Today at the lake I watch the ever shrinking high-water mark—birak summertime heading towards later summer boonaroo and autumn. The swamphens are walking the northern end of the remaining main-water pool, the moorhens are stalking the line on the easter side, pecking away as their tails flick. The stilts are in the slightly deeper water, their long legs like sticks. A couple of coots are slightly further south, beyond a reed bed, working the shoreline there. Pacific black ducks, pink ears, wood ducks and maybe a couple of teals are out in the slightly deeper water that’s left, where they can paddle still. A lone seagull sits and watches a black duck pass by. A couple of crakes are up on the dryer ground with some buff-banded rails nearby. Three pairs of swans sit in place in shallower areas, or move slowly through a deeper water place. Correllas stick to the dryer shore to the south end, or in the trees above, noisy as usual. Behind, there are white tailed black cockatoos in the trees. 

And suddenly, as I’m watching this calm Thursday morning, cool-day almost full-moon scene, the swaphens in one cloud start flap-running their way east into the nearby rushes and reeds; the crakes and rails go with them, disappearing between the separate branches in the shadows and shade; the stilts hop-fly into the centre of the lake; the moorhens and coots step off the shoreline edges and shift to deeper waters; the ducks in a couple of species-clouds do the same; the seagull has vanished; the corellas lift off into clouds and circle around the trees to the south; and in all the visial whirling I hear the yapping little bark of the stilts, the gutteral-turned-higher pitch craw of the hen, the short quacks of the ducks, the slightly higher screech of the coot and moorhens. And all the while I’m moving out from under the paperbark and eucalyptus limbs where I’ve been standing, sheltering from the cooler wind and morning sun. I’m moving slightly south, and looking up, but seeing nothing. The birds keep on moving in the shoreline scene below me. I walk out further, opening up the sky, and wait. And then, before much longer: the stretched, circling wingspan lengths, all brown and orange, of a swamp harrier gliding overhead. He makes a turn, wheeling around, barely needing to flap. I look out again as he circles back behind the tree. The birds left in the centre of the lake are still, and watching intently. The disappeared ones in the reeds are disappeared still. The swans have stopped their preening, watching, but haven’t yet moved. Nor has a white Ibis I now see on the shoreline. And nor has a white faced herron now moving obviously on grey branch towards the centre of the lake. The whole scene seems to pause a little longer, the harrier comes around again. Nobody moves, except the screeching swirling corellas further south. And then…gradually…he seems to have gone. The whole frozen moment eventually, slowly, slipping into movement again. 

The birds in the centre begin to spread out again, the stitls pick up their legs and begin to walk away. The ducks start to paddle apart, each their own species way. The swans resume their preening pruning. The moorhens and coots slowly spread back towards the muddy high-water mark. The corellas screech a little less, and start to settle back upon the ground. The heron resumes his stillness, the ibis moves a little, the swamphens return from the reads and begin to spread, while the rails and crakes take a little longer.

And I’m struck by the directions of it. The way so many that just a moment ago were on the shoreline—on the high water line—shifted quickly either to centre or periphery. That is where the life went: to the shallows or the depths. Nothing stayed on the shoreline (except the bigger  ibis). Life contracted or expanded: moved to the middle, or to the edges went. Life moved away from the shoreline, from where a moment before it was feeding—it moved away from this. Life moved away from the shoreline, because here and now, the shoreline, even at this life-filled lake, meant death.