is why it can either put us on edge or calm us down. I don't know where the fuck I read that. Yeah, I think I heard something about that too. But it's like, what I want to ask you as an ornithologist, right, is, so I listen to this. My human brain is doing overtime here. Really? I can't just let it be.

Oh no. I can't just let that be. I have to go, oh, they sound really happy about the house they're building. What the fuck do I know? I'm not a fucking magpie. They're like that tall and they're like, what the fuck do I know? I'm not a fucking magpie. They're like that tall and they're like, what the fuck do I know? They were probably given the mortgage. But you know what I mean? As an ornithologist, do you have to stop yourself putting human

emotions, human intentions, I know what they're saying there, now I do. It depends on the day. It depends on my mood and what I'm at. Is it useful to your job or do you have to be more neutral and cold? It just depends really. Sometimes I don't go out to analyse, sometimes I go out just to kind of recharge. And these sounds to me are essential for that. If I don't listen to Birdsong, if I don't go out and immerse myself in, well not just Birdsong, the sounds of nature in general, my battery runs out, you know?

I literally need to go out. I have to do it. I want to do it as well. And when I do that, I probably, I'm not listening and analysing as I would in other moments. Then other times when I'm going out there, I am listening and I am trying to figure out what it's saying. And sometimes they are saying things to me. Sometimes they're giving me really surprisingly detailed messages.

The reason I brought up the, you know, talking about when you were a little kid in the pram, and even when you were a kid in the pram, the bird song is calm and you're down. Yeah. And you're autistic as well. Yeah. And for me, when I read that I went, okay this is stimming. This is called a self stimulating.

Like when you say there, I've to listen to Bard's song every day and it keeps me calm. I'm like, yeah I understand that. For me it's not fucking Bard's song but I believe you and understand completely. Some other people might go, what a mad cunt. You know what I mean? There might be a bit of that too.

That's the beauty of Norah. We are mad cunts but we're not harming anyone so fuck it. But the thing is, that's self stimulating. How did you find out you were autistic? How did you... When? Alba found out. Alba is my partner. I'm glad you clarified that because Alba is also like the goddess of England. Is she? Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, I saw that name written in Scotland a lot. Yeah, the old Celtic goddess of England. Is that what that is? Yeah, so you need to clarify in conversation in case they think the goddess of England told me I was autistic. Alba is Mediterranean, and I always laugh at a joke with her saying that she's really pale. And I tell her that's why she's called Alba,

because Alba is Latin for white. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. No, it was Alba. It was Alba. Picked it up, really. So it actually, we moved to Catalonia, Barcelona, in, when was it again?

2018, we were there for three years, and Alba went back to education, so she did a master's in education, and she actually did her dissertation in autism, and that she had a visit from what was called the Asperger's Society of Catalonia and she came home to me and she was like, Sean, I have something to tell you, I think you're autistic. I was like, what? What do you mean? And she was like, well, we had people in today and they

were listing all of these traits and it sounded like they were talking about you specifically. And I was like, alright. And she was like sounded like they were talking about you specifically. All right and I was like what were they talking about like and they're like oh well you know they have obsessions with really specific topics and they hate when their when their patterns are disrupted and don't like eye contact, steaming all of those different, there was so many, like really, but I thought, Jesus, yeah. So I did an online test and I passed with flying colours, right? And then, yeah. So I actually, I went back to the same society, the Asperger Society. It's a very rigorous testing system, it's expensive as well. But yeah, we did it.

I took a few weeks and yeah, I passed that with flying colors too. But everything started to make sense to me then. I mean, it's not like I caught autism, you know what I mean? It was something that I was obviously born with, you know, but understanding it and, you know, it was kind of a forgiving and understanding process. And, you know, of course there are some negatives, but, you know, everybody has some negatives with their own personality traits anyway. And for me, there were a lot of positives too. And understanding these positives and the mechanism behind it allowed me to really focus on my passion which is what I what I did really like you know so for me it was a celebratory moment to be honest with you and you

spoke there about you said that's the bird song for you right it helps you to recharge your battery yeah what drains your Oh, I think this might be a weird thing to say now. Human society. I'm the same. It's a terrible thing to say because it's something I'm trying to communicate to people. But the thing is it sounds like we dislike people. And I fucking love people. Yeah, I'm the same. And I love meeting people. But if I have to do too much people, then tomorrow I'll leave my house without forgetting my keys.

Yeah. Or leave my house without forgetting my keys. I'll fucking, I'll leave my house and I'll be wearing wrong shoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll lose the capacity to plan or anything. Yeah, yeah. I'll feel dizzy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I lose the capacity to plan or anything. Yeah, yeah. I feel dizzy.

