How often it seems you’re given a name for something you’ve been seeing regularly—”It’s a sharp-tailed sandpiper,” matching at once the name to the thing in front of you, wedded, known—when you go away for a couple of weeks and return, and think you’ve seen the same old friend as before, small of course, engaging the kind of naked-eye birdwatching that you do. “Old sharp-tail is back,” you proclaim, full of wisdom, to no-one but yourself, and this writing. Only to read in a monthly newsletter today that it is, in fact, a “wood sandpiper” (the article by the same guy who pointed out the initial sharp tail). I can see it in my mind’s eye now, its bobbing tail and short, sharp movements, its almost brown-grey feathers against the greyness of the drying lake. “Old woody is back!” I proclaim, and none could care less, except maybe woody (possibly sharp-tailed), and of course me, for my whole world has yet again changed.