On the Town: Eamon de Buitléar was described as "a north Wicklow Mark Twain" at the launch of his autobiography, A Life in the Wild, this week.
Dr Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum, said the wildlife film-maker "created a sense of wonder in our natural world" and "brought wildlife into the homes around the country" through his films, including the long-running Amuigh Faoin Spéir series.
De Buitléar's book, which is published by Gill and Macmillan, is also full of "throwaway giblets of information, which makes it memorable", said Wallace.
At the launch were friends from the worlds of film, music and science, including film-maker Louis Marcus; ornithologist Oscar Merne; three former members of the Chieftains (Ronnie McShane, Michael Tubridy and Seán Potts); Garach a Brún, of Claddagh Records; TG4 journalist Sorcha Ní Riada; ornithologist Dr Richard Collins; and zoologist Dr John Rochford. De Buitléar's wife Laillí, their son Éanna and their three daughters, Róisín de Buitléar, Aoife Kirwan and Doireann de Buitléar, were all in attendance.
The film-maker's interest in nature and wildlife began when he was a child growing up on the banks of the River Dargle, he said. He was five years old when he caught his first trout.
"I screamed and ran up the weir with the fish following me on the line," he recalled. "The river was right outside. We could see salmon leaping up, a heron fishing, a gull standing on the weir."
De Buitléar's new six-part series, An Saol Beo, will be screened on TG4 next year.