Yeah, for me, like large crowds are a bit of a problem. It's a good thing I can see. I'm only joking. Being in the large crowd and speaking to a lot of people? So like, when it like, thinking back, like when it came to mixing and socializing, it was really difficult for me in groups because I didn't flow like other people. I didn't understand the mechanisms of

normal conversation and I would butt in at the wrong time or I'd say the wrong thing and I felt like I was kind of metaphorically stepping on people's toes constantly, you know, in a sense. And I also, I never had a thing for small talk. I never understood it, and I never really cared about it either. And, you know, that's the oil that lubricates any conversation, so not having that makes you kind of... It kind of makes you stand out as an oddball straight away. You know, which... When I first met you there backstage,

both of us averted eye contact. LAUGHTER And then, in my my head I was going when can we start talking about Bart? Was that similar to you as well? Yeah I didn't recognise you. Well I wasn't wearing a bag. Yeah you know I haven't knowingly met many people that are dried-nose. You seem to have the same type that I have. Yeah. Where did you get yours? But that's the weird thing about it is you could meet another autistic person and they're completely different. Like some people they can be okay with small talk but like

something like the lights in this room, that's what would drain their battery. I don't give a fuck about lights. Yeah. But what will drain my battery is persistent, a small talk, fucking crowds, the set, that overwhelming sense of the crowd. And then what I need to do is be by myself and just think about facts. Yeah. And once I do that, like even during the summer I used to,

I was, I made a choice to go on really long walks and just meditate and listening to the smell of plants. I heard that, yeah. And I said listening to the smell of plants. That's what I was trying to... I've recorded some plants here as well. Really, did you?

Yeah. Everything makes a noise, trust me. So you're, and do you mean there that the relationship that the leaf might have with the wind or the relationship that it has with the water? Yeah, I mean, I'm not talking in a really fancy sense, I'm talking about creaky trees. You might like the creak of a certain tree. Yeah, I went through a creaky tree project there last winter because you know as somebody who's a sound recordist what do you do in winter in Ireland? Record rain and creaky trees. If you want to record. What do you record when the birds are quiet or when they're gone? There's always something like in

the winter like you have like right now we're in a transitionary phase so you know the well-known migrants that we get for some of the likes of Swallows and Sand Marins and Chiff Chaffs So they're all sensibly fleeing what's coming and they're going south for the winter. But there are birds that are even harder and harsher coming from the north in Scandinavia that have been breeding there, or Iceland or Greenland, and they're coming south to winter in Ireland.

The likes of Hooper swans and red wing and, God, I've got so many sounds I'm just thinking of ways to lead into these sounds. Give us a Hooper Swan for the crack because we have to take an interval I think at five minutes so we'll crack into a bit of Hooper Swan before you get a pint. I want to ask you about the sound that a swan makes as it flies past me is that generated by its armpits or its beak? Oh did you say that somewhere before? Possibly.

Do you know what? So, you know, birds make vocalisations with all kinds of body parts, not just their beaks. So swans actually, I suppose you can't call them vocalisations, they make a lot of sounds with their wings. So they make these amazing, wearing, whistling sounds with the wind tips. Whistled one, yeah. But they'll also, as a sign of aggression, they'll slap the water as well. Yeah, I have some of them somewhere as well. You wouldn't have a carmrant, would you?

Ah, fuck it, I was going to put it on. Because I love carmrants, but I don't know what they sound like, because they're always far away. They sound like goats. Fuck off! They do. Do you have one handy? But I don't know what they sound like because they're always far away. They sound like goats fuck off they do Yeah, I must've got you have one handy. I don't but I have another I have another this is a perfect lead-in I have another bird that sounds like a goat right hang on a second a bit of context before I go into it I call this a lost soundscape and so this this was actually recorded when we were filming we went to Tory Island

We went to Tory Island for corn crake specifically because that's one of the bastions. They're doing really well there thanks to a great conservation program. Yeah that's a success story you know. They were fucked for a while weren't they? They were yeah. My grandfather is from Limerick actually. Is he? Yeah he's from... You make that sound like he was personally responsible for killing corn crakes. No it's just reminded me of something. So, you know Kilmalloch? I do know Kilmalloch, yeah.

Glen O'Sheen. Glen O'Sheen. Yeah. I tell you an interesting thing about fucking Kilmalloch, man. No, no, no, but you'd be familiar with the biodiversity map that you can get online. Yeah. So I was, so it's this wonderful resource. I think it's called biodiversity.ie right?

Yeah, you can type into this any fucking animal you can think of any animal you can think of you type it into the Biodiversity map and it'll show you everywhere that it was found and I typed in for the crack wolves, right? And it shows you on the map every single time wolves were recorded in Ireland But the mad thing about wolves is like wolves went extinct around the 1600s. Like Cramwell sent fucking wolf hunters here to kill all the wolves. Yeah. So anytime you see wolf sightings on this, it's always associated with a terrible tragedy. Ah, okay.

