Kathleen Harris told David Hennessy about the award-winning documentary Birdsong which has come to BBC.
Kathleen Harris’ award- winning debut film Birdsong is now available on BBC iPlayer.
Birdsong follows ornithologist Seán Ronayne from Cobh, Co. Cork, on his mission to record the sound of every bird species in Ireland – nearly 200 birds.
For his mission, he travels to some of the Ireland’s most beautiful and remote locations to capture its most elusive species and soundscapes.
Having been praised at both international film festivals and after its television premiere in Ireland, where audiences noted the film’s beautiful landscapes, its stirring soundscapes and it’s sensitive exploration of living with autism, the film was acquired by the BBC to bring Sean’s story to a UK audience.
The film won the Best Story prize at the European Wildlife Film Awards, following previously won awards at the prestigious Jackson Wild Awards in the United States and the
Festival International du Film Ornithologique in France.
It has also been nominated for an RTS ROI Award.
Kathleeen took the time to chat to us about the journey. Seán also chatted to us and you can check out his interview here.
Born and raised in Texas with a mother from Sligo, Kathleen Harris moved to Ireland in 2006 to become is a video journalist and then documentary filmmaker.
From 2014 to 2022, Kathleen was a video journalist for The Irish Times, directing, shooting, and editing hundreds of videos for online.
She covered a wide range of subjects including Ireland’s abortion and gay marriage referendums, sexual assault on college campuses, national elections, and grassroots environmental activism.
She also worked abroad, covering stories about migration in Bangladesh, Greece, and France.
In 2021, she was named Video Journalist of the Year by the NewsBrands Journalism Awards for Third Wave, a short documentary about healthcare workers battling a surge of Covid-19 cases in a Dublin hospital.
In 2020, she won the Justice Meida Award for TV/Video Media Award for TV/ Video for The Push, a short about the fight for same-sex marriage and reproductive rights in Northern Ireland.
Kathleen’s hour-long documentary Growing Up at the End of the World aired on RTÉ in 2020.
The film follows three teen climate activists for 18 months as they strike from school, lead protest marches in Ireland, and work alongside Greta Thunberg to create a vision for the youth climate justice movement.
In 2019, Kathleen directed, produced, shot, and edited the short documentary Postcard from a Crisis about four Irish clowns who visit Greece to perform for children living in refugee camps. Commissioned by Clowns Without Borders, the film screened at festivals in Ireland and the UK, including the Galway Film Fleadh, Cork Film Festival, and Respect Belfast Human Rights Film Festival.
What moved you to make Birdsong? How did the journey start?
“I started out as a video journalist for The Irish Times before I moved into documentary.
“Our editor had spotted a tweet that Seán had posted online saying that he wanted to record the call for every species in Ireland. He asked me to get in touch with Seán and look into making a short video about him.
“So I rang Seán up and asked if he would be willing to do that and he was very enthusiastic and said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be in Killarney National Park this week. I hear there’s a woodpecker there and I really want to find it’.
“He hadn’t recorded it before so he was there at dawn, ready to meet me and I spent the day with him shooting this video for The Irish Times.
“We put together a short video and it did well but that day that I met Seán I asked him would he be interested in doing a larger project with me.
“I’m someone who’s always looking for stories about our relationship with the natural world and when I met Seán, we had a lot in common.
“We just got on really well and I was really struck by his passion and his interest.
“He was a great storyteller.
“He was great at sharing these little anecdotes with people and making something that could be otherwise very science oriented or very academic, very accessible.
“Watching someone be passionate about something is always a very, very infectious thing and compelling thing.
“He just struck me as somebody who people needed to see on their screens and someone who had an interesting, very layered story.
“This was a quest that he was starting out on and that always makes for good storytelling.
“But that same day, he also spoke to me about his late autism diagnosis and his plans for this project of his so it just all sounded to me like a great story, and right off the bat, there was a yes from Seán.”
So how did you proceed from there, was it a case of spending a block of time with him or the odd days here and there?
“That was a really tricky one to plan because scheduling documentaries, you have to be careful with your time, with money and all of these things.
“But then, of course, when you’re working with wildlife, it’s very unpredictable so we really tried to optimise our chances of getting things on camera and recorded in sound when we were out.
“Seán was actually a good way into his project when we finally were able to start filming with him so we picked out a few species to focus on.
“It was kind of a mix.
“We wanted to make sure that we were likely to see some of the birds on camera, be able to get shots of them on camera pretty close, as well as birds that had kind of an interesting story to tell either because of some behaviour or activity or location that they’re based at, or maybe they’re a good example of our biodiversity crisis.
“We tried to balance sound, visuals and story and location.
“We did out a schedule then based on that and based on when we were able to record things.
“Because most of the species that we focused on are red or amber listed in Ireland, they are protected under the Wildlife Act so you have to have a permit from the National Parks and Wildlife Service to be able to film or record them so we had to get all of our permits in order and they only allow you to go out at certain times when it’s best, when it’s suitable for the birds that you’re not putting them at any risk during certain seasons.
“So in some cases, we would have gone out for a week or a few days.
“Donegal was a big trip.
“We spent a couple days out on Tory Island and then a few back to back days in Glenveagh National Park in Donegal and then Skelligs was the other big, big trip.
“We did a weekend out in Skellig Michael.
“And otherwise, it was kind of either me rushing off with my camera to get something that Seán was optimistic that we get or it was a day here and there when all the stars aligned for us.
“I think some of the success of the film was just down to it being so much fun to make because of all the people involved.
