Friday 27 June 2014

The Curious Robin


The subject matter of this post isn’t any sort of theory or idea that has been plaguing my mind as of late, nor is it even about children or their play. More of a group of observations that I’ve found quite humbling…

Recently, with the coming of sunshine (however brief) and the coming of summer I have begun to notice more than children existing on the playground “The Land”. And I’m not just talking about cats, which wander on often throughout the day; my favourite being Jekyll. All of a sudden there has been an influx of life on the space, but also I’m more aware of it, looking for it, so I see it more.
It begun when I shifted a load of tyres, swapped the base of a swing and cleared the brook of any loose parts blocking its flow. Standard playground maintenance. Then I sat back at the base of a tree and looked at the space, hoping for inspiration for a new modification to breathe new life into loose parts that hadn’t been used in ages.
That was when a blackbird flew down from a tree and began hopping from tyre to tyre. And at the same time a robin flew into view and settled on the swing, slowly shifting its body weight as the swing swung. I didn’t really think much of it, other than that this was a cool robin, until it charged at the blackbird and scared it away. The robin then jumped around and flew from tyre to tyre, hopping along the edge of the brook all before flying back onto the swing as it still swung lightly in the wind. It was fascinating to see, that it was inspecting every single loose part I had moved or modified, wanting to know what had changed.

Since then I have marvelled at our peaceful colony of mining bee’s (which have now left us), of the pair of pool frog that live under one of our loose part bridges, or of the lesser British water boatmen that glide their way atop the brook. Of the fresh water shrimp below them or of the tiny, rare, carpenter bee’s we’ve only just realised weren’t black flies. All the different beetles, spiders, snails and birds, or the squirrel the keeps doing bird impressions outside the office. We’ve even got footage of a young fox prowling around at night. Only yesterday I froze upon realising that a was four feet from a female blackbird as it stood near the brook, We looked at each other before it jumped in the brook and had a bath. Dunking its head under and shaking its wings, once finished we looked at each other again and then she flew off.

I may work on the playground, and children may play there, but all these examples of animal life, they are born here, they live on here and they die here. This space if their home and that curious robin wanted to know what I was changing to it. It makes me realise that “The Land” is bigger than the children that access it, that there is an added degree of naturalness to the space and that there is even more to discovery then than I previously realised.

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