And the only wolf sighting in Limerick is in Kilmalloch in 1597 and it's after a terrible massacre that occurred in Kilmalloch and all it says is wolves showed up to feed on corpses. Jeez. That's my only Kilmalloch fact. Sometimes. Which also relates with biodiversity. That's my autism lads. You know what? I can't get a job out of it. I can't be an ornithologist. I don't know what you call that. We're going off. I can't get a job out of it. I can't be an ornithologist. I don't know what you call that. We're going off on fierce tangents here, but I have another, I have a wolf fact for you.

Well, actually it's not a fact. It's more. Two autistic men on stage, we're going off on fierce. We're not, are we? It's more of an observation. Sometimes, right, and maybe this is a weird thing, maybe it's not though. Sometimes when I'm in really old woodlands

and I see an ancient oak, you know, that's several hundred years old I look at it and I think a wolf has probably peed on that tree You're fucking right though. Isn't that a weird, it's like a weird form of tongue. I love that about trees though. It's one of the things that breaks my fucking heart about Ireland Like if you even think of, so the name Derry Derry Dera means an old oak wood and then Mayo

means Forest of you. There's then Mayo means forest of yew. There's no fucking yew trees up in Mayo. Like, it was, there were so many yew trees in Mayo that they named it after yew trees and now they're all gone. And yew trees are class because they can live to be about a thousand years old. And the only place that you find yew trees now, cause they were all cut down,

you'll find them in graveyards. And the reason that, like if you go to a real fucking old church, because they don't know that the, we know that Irish pagans worshipped holy wells, but they reckon they also worshipped yew trees as well, particularly really, really old yew trees. But yew trees were, when Christianity came they used to build graves, graveyards around the yew tree because the yew berry was poisonous and foxes wouldn't come over and wolves wouldn't dig up the graves. So that's why we've got our old yew trees. Yeah, I forget what we were talking about originally. My grandfather's from Kilmalloc. Yeah. Right? And he, getting back to corn crake originally, he, like that would have been the 1940s in rural Limerick and he remembers hearing the corn crake because corn crake, well you can't

call it singing. Corn crakes, it's like they scream almost. It sounds like, imagine you rub your finger down a comb, right? That kind of crexing sound and that's where the Latin name comes from, crex, crex. And so there was actually an old curse. I'm not good with the Irish language, but there was an old curse which translates to, may you have the sleep of the corn crake.

Meaning, you know, if someone has annoyed someone, you're wishing that they don't get any sleep because of the corn crake. And he used to tell me he used to curse them growing up. So like they were, I'm just trying to say, like how widespread they were. It's not a terrible thing. Because, because like, as I understand it, corn crakes were the first, when I was a kid in school, they were one of the first animals I learned about that

were disappearing in Ireland. Yeah. It was combine harvesters that fucked them up. Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those things. Have you ever read the writing of a, he's an Irish writer called Liam O'Flaherty, no? No. So Liam O'Flaherty was a short story writer from the Aran Islands and he would have written his short stories around 1910, okay? Yeah. And a lot of his short stories are about nature. And he'll write about, he'll have a short story called The Cormorant and it's literally the day and the life of a cormorant. These short stories, they're almost David Attenborough

but they're fiction. Oh, class. But when Liam O'Flaherty, and it's something that makes me really sad, when he's writing a short story set in 1910 about a goat or a cormorant and he describes the wildlife. He said there was a pond and the pond was was literally silver with the amount of fish in it. I

feel like he's lying. He's not lying. That's how many animals existed. I live in a poverty of biodiversity. He did not. He lived in a land a hundred years ago where there were lots of wild animals and now I think he's lying when I read his fiction. Just like your granddad, they're saying, oh, I couldn't sleep because of corncreeks. I'm like, fuck off. There's no corncreeks in Kilmalloc. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you've heard of shifting baseline syndrome, have you?

You heard of that? So it's like, imagine, imagine like someone is born and when they're born for some reason, they're born into a green sky. That's normal to them. That's what they know. This is how it's always been. So when you're born and corncreek only exists on the offshore islands, that's where they exist. That's normal to you. So, you know, that's how things kind of slip away through generations. And that's why it's important to document these things and talk about them and share their stories and share their voices, which is kind of part of what I

did. If I spoke to a ten-year-old now and said to him when I was your age we used to drive out into the countryside and when we'd come home to Limerick there'd be flies all over the front of the car there'd be so many flies on the car's lights that my dad would have to wipe them off. That 10-year-old would say, fuck you. Do you know what I mean though? Like, watch it, you're lying. You're lying to me. But it's true, I remember that. Yeah, and that's why these stories as well, these stories of hope and these stories of, you know,

bringing things back are really important and we need more of them. And this was a really beautiful moment for me. For personal reasons too, like, cause I thought of Grandaday when I was sitting there listening to these corn crates, I was laughing at him cursing the corn crates. But it was on Tory Island and we had the film crew, the whole lot were there.