“We had such an amazing team of people: The cinematographer, the editor, the producers and everybody just gave it such willingness and such open heartedness and such time and energy, I think it all these things really percolate through into a piece of work like this.
“When there’s good hearts behind it, it shows, I think.
“I think you can see that.
“I’m just hugely grateful.”
How knowledgeable were you about birds and their plight, or were you learning a lot on this job?
“For sure, yeah.
“I learned an awful lot.
“I knew things were grim.
“I’m from the States and I guess I have kind of an outsider view on Ireland and I’ve always been really struck by the lack of wilderness in Ireland and the dominance of agriculture and that plays out in the figures and the numbers when you start to look at them.
“But when I started hanging out with Seán, I started to understand that in a much deeper way from an ecologist’s eye, I suppose, because Seán is able to give that and anytime you hang out with Seán, he just kind of throws information at you, these things that are fascinating to him and they’re fascinating to you too.
“I still text Seán regularly but in the two years we were working on this film, I was in contact with him every day and he would share something he found out or something he saw or some sound he recorded so it’s just this constant back and forth learning experience for all of us really.
“I, very quickly, became friends with Seán and we knew each other for a year before we actually started filming the bulk of the film and at that stage, I had gathered a huge amount of information from Seán through our conversations on the phone, through our text messages with each other, through reports that he would send on to me or news articles or some latest statistic published in a wildlife academic journal.
“And over time, I kind of gathered this and then weeded things down and so when we started filming, I had a good bank of material there that really informed what we focused on in the film like the jay barking, for example.
“Seán recorded that out with his dog.
“On that day he sent me the recording saying, ‘Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe what I came across today when I was out walking Toby’.
“And I said, ‘Oh, this is amazing. We have to include this in the film’.
“I learned so much from Seán and through researching the project and I have an appreciation for birds in a way I never had before, for song.
“I definitely listen differently now. I listen more intently.
“Things catch my ear when I’m out more than they would have in the past and it makes being out in the world just a much richer experience.
“We’re hoping to do more with Seán as well so I’m eager to learn more.”
It’s interesting that different bird songs are saying different things..
“I have a real fascination with communication in between species that are not human.
“I knew that all of it had a role to play.
“I think it helps us appreciate it’s not just an aesthetic thing or something nice or pleasant, it actually does serve a purpose and it helps us understand other species better.
“It makes sense that different birds have different accents.
“Seán was able to show that in his recordings.
“When he’s recording in Cork the same species of birds from one part of Cork have a different accent than birds from a different part of Cork, the same species.
“Of course they do.
“Because humans do so why wouldn’t other animals have the same but it’s just little things like that that I found really fascinating.”
As you say many of these birds are red or amber listed.
It’s all emblematic of the wider problem. If there is no home for nature, there won’t be nature..
“We think animals going extinct is happening somewhere else but it is happening in our own backyard and the extent of that I was really surprised by.
“I never thought that we would record two birds that are the last of their species in Ireland, we would get that close to extinction for the film.
“Something that did strike me right away about Seán and this story, and it made me want to pursue it, is that it’s a specific story that focuses on a specific thing, birds specifically and birdsong and something very positive but using that kind of beautiful story and that specific story to tell a deeper story about the state of the environment in Ireland and more broadly as well because we’re a part of the whole global ecosystem.
“I really liked that as a starting point because all these things have knock on effects.”
You have often looked at environment issues in your work, is it those stories that appeal to you particularly?
“Yeah, I definitely always have been very drawn to stories about the environment.
“They can be about climate change because I think it is the urgent issue.
“I like the idea of approaching it more from an appreciation way in I think we care about things that we understand.
“We care about things that we can see and that we love and someone like Seán is so excellent at instilling love in other people and instilling and helping people understand the world around them, other animals and the environment.
“I think that’s a very good place to focus if you’re an environmentalist.
“I’m interested in a lot of different things which is, I guess, why I went into journalism and filmmaking in the first place.
“But stories about animals, about our connection with them, our connection with the natural world, women’s stories, these things are a big draw for me.”
Drawing attention to this issue, I bet, would be more satisfying than any of the awards or plaudits the film has earned, wouldn’t it?
“I’m still just blown away when someone tells me that they’ve seen my film.
“It’s just a very nice feeling when someone has seen the work that you’ve done and to hear the responses that Seán has gotten.
“When it came out on RTÉ there was a bit of a social media reaction and so all of these things have added up to us just being absolutely blown away by the response to it.
“Birdwatch Ireland’s membership went up higher last year than it has done before.
“Seán has been inundated with emails from families, from individuals, from kids who have autism, just so many people getting in touch to say thank you, to tell him about something cool that they they saw out in the woods, or parents just thanking him for being someone who has autism who’s out there in the world doing things like this.
“He’s been such an inspiration to their kids who also love birds or love animals or all of these things.
“I’m hugely grateful and really, really blown away by the response.
“You’re just happy if someone sees the film, never mind tells you that they were really moved by it or they’ve actually kind of made changes in their life, or their kid was blown away by it.
“It’s just very nice and we’re thrilled.”
Would the hope be that some action is taken to protect these birds?
“People ask me, ‘What do you hope that it does?’
“You want somebody to feel moved by the thing that you make and the outcome of that is so amorphous then and so hard to put your finger on necessarily.
“I just hope that maybe there’s a little kid out there somewhere who now is fascinated with Seán and fascinated by birds and maybe he grows up to get a science degree.
“These are the kind of impacts that are hard to measure and, I think, more satisfying.”
For more information about Kathleen, click here.
