In Balleally, field recordings fill in the sound of the estuary’s missing birds

Garrett Phelan switches his car radio from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young over to an FM station as he steers into the Balleally landfill car park just before midday on Monday.

The voice from the speakers, deep and calm, is now his own.

His radio-self discusses the Eurasian teal, a small duck found around these parts. The recording’s backdrop is birds, cawing, singing, chirping.

Occasionally, Phelan yawns or pauses or – faintly under the monologue – scratches. “That’s me drawing,” he said.

The broadcast lasts an hour and it had been transmitted on loop since midnight.

This show is largely focused on the teal but he passes observations on a wave of birds. He talks about how people mistake geese for fish, and of his love for the petrol-green tail of magpies.

It’s a peculiar thing, said Phelan, climbing out of the car. “It’s amazing, like this metallic glint we see on cars, and I talk about it in some of the broadcasts.”

The Monday reflection on the teal was one of 28 shows that Phelan has recorded for broadcast on 94.3 Hide FM, a radio station that visitors to the landfill and park – and others within 2km of it – can listen to.

His continuous broadcast started on Monday 24 March, and will continue until Sunday 20 April.

The station is the latest installment in the Hide Project, Phelan’s ongoing series of artworks based around the Balleally landfill, 1km south of Lusk, which he began in 2006.

From episode to episode, Phelan talks about birds that flock around the Rogerstown Estuary, in which the landfill sits – their migratory patterns, distinct calls, and depiction in folklore.

Or rather, birds that used to flock. The field recordings were made 15 years ago, he says, and the ecosystem of the estuary is changed. “You listen here now and it’s a completely different world.”

Art within official channels

For 10 minutes, Phelan waits by the fence at the perimeter of the landfill.

Balleally stopped accepting waste in 2012, according to Fingal County Council’s website. On Saturdays, it serves as the public Rogerstown Park.

But given it is still managed as a landfill, the ability to view Phelan’s work is subject to bureaucracy. So it can only be viewed by request, and with his accompaniment.

Phelan hails from a background in experimental noise music and pirate radio. But he decided to subvert that, he says.

He had to collaborate with the council to get the radio station on the airwaves, he says.

That was a novel idea and they had to create a template for Coimisiún na Meán, the regulator, he says. “I love breaking ground every time I do something like this.”

Phelan was waiting for a council official with a sign-in book and a list of health and safety requirements for entrants.

That is something he really enjoys, he says. “There is this subversive play with officialdom. It is interesting, because is it possible for me not to become a part of the bureaucracy?”

Once registered, he walks through a wooden gate carved with the words “Hide Sculpture”. He wanders a winding path, smoothed for those who use wheelchairs, and up to the sculpture, a single-storey hide.

It looks like a wooden cabin. But it is made from cement, moulded to look like timber planks.

He unlocks the heavy front door and steps into dark, before opening the shutters to let the bright sunlight in through three long rectangular frames, and reveal the panorama of the landfill and estuary.

He points to a distant hide built by the former contract ranger for the council, Julie Rowe. “I thought it was a beautiful hide that I wanted to replicate,” he says.

Phelan has carved images of moon cycle charts and birds on the walls and ceilings.

He wanted to highlight the work she and other rangers did to protect the local environment, he said, peering through a telescope in the corner.

Radio as sculpture

It was in 2010 that the 94.3 Hide FM part of his larger project started.

Phelan and the artist Fergus Kelly ventured out onto the landfill to record the sound of the birds in the area.

Just like the structure, the radio show is a sculpture of sorts, he says. “I view radio and sound, and electromagnetics of sculpture.”

“People would scratch their heads over that,” says Phelan. “But right now, this project is totally complete, because you’re here and the electromagnetic signals are passing through your body.”

And that broadcast is being powered by the landfill itself, he says.

The landfill grew from waste left by farmers who had to put rotten produce somewhere, he said. “In the late 1800s, early 1900s, they came down and dumped the stuff into the estuary.”

It became an official landfill in 1971, according to the council’s website, with its use peaking in the 1980s, Phelan says. “Over time, we became aware of its toxins leaking into the estuary.”

The council sealed and capped the landfill, he says.

It emits methane, which can be extracted and converted into electricity, he said. “And this toxic space was recycled into usable energy, green energy.”

The hide project began as a study of monuments, he says. “As the landfill is in effect a monument.”

With the radio broadcast, he expands the definition of a sculpture to include electromagnetics, he says.

“They exist, pass through houses, trees, buildings, and we end up hearing something,” he says. “Depending on how loud we turn those up, they can shake our bodies. There is a physicality to it.”

Meditating with birds

Every few minutes, Phelan stopped speaking suddenly as he heard the far-off call of a different bird.

There was a blackbird washing itself in the water and he pointed to a buzzard in the sky. “It’s beautiful,” he said, as it flew in circles, only to be joined by a second and then a third.

Still the area was quiet.

Maybe it was because the tide was out, he said, or maybe it was the wrong time of the day. “But fifteen years ago, it really was a different world here.”

Now in his early 60s, Phelan has spent the best part of his life studying and admiring birds, he says. As a child, he was a member of Birdwatch Ireland when it was still called the Irish Wildbird Conservancy.

He was out on Bull Island at the age of six, he says. “Drawing birds, making cardboard cutouts that I’d paint and sell them to family.”

It was never academic, he says. “I wasn’t a spotter, travelling the world, ticking off boxes. I’ve no interest in that. I even stop myself from learning too much. For me, it’s the wonder of it.”

It is the feeling of contentment that comes from simply observing them, listening to them, he says, as he leaves the hut and walks back along the trail.

“I love stopping, taking time to analyse the view,” he says, “look a bit more deeply.”

Processed teal

The radio was omitting a dense, low frequency sound as Phelan drove out of Rogerstown Park.

It was still on 94.3 FM, and the rumble was like a synthesiser bassline.

But it wasn’t. Its origins were entirely organic. It was the manipulated call of a teal, he said. “That’s processed teal.”

Phelan drove up Balleally Lane towards the Rush-Lusk train station. A Jack Russell Terrier ran out onto the road, yapping as it went for the front wheels of his blue car.

The artist looked in the rear view mirror to check if it was fine – and it was. Still, it barked angrily, out in the middle of the road, guarding its territory.

A relief, Phelan said. “I’m glad that didn’t just happen.”

The low frequency noise coming from the speakers changed, reverting to a multitude of birds tweeting, chirping, and singing.

There was a striking contrast between the number of birds in the field recording and those that he had heard in the last hour, he said. “It’s not just that we were there at a different time of the day.”

Indeed, 20 percent of breeding birds in Ireland are in long decline and birds that overwinter are down by 50 percent since the 1990s, says the Citizens’ Assembly report on biodiversity loss.

Sometimes Phelan worries that he sounds too apocalyptic when talking about how there are fewer birds in the area, he says.

“But I’ve got to stop saying, ‘Oh it’s just a different time of day,’” he says. “The difference is staggering.”