David Cabot is an Irish naturalist and writer. He was educated at University College, Oxford and Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied natural sciences, going on to University College, Galway, where he obtained a PhD in ecology of bird parasites while lecturing in Zoology. For twenty years he worked as an ecologist and was responsible for Ireland's National Heritage Inventory, developing nature conservation policy, later also as special environmental advisor to two Irish Prime Ministers. An all-round field naturalist and ecologist, he specialises in wildfowl and seabirds, enjoying the arduous life of fieldwork on islands, in the Arctic and other wild places. He lives in County Mayo, on the edge of the Atlantic.