By Natasha Ariff

“No one will protect what they don't care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced.” David Attenborough

Birdsong, directed by Kathleen Harris, is an extraordinary documentary which follows ornithologist Seán Ronayne on his mission to record the call of every bird species—around 200—in Ireland. Influenced by Magnus Robb, an enthusiastic wildlife sound recordist and composer, Seán began recording nocturnal bird calls back in 2020 during Covid-19, when he was living in Barcelona. Confined to an apartment and a little bored, he put out a cheap handheld recorder on the balcony of his apartment at night. To his surprise, he captured the calls of several out-of-context bird species, such as flamingos, little bitterns, and black-crowned night herons, as they migrated south to Africa during the night. From that point onwards, he was hooked. Returning to Ireland a year later, Seán brought this new passion with him, setting up Irish Wildlife Sounds [1]—and so his journey to record every species in Ireland commenced.

““our ancestors would have ‘listened to bird sounds to interpret the world around them’””

The documentary begins with Seán actively listening to bird calls and setting up his parabolic reflector in a woodland. He immediately draws us into this world, a place of ‘magic and wonder’. Seán, it appears, is a natural storyteller. Harris uses this to good effect as we follow him recording one bird after another in diverse habitats all over Ireland—from Tory Island in County Donegal to the Skellig Islands in County Kerry. He tells us in his soft Cork accent that our ancestors would have ‘listened to bird sounds to interpret the world around them’. Every bird ‘call is like a fingerprint’ - it is unique to each bird - and is ‘used to attract mates or proclaim territory’. We are even told that swifts will fly all the way to France to fill their throats with insects forming a ‘big bolus’ [2] if the weather is bad in Ireland.

““63% of our birds are at risk of extinction””

Neither does he shy away from outlining some of the problems these birds are facing: “currently 63% of our birds are at risk of extinction, so they’re either red or amber listed” [3]. He lists the problems: the agricultural practices which lead to ‘a jigsaw of intensive cow fields’ divided by ‘slashed and trashed’ hedgerows, the bogs which are ‘being drained and ruined’ and ‘the uplands (which) are being planted with conifers’—an ‘industrial crop’ with ‘very poor species’ diversity. Sadly, the film crew even catches on camera the tragic sound of extinction as Seán records the only confirmed pair of ring ouzel in the country, on the remote scree of Glenveagh National Park. Seán tells us the ring ouzel is a bird that once would have been seen in almost every county but mostly due to overgrazing has been reduced to one solitary pair.

However, rather than lamenting these potential losses, Seán is reaching out to people through his talks [4]. By sharing the beauty and encouraging us to listen to the natural sounds all around us, Seán hopes we will learn to appreciate it thereby making it ‘less likely we will let it disappear’. It turns out that Seán’s real mission is to get us to fall in love with the natural world through birdsong.

““Seán’s real mission is to get us to fall in love with the natural world through birdsong””

Early in the documentary, Seán admits he prefers ‘hanging out with nature’ rather than socialising with people. When he was younger, boys in his class would tease him and call him ‘nature boy’. It emerges through the course of the film that Seán has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It was first brought to his attention by his partner Alba Novell Capdevila who realised that he had all the characteristics of ASD. Like many people with ASD, Seán has an increased sensitivity to certain sounds. According to Alba, he often complained about anthropogenic noises or anthropophony [5] such as busy roads, noisy neighbours, or planes flying overhead.

Seán is not alone in this sensitivity to certain human-generated noises. According to a recent study [6], “[a]nthropogenic noise is a major pollutant in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems” and our increasingly noisy world is ‘leading to both acute and chronic disturbance of a wide variety of animals.’ For birds, continuous exposure to noise pollution can result in a decline of species richness with recent studies showing that some ‘city birds sing higher-frequency songs’ than those in non-urban habitats in order to ‘sing over’ low-frequency traffic noise [7].