And I think they weren't used to me yet and the madness. And so they said, let's go in and get some dinner. And I wolfed down the dinner. They went to bed and I ran up to record the corn crates at 11 o'clock at night. And I ended up falling asleep in the grass. And I woke up at one o'clock in the morning and I was locked out of the hotel.

But I got an amazing sound recording though, which is what I'm going to play to you. So this sound recording, you've got three characters in here. And these are all characters that were affected by two different things in Ireland. So the corn crake, because it nests on the ground, it would have nested in the old hay meadows. They were really diverse meadows that were cut by hand at the end of the season, which allowed them to see out their breeding period and raise the chicks. But because now we've moved to a silage-based system where that can't happen, several cuts

need to be taken. They don't get the chance to raise their young, and if they try to, they'll be caught up. But out here, those methods are not done and they're doing really well. But there's another species, Skylark. Skylark is, maybe you know it, it's a bird that flies up high up in a tower and it sings its song from a height. Because normally where they breed are open areas, so they don't have the advantage of perching up on top of a tree to spread their song far and wide. So they fly up and they just hover and do it there like a kestrel. So you'll hear that. They're ground nesters too. And then the other character, this goes back, way back in all the tangents. This is the bird that sounds like a goat.

So we'll get there eventually. Carmanent. No, it's not a carmanent. It's another goat-like bird. Okay. So, and actually, what is it? It'sine? Something. So the Irish names again, so this idea of it sounding like a goat wasn't lost in our ancestors either. So if you look at the Irish names for snipe, that's what it is, they all translate to different variations of goat, like little goat, little kid, things like that. And you know the term sniper is

someone who was so good at a gun that they could kill a snipe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because they zigzag. They're so fast. And so what you'll hear, you'll hear the cracks in concrete, you'll hear the beautiful melodic song of a skylark from a height.

And then you'll hear what sounds literally like a flying goat. I'll never forget the first time I heard it in Cove. Like I went, I was doing my junior start and I cycled out to a place called JJ's Bog at night time and I heard like, I was thinking what the fuck is going on? Why are there goats flying around my head? And I only discovered afterwards there was snipe and they're not vocalizing. So what they're doing is they're flying up a height and there are two outer tail feathers. They plummet so fast that these vibrate and they sound goat-like.

So this is what I called a lost soundscape but it's a soundscape that we could bring back and I hope that we can. So here we go. It's no wonder we had all these, you know, strange mythology based around bird sounds. Like, think of the Banshee as well. Like the Banshee. Have you ever heard of Barn Owl? Is that the Banshee? It's got to be. It's either a Barn Owl or a fox. They both sound... I've heard a fox with a cough as a good contender for a Banshee. Already? Yeah. I've got a coughing badger here for you. I was just thinking there, imagine a tourist from a different country just walked in right now and there's 800 people here watching a man with his bag in his head and yourself listening to bird song.

800 people showed up for this. Here listen, they need to go for a piss man. I'm getting in trouble. You go for an interval have a little pint and a pace right we'll be back out in about 10 minutes. I hope that you're enjoying that chat that I'm having there with the wonderful Sean Ronain, our magnificent chat about bird song. Let's have a little ocarina pause.

I'm in my home studio so I have my ceramic otter. I have a little ceramic ot little ocarina pause. I'm in my home studio, so I have my ceramic otter. I have a little ceramic otter ocarina. And I blow into his tail and put my finger on his ceramic rectum. And then this generates a noise and then you're gonna hear an advertisement for something. Ocarina noises This is an ad from BetterHelp. As kids we were always learning and growing, but at some point as adults we tend to lose

that sense of curiosity and excitement. Therapy can help you continue that journey, because your back to school era can come at any age, and BetterHelp makes it easy to get started with affordable online therapy you can do from anywhere. Rediscover possibility with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.HELP.com That was me whistling into a ceramic otter's rectum in the service of capitalism. I haven't vaped in two fucking weeks, which is good, which is good. Whenever you're under the weather, I just wasn't craving a vape because I was under the weather and now I'm two weeks with no vape and I think I'm just gonna see

I'm just gonna try and quit vaping why not you know it's definitely doing bad things to my body but I have temporarily replaced the vape with a menthol nose inhaler. So I'm huffing menthol through a nose inhaler. It's magnificent. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, whatever the fuck, please consider paying me for this podcast if you consume it because this is my full time job, this is how I pay all my bills, how I rent out my office, all of that crack. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's

it. If you can't afford it, don't worry about it, you can listen for free. Cause the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast, and I get to earn a living. Patreon.com forward slash the Blind By podcast. This podcast is only possible with patrons. Upcoming gigs. Fuckin... Mayo, is this? Mayo, there's about four tickets left in Mayo, and the 11th of... no! I can't read fucking dates. The second of the 11th? What's that? November? Second of November? I mean Mayo, there's like four tickets left. Then... and the 19th of November, I'm in Vicar Street.

