Last night after another 40-something day I went down to the beach. And after swimming spotted something moving in the shadows on the sand not far from a couple of people nearby. It took a while to register its form and movements as it appeared near the waterline and moved back towards the dunes. It glided easily on all fours, silently, looking around, smelling the ground, untroubled, unbothered by humans. A fox. It trotted along the sand in the hot night, going almost as far as the dunes before stopping, and slowly slinking in the direction of another person, on their phone, not noticing. Then it stopped, lay down. The person picked up their stuff and moved off. I walked back towards the car parks. I caught up with the person and asked if he’d seen the fox. He looked back as it picked itself up from the shadows and bounced across in the direction in which he’d been sitting. “No,” he said, sounding suprised. “Never seen one here. Are they dangerous?”

This morning I was driving home, further along the coast, next to a break they call isolaters, and noticed a raptor hovering above the dunes. It was all white except the black undersitde of its wingtips, it’s beak and eye, and, when it dived a little or hovered higher, a black patch also on its shoulders. And so we name things—a black shouldered kite. It hovered effortlessly as the wind rolled round its wings, looking from time to time straight, then right, its head pointed into the southwesterly, the whole city cooling a little. It rose again, adjusted, went a little to the side, then dropped slowly, its talons extended, before pausing, rising again, then turning left, flying over where I was parked.

This shoreline, this salty shoreline, is one of the cunning, and of the head, be it canine or bird or a hundred other things. This shoreline, this heady salty shoreline is a shoreline of death.