Nature Notes: Why I love being a volunteer on the Schools Project at Railway Fields

As the summer term draws slowly to its end and schools wind down for the holidays, we volunteer Environment Officers can look back on a wonderful three months of leading Haringey children from 16 different Primary Schools and nurseries on walks and activities to discover all the delights and wonders of Railway Fields.

Amazingly, we’ve had 1237 children visit us this term from tiny nursery children doing the Wiggly Worm dance to year 6 pupils carrying out animal classification studies. We’ve seen lots of parents too and we hope they got as much out of it as their children.

We’re not resting on our laurels however and Holly, the school’s project officer, has planned a full programme of free drop-in summer activities on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I’ll be running one next week on butterflies but there’s all sorts of fun, nature stuff to do from now until the end of August.

For me, the importance of bringing children to Railway Fields and encouraging them to connect with the natural world is more urgent than ever. As I’ve said before in Nature Notes, how can we expect them to care about protecting the natural world in the future if they can’t recognise and name even the most common things in the world around them? How can you love something you have no language for? It’s wonderful to see their excitement at spotting spiders, robins, bluebells, centipedes, squirrels, and also at the way their parents can be drawn into their wonder too.

This week, a small boy from a year 2 group asked me incredulously how I could describe a small brown moth as beautiful. “Are you kidding? It’s exquisite”. I replied. “Look closely at its wings, the pattern, the detail.” He leaned forward and, after a moment, nodded silently. Later, he said very solemnly as he was leaving, “You really love nature don’t you? You think everything here is beautiful”. He was right. I do. I hope he feels the same way some day too. If we adults don’t show wonder and love for the natural world, we can’t expect our children to do so. The excitement of the children on our sessions gives me hope.

After they’d gone, I went for a walk alone around the site. It’s high Summer and the ground is dry, the grasses brown and withering and flowers nearly all gone. Yet, life carries on. Berries are ripening on boughs, gatekeeper butterflies are gathering on the only flower left in the back meadow, the ragwort, which is sustaining lots of insect life in this long, dry spell. In a dark corner, I watched as a spider caught a small fly and expertly wrapped it up and dragged it to its “larder”. Robins still raising young came close, squirrels shook branches as they skipped along them. Large Whites and Speckled Wood butterflies are everywhere you look. My first Red Admiral of this summer appeared. It’s hard for some species, like our frogs, this year but others seem to be toughing it out.

The good news is that we’ll all be back in the Autumn term as the Schools Programme is carrying on through the Autumn and Spring terms for the first time this year. Harvest, Halloween, Christmas, the first signs of Spring.

I can’t wait.