Tag: habitats

Through the magnifying glass

At the start of our walk, we stopped by the magnificent web of a Golden Orb Weaver spider that one of the educators had spotted in the car park earlier in the day.

GoldenOrbWeb

 

The sun shone directly on to the web bringing out the intricacy of the structure and revealing the insects and leaves trapped in the strands.  This was to be one of many different spider homes we were to see on this walk.

 

The children were each given a magnifying glass to use.  The first thing they did was to hold the glasses right up to their eye, looking around to take in the new perspective.

MagnifyGlass3

You look like a ‘giant’ they kept exclaiming as they studied each other through the glass lens. They then turned the magnifying glasses to the sky and the tree tops, scanning the spaces over-head and looking far into the distance.

After a while, the children directed their magnifying glasses to the micro-worlds around them.  Some tried to follow the trail of ants scurrying up a tree, only to discover the challenge of watching a moving object through the glass.MagnifyGlass1

Having the magnifying glass seemed to draw the children’s attention to different plant life.

MagnifyGlass2They commented on the various colours of the bark and the texture of moss on the rocks; with one child finding a moss-covered rock that ‘looks like a dinosaur’.

spiderwebontree

We found spider webs in rock crevices, strewn across the bark of trees and hidden under metal structures. With each new find, the children would call out ‘look what I found’ and the others would rush over in anticipation.

Magnifying glasses are intended to be used as tools to examine close-up the smaller detail of life around us that we might otherwise miss. But their diffractive potential is greater than the intended purpose. On this walk the children experimented more widely with the perspectives the convex glass offered; intermittently using them to alter the perspective of things and creatures that were both near and far, small and large. The shifting optics enabled by the magnifying glasses opened up new ways of seeing and thus experiencing these local surrounds.

One noteworthy new find was an unusual tree. peppercorn and eucalypt

The children were drawn into folds of the drooping foliage and, once ‘inside’, could not resist climbing and clambering through the lower limbs.

On closer inspection, the entangled trunks and branches were in fact two trees: a tall Eucalypt growing right up through the middle of a Peppercorn tree.

The tree embodies the entanglements of different species that we are thinking through in this project. How might we co-inhabit our already entangled common worlds in ways that are mutually beneficial?

Some children collected small bunches of peppercorns and others noted the smell of the peppercorn leaves on their hands even after we had returned to the Centre; a lingering sensory connection to the places we had been.

Visible signs and hidden worlds

As the children become more familiar with the places we visit, they ask if we can return to particular sites.  This week we had requests to go the rocky bank and to the pathways under the casuarinas along the water’s edge.  The children were particularly keen to see if the birds nest (from last week) was still there. The nest was located; though it was in a somewhat disheveled state and showing little sign of habitation.  lake return

While we were pondering on the presence of the nest, a water bird feeding in the reeds captured the children’s attention.  Noticing that this bird was more easily frightened than the swans, the children approached cautiously; tip-toeing and whispering ‘shh’ to each other in their attempts to get a closer look.  From a distance of several metres the children followed the bird as it darted through the reeds and grasses and eventually back to the water.

Purple swamp hen

One child commented that he loved the way the bird ‘ran so fast in the water’.  Later, after the walk, the children looked through a field guide to find the name of the bird – it was a purple swamp hen.

We found that following the movement of the birds through air, water and land required us to adjust our own modes of moving if we wanted the birds to stay a while. Observing in this way required us to pay close attention to both the bird’s and our own presence.

In thinking about other animals that live here, we soon came across a different type of challenge: how could we possibly come to understand the habits of the wildlife that live beneath the surface?  We have witnessed an ant dragging food to its nest, but it soon disappears to territory that is invisible to us.  There is so much more to this place than what we can see, and attending to what lies beneath is not an easy task.

This week, the children had a chance to wonder at these hidden underground worlds. On our approach to the rocky bank (a steep incline covered in large rocks, small trees and shrubs), several scuttling rabbits caught the children’s eye.

rocky bank - on way

Some rabbits were startled and ran away across the grass, while others retreated to their burrows. Through all this activity, the children’s attention was drawn to the multitude of rabbit holes in the rocky bank. Peering into holes, and discovering new ones concealed by over-hanging rocks, kept the children busy for sometime.

standing on rabbit burrowThey became aware that underneath them was a network of tunnels where the rabbits lived: ‘I’m on the top of the rabbit hole’ exclaimed one child as he stood on a rock, while others called out ‘I can see another rabbit hole’ and ‘there’s so many’.

There were also clues as to how the homes were made, such as piles of dirt out the front of the holes and fresh scratching. The children enjoyed the feel of the newly turned dirt. It was easier to pick up and move around than the hardened earth elsewhere.

Towards the end of the walk, some children lay down in the cool, damp grass in the shade.  Watching the children enjoy the soft and prickly texture of the grass was a reminder that there are many ways we can get to know this place. It is not only about what we can see, but also about what is hidden and what all our senses might reveal.