Homebirds: Days out Getting to Know Birds and Places Around Northern Ireland

About Anne Marie McAleeseDot Blakely

Anne Marie McAleese is from Portstewart County Derry and has presented the award-winning Your Place and Mine programme on BBC Radio Ulster since 1991. Before meeting Dot Blakely just over twenty years ago Anne Marie knew that birds flew and that there were a lot of them. Since then with Dots expert guidance she has become an enthusiastic birding student. Dots regular slot on Your Place and Mine is a favourite with listeners: Dot supplies the bird knowledge; Anne Marie peppers their conversations with fascinating facts about the places they visit. Dot Blakely was born in Bangor County Down and it was as a young girl on walks with her dad in the grounds of Bangor Castle that her fascination with birds began. She is a member and former committee member of the RSPB NI; an ornithologist for the Woodland Trust; a member of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust; the founder of Castle Espie Bird Watching Club and of North Down Bird Watching Club which she still runs; and an official bird counter and surveyor for the UK Wetland Bird Survey. For the last thirty years she has shared her extensive knowledge with eager birders and novices alike through her classes walks and talks via Belfast Metropolitan College and Queens University Belfast and through her hugely popular appearances on BBC Radio Ulsters Your Place and Mine.