online: 13 january 2009 modified: 9 january 2009 9 january 2009 a hole in the ice
Pond 1, Hampstead Heath
...i am stopped by the sight of an almost elliptical unfrozen hole (about 40m by 20m) in the centre of a frozen pond...
...standing on the ice are about two hundred birds: seagulls, swans, geese, ducks, coots... and also pigeons standing on the surrounding grass... some of the seagulls are wheeling and diving above the water... they all seem to be enjoying this pond-within-a-pond in the winter sunshine...
...i'm looking now at the rest of the pond surface, grey and empty and looking quite solid... the birds are ignoring it...
...now a solitary crow flies into the flock of the wheeling gulls and they flee from his attack... afterwards the crow does not stand on the ice - it flies to the nearest tree branch...
...the majority of the birds ignore these movements and stand perfectly still around the ice hole, each facing the sun, with a slight breeze coming from behind them, from the northwest...
later:
...standing now in the shadow of a tree trunk, i can see thousands of water droplets on willow branches lit up by the sun.... and, as i write that, two swans with wings extended fly low over the hole in the ice, scattering smaller birds as they go, until they reach the frozen surface on which they land with wings transformed into airbrakes and webbed feet held out flat to skate the last few metres...
this is the spot where a duck flying past me in 1984 provoked a detailed description of bird-flight (compared with the clumsier flight of aeroplanes and the crudeness of our social designs)... perhaps that event is what led me to write these hundreds of digital diary entries, several decades later... and to continue the comparison of the artificial forms of the city with the natural forms of the forest...
...and that piece about the duck flying is one of my favourites...
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