“This picture shows me recording sounds on a typical day in Marlogue Woods, near Cobh, Ireland. When I was a child, my father would bring me to the countryside, where he would mimic bird sounds and test me on them. This was one of those places, so it’s special to me.
I have degrees in zoology, marine biology and ecological impact assessment. But I’ve discovered where I want to work only in recent years. My passion lies in nature, but creative communication is where I found my voice. I love to capture stories of wildlife — good, bad, sad, happy — and to communicate them to people in my way. Scientific data and publications are important, but I want my stories to be accessible to everybody.
I used to work for a consultancy company doing bird surveys of proposed building sites (I still survey as a subcontractor, and sell sounds for television, radio and games). I spent a lot of time in the office and found myself wanting to listen to soundtracks of nature. I realized I didn’t have recordings of wild habitats in Ireland. So I began recording in some of the last remnants of such places. I travelled to uplands and loughs (Irish lakes), and made an album from the trip called Wild Silence.
