Though they mostly hung around through summer, things got pretty thin the last little while, as the water also thinned. But with rain, they have returned, and maybe slightly settled in. Janjarak the black-winged stilt is back, maybe the last to leave; wayan the white-faced heron, one of the last, now here again; sandpipers and dotterels— it’s hard to see exactly. Plus seven white ibis, three straw-necked and, for something different, two big shelducks plodding and poking around the water’s edges, not deep enough to swim. Then there are the djiddy djiddy wagtails who’ve taken an increased liking to the lake-bed in the warmer months; a ring necked lorikeet flies across. And then the friends who never left:, kwirlam the swamp hen, and even little cooli the buff banded rail not so shy. The birds, not quite circus animals, reappearing; in not quite the order they disappeared, but something like a mirroring, something like a breathing.