End of February, end of the water at the lake this season. Still enough of a pool, enough of a puddle to keep some birds here. Stilts stand in the water, their long legs sticking out. A sharp tailed sandpiper on the water’s edge, maybe two, or else a noodalyarong the black-fronted dotterel. I thought wayan the white-faced heron might have moved on, but no, there he is on the other side back a bit, on the drier ground, stalking. And then the morrhens on the even-drier ground, not too far from the rushes and reeds. Finally the swamphens mostly in a drier area to the north, amongst the green grasses, or moving in and out of the long rushes. Five karak black cockatoos fly directly overhead while giving glimpses of their fiery red tails. Two nyimarak shelducks circle above the lake a few times, but finding it not to their liking or depth, move on. At one point the swamphens and moorhens all move toward the cover of the rushes, their tales up. I look above, but can see no raptor, though he may be behind the trees. 

The birds, then, move from the sharpest and most sticklike, most nervous and headlike, in the middle of the lake, to birds more rounded at its edges. All of them together giving the picture of a human being with their head planted in the last of the water, with body and belly and feet moving out, maybe even up.