"We made this recording as they emerged and by ten or 11 o clock at night I hadn't heard anything for a while so I thought I'd get the microphone back," recalls Chris. "I got out of the car and started coiling the cable up and working back down to where the microphone was. Fortunately, getting out of the vehicle must have woken Francis, because suddenly he put the headlights on and I saw about six pairs of orange eyes and I was walking straight towards them.
"I remember Francis saying 'never, never do that again.'
"I've since seen hyenas bite the leg off a zebra and chew through it like it was celery. I think that was about the only mistake I've made.
"
But it was not the only potentially dangerous situation Chris has been involved in as a BAFTA award-winning sound recordist working on the country's top wildlife documentaries. Chris, of Kenton, near Newcastle, has built an enviable career working on major productions, such as the BBC's Life in the Undergrowth and Big Cat Diary, to producing his own CDs. It all began when his parents gave him a tape recorder for his 11th birthday.
'It was an inspired gift really," recalls Chris, who grew up in Sheffield. "When I'd recorded everything inside - budgies, doors creaking, relatives at parties - I took it outside where we had a bird table and I recorded the birds. When I played it back it was like being given an insight into another world.
I found it completely captivating."
At the time, it never struck Chris to turn his keenness for recording sounds into a career and he found work as a telephone engineer when he left school. But he pursued his passion for music by forming the highly successful experimental electronic band, Cabaret Voltaire, with two friends from Sheffield.
The group proved to be a huge influence on bands such as The Human League and Depeche Mode. They would often be in the recording studio with the likes of Joy Division and The Fall and were on the first ever Factory Records compilation.
"They were great times and we enjoyed what we did," he recalls.
But as the group became more successful, producing ground-breaking music and playing in America, Chris felt they were slowly being sucked into the music business.
"We were just getting absorbed and I felt I was much more interested in the broader aspects of sounds. As we got more sophisticated recording equipment, I started taking it out with me, recording sounds and incorporating that into our work.
But I felt like I was on a bit of a treadmill."
By the early 1980s, Chris took the decision to leave the band and got a job as a trainee in the sound department of Tyne Tees Television in Newcastle, where he found himself working on the music show The Tube and jetting off to Los Angeles to interview Robert Plant.
He was still recording wildlife on walks with his wife Maggie - the couple now have three children: Rosie, 19, and twins Alex and Lewis, 17 - but it was only when he was visiting the Jamaican home of Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, that he felt inspired to take his hobby further.
"I found the sounds so musical and beautiful," he recalls. "It just literally struck a chord. It was the first time I'd been to a tropical location and it really inspired me.
I became really interested in how animals communicated."
Chris' break into wildlife work came when he got a job as a sound recordist for The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds' film unit in Bedfordshire. Two years later, he returned to the North-East and eventually went freelance, which led to a number of collaborations with the BBC, David Attenborough and Bill Oddie.
So far, he's won a BAFTA for his work on The Life of Birds and was nominated for a BAFTA for Life in the Undergrowth.
"I found Life in the Undergrowth fascinating because I recorded a lot of insect noises, the sounds of caterpillars and ants," he says.
And what exactly do caterpillars sound like?
"It's like a grunting sound," he laughs, adding that the caterpillar and ant sounds were some of his most challenging to date.
"They were so quiet and we live in such a noisy world," he says. "So it was rewarding to get the microphone so close and tune into the sounds at our feet.
"
But there have been more potentially dangerous animals to record than the humble caterpillar, and since his hyena days he's careful not to poke the bear - or snake, or crocodile - so to speak.
'You have to ensure you use common sense and you don't put yourself in difficult situations," he says. But, even so, you cannot always take the unpredictability out of a situation where animals are concerned.
He recalls working in the Congo filming chimpanzees which had been rescued for the BBC's The Life of Mammals. The crew were in a dugout canoe, when a female chimp came on the scene. The scientist on board warned them that she may try to test them.
"I was sitting next to David (Attenborough) and there was a bit of space so this chimp came and sat on the bench beside us," he says. "She reached out and took a pen out of my bag and looked at me and they said 'just talk to her' and she put it back. Then she got hold of David's hand and they said 'don't pull your hand back because she'll pull and dislocate your arm.
Whatever you do, just go with it.' And she let go. That was a real privilege to be there and I'll never forget it.
"
Chris has worked across the world and was recently on Vancouver Island, off the Canadian coast, filming killer whales under water.
"I must play you some," he says, and disappears to dig out his iPod.
When he returns, the haunting, high-pitched sounds of the killer whales echo around Chris' kitchen, interspersed with the tranquil lap, lapping of water.
Then the throaty clicks start as the animals get closer.
"They're pretty social animals, they're hunting for salmon, they're communicating all the time," says Chris.
How does he capture such fascinating sounds?
"You need patience and to spend a lot of time getting to know your subject," he says. "You can go out there and record them but you need to spend time listening and observing and being in their surroundings.
"You start to be able to predict with a fair degree of accuracy where you need to be.
We also work with scientists and researchers who help us. We would never put an animal under stress to record a sound."
The equipment has changed considerably since he began and he now uses a portable hard disc recorder - like an elaborate iPod - instead of a tape recorder.
The sounds are sharper, which means the time in post production has been cut down.
There are still sounds he would love to capture. He's never recorded wolves, for example, and in the future he would like to get more involved with post production work.
At the moment, he hands his recordings to a sound editor who will put the images and sounds together. He also enjoys producing his critically-acclaimed solo albums which bring to life a myriad of sounds from our planet.
But while Chris has finally got his dream job, it must be hard for him to switch off sometimes?
"I can filter noise like traffic out but I do find it hard to switch off," he admits. "I get really bothered by noise pollution, like if you go into a shop or bank and they're playing music.
"But sometimes I'll get a gin and tonic and I'll go upstairs and put on some tropical sounds and that's a really great way of chilling out.
I'll remember exactly where I was when I made those recordings and it has that incredible power of being able to focus you. I'll be right back where I recorded it which is fantastic.
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