Come along to that. Come along to that on the 19th of November. My Vicar Street gigs, they're the best crack in the whole world. I do a few of them every year. People even travel internationally for the Vicar Street gigs, but very intimate, quiet, lovely live podcast in Dublin. So that's the 19th of November. Then February 25th, Belfast Waterfront Theatre, come along to that. And fucking Australia and New Zealand tour, April. Right, there's fuck all tickets left for that most of

it is sold out go to my Instagram blind by a ball club on Instagram you'll see those gigs there now back to my chat with the wonderful ornithologist Sean Ronan and and let's hear some more bird sounds and some mammal sounds hello you glorious console hope you had a wonderful pint in a piss and you were dying to play me some mystery sounds yeah go for a mystery sound then right okay what the guess yeah I will give you a clue first go on it's an Irish mammal It's not a human. Oh, that's not a bird. No, no, no, so this is this is what I call sonic boycatch

So this is the accidental things that you find exactly so when I have recorders out for long periods of time sometimes I get these Mystery sounds screaming into the microphones and I have to figure out what they are But actually is that a cow drying itself? No, no. It's a wild mammal. I was actually there for this one, come to think. What is it? It's a hedgehog. Fuck! Yeah.

Doing what? It's... you know what? I was wandering around in the dark the other night, trying to find a place to put my microphone, but I didn't want to draw attention to myself so I had no light on and I heard this noise next to me I thought what the fuck is that and I turned on my torch and there's a hedgehog all curled up like puffing at me it's like a it was warning me to back off basically yeah. I'll tell you an interesting fact about hedgehogs and no it it's a lovely, their name in Irish is gráineogh, which means ugly little thing, but the thing is hedgehogs, they're not indigenous

to Ireland. They did very well over here. They were brought here by the Normans. The Normans wanted to eat them. But when the Normans came here in the 1100s like to the Irish it was like what are these spiky little fucking pricks that those Brits are bringing here so that because I don't think hedgehogs are ugly I don't believe people who call I think hedgehogs are beautiful yeah but I think they gave him this name because they were pissed off with who brought them they're like walking chestnuts badgers eat them actually go away yeah how do they do that so they turn them upside down and they they basically open them up like yeah fair enough. Yeah Do you want another another mystery yeah, a book meeting I've ever seen in my life.

That's someone at the back of... They're agreeing with something but they're bullshitting. It's like there's a speaker and the speaker is talking about something real intellectual and there's a cunt at the back and they're performatively agreeing and it's like, you fucking cunt, you don't know what he's talking about, you're trying to show everyone that you're, is that what that is? No, no, it's another Irish mammal that's not a human. So this was this was accidental, actually. It's from that Golden Eagle day out. Can you give us that again?

Yeah. What a cunt. hmm hmm hmm What a cunt! I've got strong feelings towards that. What the fuck is that gun? It's a red deer. A red deer. So there was a... No that's very... Yeah, yeah actually. Then they hang around on us and oot around us.

There was a... There was a there was a mother because there's a bang on Michael D of that it's a mother and calf hang on here's a better one see if you get this one this comes in two parts I'll give you a clue first and then a second that's part one that's part one. That's part one, right? Is that an animal's rectum?

It is. It is. Not a human again, even though it sounds quite human-like. It sounds about two feet away from the microphone. It was. It was. Luckily, I wasn't there. The microphone took the brunt of it. But I'll give'll give you the second clue right the same animal, but this sound is coming from the other end of it I'm having a fucking clue. What the fuck is that? So, right, last year I discovered two things about grey seals. They fart a lot and they scream a lot. That's a very bad thing to scream about. All they do is fart and scream. But it's funny because if you look at old mythology, they were known as sirens. They used to attract people onto the rocks

I don't know where that came from and there's the Selkies as well you ever hear about the Selkies it is that I think so there's there's Selkies are um see see that you'd find this mythology around the northwest coast of Ireland and also around Scotland the The Selkie was a seal that turned into a beautiful woman, right? But I reckon it was just a man who fucked a seal. No, seriously, because if you think of it, it's just a man going like, oh yeah, I was alone on the rocks and I heard these seals and when I went to investigate the sound of the seals, it was actually a really beautiful woman

And we made love on the rocks. It's like you fucked a seal brother You fucked a seal you're worried that someone caught you and now you're coming up with this story That's the only lovely lovely popping yap about them. I hear the otters down by the river in Limerick. I do, yeah. I used to hear them here at night, as well in the Lee. You often do.

