I’m back here after an absence. I was trying to cut back on apps. I feel like I’m being shadow-banned on instagram so this seems like a nicer place to revisit

Here’s a video from a mic deployment in Barcelona, in the midst of a wonderful thunderstorm. I got so wet it didn’t matter! It was beautiful

1/6🧵

It was around this time last year that I was given this chance to talk about the thing that means the most to be on what is a huge national platform (thank you RTE and thank you Tommy Tiernan and team)

Two song types from a Wood Warbler in an Irish Sessile Oak Woodland. Now both sadly very rare. This bird was a real treat to sit with and listen to. I'd imagine this was once a much more common sound, in the very distant past, when oak woodlands were more common.

This fast flowing water was almost singing to me. I heard it from afar and tracked it down the the exact source. I just had to record it. I was searching for Dippers again, but I always get distracted. But that's what makes the day - these beautiful distractions.

1/3🧵

Setting up my mics one night, I glanced at, but took no particular notice of, a large slug (not the individual in photo - this one I saw in SE Asia!) right by my kit.  
 
I finally solved the mystery of the odd scratchy sounds I sometimes heard in my recordings!

Clicking sounds from many brown shrimp (crangon crangon), recorded from a small pier in West Cork with a hydrophone (an underwater microphone). 
 
If you listen very closely you will hear a distant limpet grazing on algae. 
 
It's another world down there and I'm looking forward to exploring it!

Just a dinky, submarine-yellow periwinkle going about its business to the sound of a lapping Cork Harbour sea.

Gently lapping waves, very low levels of anthropogenic noise, no wind, and ten displaying black guillemots right below me. This was a perfect recording scenario - bliss.

A grey seal snorts and loafs around amidst a sunny, bustling seafood festival at Kilmore Quay, Co. Wexford, presumably hoping for fish scraps from the numerous fishing boats tied up.

Short-eared owl wing-clapping and calling, with the company of some whooper swans in the background. 
 
Recorded with an SM4 at a then long-term, listening station on the Wexford coast, on the 17th Jan' 2022. 
 
This is possibly my favourite ever recording, of this seldom-heard migratory owl.

**Spoken extract from 'Nature Boy' - available in full on Audible.

Wet woodlands are real magical places. There's something ethereal about them. They're wild places full of life, mystery and character.