Bird whisperer of Cork features on TV documentary
Cobh ornithologist Seán Ronayne’s ambitious mission is at once inspiring and cautionary, a journey that reveals the beauty and importance of our native wildlife, and of the magic of sound.
We will get to see how Seán gets on in the documentary Birdsong which is shown on RTÉ1 tomorrow (Sunday May 26) at 6.30pm.
The 35-year-old has an acute ear and a passion for the natural world.
After compiling a list of 195 ‘regularly occurring’ bird species in this country, Seán sets out to record each one.
But what begins as a recreational personal project transforms into an urgent environmental mission.
Seán’s recordings – many the first of their kind – reveal the stark realities of our biodiversity and climate crises, and provide a poetic record of a vanishing, vital part of our world.
From the busy seabird colony of Skellig Michael in Kerry, to a native woodland free from road noise in the Burren, to the corncrake stronghold of Tory Island, it is a journey that celebrates one man’s passion.
Seán also views a murmuration of 100,000 starlings in the Midlands, and a solitary nest on a windswept Donegal mountain, belonging to a species on the cusp of extinction.
His mission illuminates the language of birds – their use of calls, alarms, songs, and their incredible moments of mimicry – and it also sheds light on why Ireland’s ecological health is considered the worst in Europe, despite its reputation as the Emerald Isle.
With the support of his girlfriend Alba, he learns to appreciate his singular focus and hypersensitivity to sound, and to overcome his social anxieties so he can share his findings with the world.
Seán, known as ‘the bird whisperer’, has appeared on The Tommy Tiernan Show, where he told the host he has almost 10,000 recordings of his feathered friends.
Birdsong had its premiere at the Dublin International Film Festival in February.
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