This is actually another otter. So these are two otters that I knew. I used to know them quite well, actually. And no, I'm being serious. So I used to have these microphones, I still do, actually, that I would put out in prominent migration locations. And they would automatically turn on at sunset

and turn off at sunrise. And they would monitor calls of birds as they migrate through the night, every night of the year. So that's been going on for four years. So at this one site, it was a coastal site. And this otter, I think it was messing with me because it would scream into the microphones every single night. And every six weeks when I would collect the batteries and the memory card the otter would be there and it would be waiting for me. And we would play this game of peek-a-boo like this and

eventually I trusted it and it trusted me and we used to, it used to come really close but I remember one morning it was about 6am and he was there having a fight with his brother, and they were actually fighting over a crab, and I knew when I took the memory card home that I'd have this recording of two otters fighting over a crab, and this is it. They're very vocal, they're brilliant. Where were they there? I'm hearing the sound of stone.

So they're in Mizenhead, they're in the estuary there. You know what's the name of the beach there? Barley Cove. You know Barley Cove? I don't. Yeah, so there's otters in there all the time and this was a family, a boister you know Barely Cove? Just there. I don't. Yeah. So there's otters in there all the time, and this was a family, a boyster's family that used to hang out in there.

Yeah, they're still there, I'd say. What's the point of recording all the bird songs? As an ornithologist, what's the purpose? Yeah. So can I go back a little bit? Go on. So this kinda, I mean, I was always very much interested in Bird Sound, but the project kinda came about

of its own accord, and it started in a very strange way. So when I first met Alba, I met Alba in the Old Oak, actually. We used to work in the Old Oak together, and we were dating for about a year and she said, Sean, you need to know that I don't like the Irish weather and one day I'm going to go back to Catalonia and what are you going to do? Are you going to come with me?

And I said, of course I will. So we did and we moved to Barcelona and we were there for three years. And COVID came along when we were there and the restrictions over there were really intense. So you couldn't leave the apartment at all. I think, was it a one kilometer, two kilometer area you had here? We had zero meters, unless you had to go to the shop or a doctor.

And if you were stopped on the street, you had to prove that you were out for a legitimate a legitimate reason and so people were cracking up including me because I couldn't recharge myself and get out to nature so I found a way to bring nature to me and so what I did is I went into the kitchen I took a measuring jug from the cupboard I took a small little sound recorder I put it into the measuring jug put cling film on the top and wrapped an elastic band on it. I pressed record at night time. I went out to my tiny little boxed in balcony, just looking up at skyscrapers and concrete, and

I put it on the lip of my balcony. And the next morning I took the recorder in and I wanted to know were birds migrating over my head when I was asleep because there in Barcelona you're on the East Coast, you're in mainland Europe and you're on a major migratory highway or flyway if you will and it turns out that all kinds of birds were flying right over the heart of the city centre in Barcelona. And it just totally changed my perspective of the world around me. And it made me realise that there was so much more going on that we don't even know about.

So that's how it started. Picture Barcelona, one of the biggest cities in Europe. It's a concrete jungle essentially. And it's not somewhere that you'd expect to see an eclectic range of birds. It's not like a really biodiverse nature reserve, for example. But in actual fact, I was wrong, because every night there were, you know, 20, 30 species migrating right overhead,

sometimes thousands upon thousands of calls going over as I slept. So here are some examples of that. So here's a flock of flamingos passing over the city center, over the tops of the skyscrapers of that. So here's a flock of flamingos passing over the city centre, over the tops of the skyscrapers of Barcelona at, I think it was half past two in the morning on migration. They're heading down for the salt marshes of Africa having bread in Europe. And to hear them in this context, in the longer recording, I don't know if it's in this one, you can hear bats. When do you hear bats with flamingos? And when do you hear flamingos with sirens and barking dogs?

Such a weird context. So here they are flying over what is clearly an urban soundscape. So, like Sean, you wake up the next morning, you listen to that, right? How do you know it's flamingos? So the good thing is, is like I was obsessed with getting to know the birds there when I moved over because I needed to update my knowledge to get back into ornithology work. So a lot of the sounds that they make will be very similar to the sounds that they give by day anyway and I would have encountered a lot of flamingos by day. So you can

verify the visual with the sound as well you know. So you're kind of copying it yourself? Yeah and then once you see it once you'll remember it, you'll remember that like the shapes are like fingerprints they're very distinctive you know. But what do you do when you get a recording, especially when you're in Barcelona, and it's like, I don't know what the fuck that is? What do you do in that situation? Yeah, so it happened a lot because obviously you're not there. You haven't seen the bird and you haven't heard the bird either. So you need to start playing detective really and thinking, what family does it remind me of?

