Having just been talking of the ways the old people worked with dolphins and rocks and tides to bring in the collective fish—and after a seaplane circled overhead all silver on the underbelly, recalling stories of American pilots landing on the river during the war, approached by dolphins and fish—we walk the shoreline by the river. And, looking down from cliffs, we spot the back of an osprey in a tuart tree—he’s also looking down at the rapidly retreating river which peels its way back from full, sucking itself out through the mouth beyond; the sun also leaning that way, crescent waxing moon with it too. A darter slinks about on a lower tree like a liquid twig, like a preying mantis in bird form, getting a better view on us, on the osprey, on the living and unliving things funnelling past in the deeper water below. The river is a kind of thick, lighter-leafy green—like a spring green today. The osprey has turned his head and shows us his brown eyeline, keeping it on us walking higher; the darter continues his movements—“big data is watching us,” I joke to my wife and sister, with only groans in reply. Mimal and dorn-dorn by other names (the birds, not the women). We walk on to the small jetty below, with higher-tide wetness on its topside, and tidal line beyond the limestone wall of the ‘beach,’ detritus washed up on its first steps—boat-wake waves seek to push up between the gaps in the planks. We walk the winding shoreline further downriver towards its mouth, past the football ground, past the two little inlets getting some of their first soakings in months, island tea trees long past dead. We walk under the concrete bridge, past the apartments, and on out and under the old, timber traffic bridge soon to be removed—my sister seems to want the wood. We watch the water moving quickly under us, past us, past a little line of a rocky limestone island—much used by pelicans—which someone built to stop another ship from crashing into the trainline bridge should one ever slip its chains in storm again. There are a few ships berthed today—Saturday in May. I watch where the water is all churning not too far from a ship on the northern side—there seems to be some extra movement there. We watch from under the bridge, as one, then two, then a few fins emerge from the water and return to it again. A pelican takes off, then another. The water still moves and churns—and then there is a shooting run of a dolphin towards the large container ship, others slide in that direction, the pelicans too. There’s a splashing, a shooting of spray against the painted red wall of the ship, pelican’s gliding in and flapping about, water thrashing, as the sky glows a golden yellow. All the dolphins come up at one point, blowing spray into the air, the pelicans paddle back and forth. The fish—maybe mullet—must be pressed up against the hull of the ship, nowhere to go except further down if they can manage. The dolphins come again and again, the pelicans too. And it’s not like the time a school of fish got stuck for hours in the shallow water in the middle of the sandbar surrounded by dolphins…but today they are, for a moment at least, wedged up against the edge of a giant steel rock wall, with nowhere much to go, dolphins and pelicans coming at them, the tide rushing out. And now, on this day, maybe we’re the only humans left watching, but surely not the only ones left caring.