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Spark Bird: Thomas Poulsom and the LEGO Robin
Building one bird out of LEGO bricks led to many more
© Thomas Poulsom
As he trained to be an arborist, Thomas Poulsom started developing two new interests: birds and building with LEGO bricks. After first building a European Robin, he went on to create LEGO models of more than 75 species. Thomas became one of the first LEGO fans to have his designs produced as an official set.
BirdNote®
Spark Bird: Thomas Poulsom and the LEGO Robin
By Mark Bramhill
Mark Bramhill: This is BirdNote.
[Birdsong]
As he trained to be an arborist, Thomas Poulsom started developing two new interests. The first was birds:
Thomas Poulsom: My favorite bird is a robin, robin red-breast in Europe.
[European Robin song]
Thomas Poulsom: Because when you're digging, a little robin is always following you around looking for food. Worms and grubs and all sorts of things that you're digging up.
Mark Bramhill: The other was building with LEGO bricks, after a "dark age" away from the toy while at university. And then Thomas found these interests colliding.
Thomas Poulsom: I wanted to build something related to my work. And I had a Eureka moment, which was a robin landing on my fork handle.
[European Robin song]
Thomas Poulsom: So I thought right, I'm gonna build a robin out of LEGO.
Mark Bramhill: After building that European Robin, he built more bird models — and a name for himself in the LEGO community. To date, he's made more than 75 species! And in 2015, Thomas was one of the first LEGO fans to have his designs produced as an official set. It included a Blue Jay, a hummingbird, and of course, a robin.
Thomas Poulsom: I was really chuffed. And I was invited to a LEGO store in London, and people were queuing up to get me to sign the box and everything. It was very surreal, an extremely proud moment of my life.
[European Robin song]
Mark Bramhill: To see pictures of Thomas's delightful bird models, go to our website, BirdNote.org. I'm Mark Bramhill.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. European Robin ML89108201 recorded by Dominic Garcia-Hall, and European Robin ML162860 recorded by G Budney.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote October 2023
Narrator: Mark Bramhill
ID# sparkbird-24-2023-10-18 sparkbird-24
Mark Bramhill
Writer NarratorSights & Sounds