You know, does it sound like a type of a gull, does it sound like a wader? And you can narrow it down by there. And then there's a website called Xenocanto and it's like an on, it's like the YouTube of bird calls. So you can go on there and you can think, right, maybe it's this, let's check this out and you'll pull up, I don't know, another species, a heron or something, and you can see it, okay, it doesn't look like that, it doesn't sound like that.

And sometimes it can take a while, but you'll always get, worst case scenario, you just listen to every bird species in Catalonia, and you'll get it that way, you know? You'll always get it with persistence. Do you ever see, something that's jumping out for me, right, is, so you're a human, right, and you're trying to understand bird song, this form of communication between another animal.

You're looking at a system of communication, you don't know what the rules are, you don't understand it, and you're trying to find a way in. And as autistic people, that's what we have difficulty with. As autistic people, what we struggle with is the unwritten rules of human communication as in body language, when you get into a group of people. You know, everything I know about how to interact with humans, even saying that, even like that sounds insane, humans, but that's how I feel.

I've had to learn it all and then I find out that for other people it's completely instinctual. Yeah. But I've had to watch and learn or that's how people enter a room, that's how people, or that's when you shake someone's hand, or that's what shaking a hand means. I've had to watch, observe, learn and know when to deploy that in social situations, but that's exhausting. So I'm like, I'd rather stay on my own and look at Wikipedia. Yeah, it's like, isn't it? It's much more of a mechanical process rather than an organic process.

It's up here rather than here. You're thinking, like, it reminds me of something like when I was doing my driving test, I studied Google Maps and I memorized every road and every lane and that's how I passed it. Until I did that I couldn't pass it, you know. So it's just a different way of approaching things isn't it? It's very, has to be broken down and understood before it flows, at least for me anyway. But do you ever see any parallels between looking at birds, listening to birds and looking at birds and their system

of communication and then maybe when you're 13, 14 trying to figure that one out with your own friends group. I find bird vocalisations and socialisation easier to understand than human to be honest with you. I think that there's less hassle and less complexities, at least for me. I mean there's complexities in the beautiful details that you can take from it. Can I give you an example? Go on, yeah.

So this is one of my favorite subtopics of bird sound, and it's vocal mimicry. And so this is when birds imitate the sounds of other birds or even other mammals or mechanical sounds even. So when I first really started to delve into that, when we moved home we went to Malo and I was recording by night birds passing over but there was a starling that was nesting in our roof in the eve of our roof. Starlings are lifelong learners, many birds aren't.

They have a critical learning window of a few months in the early stages and after that their song is set for life. But because starlings learn for life and they're mimics, I wanted to know would this starling that I know so well update its song and will I witness those changes and will they be related to natural history events that I also so well, update its song, and will I witness those changes, and will they be related to natural history events that I also witness? And it turns out that it did. So I recorded every night and every morning, and I was matching things up.

It turns out, first of all, it was listening at night, because it was learning nocturnal sounds. So when the two foxes started going at it in the spring, they started screaming and doing whatever they were doing. A week or two later, the starling started to scream like a fox. And then, I think it was late March, when Golden Plover and Snipe waders started to migrate back north to Scandinavia for the summer season. They're very vocal when they're migrating.

Again, a week or two later, this starling soaked up that mimicry and started to incorporate the calls of those birds in its song, right? And then one day, this starling started to speak in a Cork accent. Fuck! No, I'm serious. So, and I, at first when I heard it, I thought, oh, fuck it, I'm speaking over the recording. I messed it up. But then when the verse repeats later on, there's my voice again in the same place. And I realized that it's the starling mimicking me.

And what had happened was, you know, it was April now, so I was leaving the dog out a lot more and I was calling him back in. And of course I was standing under the eve where the starling was poking out and I was saying to Toby in and of course I was standing under the eve where the starling was was poking out and I was Saying to Toby come here come here and eventually the starling started to say come here back, you know So that's what kind of got me into vocal mimicry But look and let me get to what is the probably the craziest example of that, you know, Ballian and woods in Middleton

