Evening walking along the clifftops by the river, storm blowing north to south further west, and now south; the weather still warm, more like a tropical low dipping down, though slightly past us, than a cold front come in from below to batter. There is lightening there, to the south—horizontal fork lightening stretching from cloud to cloud, south to north, like I don’t think I’ve ever seen. Then ten seconds in between. And then the thunder comes. There are cumulo-nimbus down that way, with sheets of rain we watch from the top of Cyprus Hill. 

(And was this the day we also saw the first rainbow of the season to the east, fairly faint and partial?) 

We walk back along the clifftop. And as we start to turn away from the water, my eye is caught by a large rippling bubble—an aftermath of displaced water, almost the size of a dinghy—dolphin I’m thinking, but nothing (re)emerges, there by the edge of the sandbar—Katie thinks shark. I watch and watch for minutes, but nothing disrupts the surface of the water again.

While this morning the birds are gone from the lake once more; ibis all gone, shelducks gone, wayan the white faced gone, don’t see any sandpipers or dotterels, only two janjarak black-winged stilts remain on the shoreline.