Aside from sensitivity to particular anthropophony, Seán sees the many positives of having ASD. His obsessions or ‘special interests’ are a common trait among individuals on the autism spectrum. These interests can be incredibly intense and focused, and in Seán’s case, it is centred around bird vocalisations. He likens his ‘alternative brain’ to a superpower. For example, he has the ability to tune in and out of the vocalisations of different bird species and can retrieve the visual imagery, the peaks and troughs of a sonogram [8], of each bird call in his brain. Even more amazing is his ability to distinguish the different mimetic sounds some birds make. In one scene, he describes six different bird vocalisations mimicked by a siskin.

Captured so beautifully by Harris and team, Birdsong is a lyrical journey through the soundscapes of Ireland. It is a film that follows the sights and sounds of nature as seen through the eyes and heard through the ears of Seán Ronayne. The trip to Skellig Islands is a gorgeous assault on the visual and auditory senses—cliff upon cliff of nesting birds with the cacophony of the seabird colonies echoing in the background. The murmuration of starlings in Lough Ennell is a breathtaking spectacle as we watch the ebb and flow of the shapeshifting starling clouds, the whooshing of wing beats sounding like rain. Will we, we ask ourselves, ever be able to take a walk in nature without stopping to listen?

““The film is an invitation for us to join in, to open our eyes, our ears and our hearts, to cultivate this love of nature””

Ultimately, however, Harris’ wondrous documentary is a love story: Seán’s love for birds, for the beautiful natural sonic world around us, and the love between Alba and him as we see her at his side in nearly every scene. The film is an invitation for us to join in, to open our eyes, our ears and our hearts, to cultivate this love of nature, and to experience and by extension, to care for and protect the natural world around us. In the biodiversity crisis that we are currently experiencing, Birdsong is a clarion call to action with Seán Ronayne leading the charge.

Birdsong is currently available on RTÉ player. Running time is 52 minutes.

Natasha Ariff is a biodiversity and landscape consultant working in County Wexford.

Notes

www.irishwildlifesounds.com , accessed 11 January 2025.
They (swifts) feast on small flying insects by catching them in flight. Insects collect in a special pouch at the back of the swift's throat, where they are bound together by saliva until they form a kind of pellet known as a bolus, which can be regurgitated and fed to chicks. One single bolus can contain over 300 insects, with some holding over 1,000! https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/swallows-swift-martins-and-nightjar/swift , accessed 11 January 2025.
The conservation status of bird species in Ireland is signalled using a traffic light system with red and amber signalling high and medium conservation concern respectively. See Gillian Gilbert, Andrew Stanbury and Lesley Lewis “Birds of Conservation Concern in Ireland 2020 –2026”. Irish Birds no. 9 (2021), pp. 523—544. Available at https://birdwatchireland.ie/app/uploads/2021/04/BOCCI-2020-2026.pdf.
Seán Ronayne has already given several talks to the public and will continue to do so in 2025. The locations of his talks and to book tickets, go to his website https://www.irishwildlifesounds.com/irish-tour/ , accessed 11 January 2025.
Anthropophony was coined by Bernie Krause, known as the ‘father of soundscape ecology’ and Gary Snyder, an American eco-poet. See https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/08/biophony/ , accessed 14 January 2025.
Annebelle C. M. Kok, Boris W. Berkhout, Nora V. Carlson, Neil P. Evans, Nicola Khan, Dominique A. Potvin, Andrew N. Radford, Marion Sebire, Saeed Shafiei Sabet, Graeme Shannon and Claudia A. F. Wascher “How chronic anthropogenic noise can affect wildlife communities”. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 05 April 2023 Sec. Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology Volume 11 - 2023.
Ermin Nemeth, Nadia Pieretti, Sue Anne Zollinger, Nicole Geberzahn, Jesko Partecke, Ana Catarina Miranda and Henrik Brumm. “Bird song and anthropogenic noise: vocal constraints may explain why birds sing higher-frequency songs in cities.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 07 March 2013, volume 280, issue 1754.
A sonogram, also known as spectrogram, is a visual representation of sound in a graphical form with frequency (analogous to pitch) in Hertz (wave cycles of sound per second) on the y-axis, and time (in seconds) on the x-axis. See https://www.fssbirding.org.uk/sonagrams.htm , accessed 11 January 2025.

Birdsong – Documentary Review