So I was walking there air was last summer now I think we'd often go in there and Toby the dog he was trotting ahead of us on the track. And I heard another dog barking. So I said, look, I put him on the lead there as we're passing in case they don't get on or whatever. And when I'm kneeling down to put the lead on him, I realize that the barking, which sounds like a Labrador, is coming from the top of an oak tree above us. And I stopped and I thought, what's going on here? And Toby looked up as well. And here we hear this Labrador barking from the top of the tree and out jumps a Jay. So a Jay is another member of the Carved

family. It's a species of crow. And this Jay comes down and aggressively looks at Toby, starts jumping up and down and barking like a Labrador at Toby. And I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. And I wasn't recording at the time, but I had my iPhone and I took a video and I extracted the sound afterwards. So I'll play that sound for you now and then I'll explain. And like this sound, I'd often play it to schools when I visit and the kids always say,

you're lying, that's Toby. They don't believe me, it's so realistic is a this is a J barking at my dog I went home to write it up because I thought that this is surely new to science and it's not. So it's a thing called context-dependent vocal mimicry. So this J is reacting in the moment and there's two theories behind it. One is that the J sees the predator, so in this case it's a dog, knows what sound it makes and it repeats the sound of that predator to try and trick it and scare it away, you know, probably to protect the young. The other theory is that it recognizes the threat is on the ground

and because the other Jays know the sound of this predator, it's telling them get up off the ground, there's a dog coming. And they also mimic buzzards, so the theory would be that if they mimic a buzzard they're, keep your heads down under the canopy so the buzzard doesn't pick you off. And when I went to research it, I found other examples. So this example now, this guy, he leaves his cat out on a balcony, and there's a tree next to the balcony. And in the tree, there's a Jay preening the balcony and in the tree there's a jay preening and chilling and the jay is startled when the cat comes out and the jay turns and this is the recording, the jay starts to meow at the cat.

Another example of the same is there's a horse, it's a paddock, and they let the horses out to graze. The horses come storming out, and again there's a copse at the end with Js in it. This one was in Poland. And the recordist says the horses gave the J a fright, and it kind of comes out onto a branch, looks at the horse, and starts naeing at it. So this is the J naeing at the horse. So I realize I've gone off on a tangent again you asked me why did I start to sound record the Birds of Ireland? I question about that the context specific mimicry. Yeah and

Starlings right so there's this street in limerick called the bird shit district well, it's it's a bird for Roe, but we call it the bird shit district because It's for all the starlings come and they do such phenomenal amounts of shit that people walk down this road like this, like for real. It's like profound. It's not like dog shit. It's not like human shit. It's just tons of starling shit and it's very, very unpleasant.

But every night I watch the starlings, right? And they do this dance in the sky. But what I read was that the starlings are trying to create the shape of a larger bird to frighten off predators. So they're predators, buzzards or whatever. If they see this giant bird in the sky, they'll fuck off. And then when the coast is clear, the starlings go down

and they have their marmoration, their conversation. Yeah. It's half 10 now, right? So, oh, you have to plug something, go on. I have to plug something, sorry. And I think it probably relates more to people who will be listening to this afterwards. But, so the film, so for anyone who hasn't seen the film,

it's called Birdsong, and it followed us for the last year and a half, it was on RT. If you haven't seen it, you can still get it on RT player. It's brilliant, by the way. Oh, thanks. But for the people, I guess, who aren't here in the room, but who will be listening to this online at a later point, we'll be having an international online screening.

So this will be in November. And if you go to the website birdsongfilm.com all of the details will be there and you can sign up for it. So we're going to have a Q&A with myself, with Alba, with all of the production team and it's going to be open to essentially every country. Thank you so much Sean Ronain. Thank you so much Sean Ronain for that wonderful chat. Sean's got a book coming out called Nature Boy on the 10th of October as well. I'd like to thank you the listener. You know I want to put out a podcast each week. I'm seven years doing this.

I do not want to miss putting out a podcast I didn't think I was gonna have a sore throat Two weeks in a row, but that's what happens when you fatigue your voice and you don't rest it So hopefully this week my voice will get the rest that it needs and I'll be back on form next week Thank you so much to all of you for the patience. It's not like I'm gonna burst into tears, but getting a sore throat, that's the number one occupational hazard. That's...if I get a fucking sore throat, that's my voice and I can't talk. It hasn't happened.

Last time this happened was 2019, so that's not too bad. Thank you everybody for the patience. Alright, dog bliss. Roboswan. Jenny Flick to a mouse. I'll catch you next week. everybody for the patience. Alright, dog bless, rubber swan, join your fleck to a mouse. I'll catch you next week. This is an ad from BetterHelp. As kids, we were always learning and growing.

But at some point, as adults, we tend to lose that sense of curiosity and excitement. Therapy can help you continue that journey because your back-to-school era can come at any age. And BetterHelp makes it easy to get started with affordable online therapy you can do from anywhere. Rediscover possibility with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelpH-E-L-P.com today to get 10% off your first month. you... Thank you.