There’s been some more rain overnight and the seagulls and ibis and Pacific black ducks are back at the lake. The water has spread almost all the way to the jetty on the southern side, and has started to link up with the other puddles slightly north by the rushes and reeds. There must be about 30 gulls on the water’s eastern edge. I don’t see the ibis at first, but they’re even further east amongst the red ground-covering plant, dipping their long protrusions of beaks down into the dryer (but now-slightly-less-so) parts of the lake, claiming something there brought by rain to new life…and death. There are half a dozen black-winged stilts, two Pacific black ducks paddling in the centre, sending little ripples out from their efforts—plus another two I see a bit later in the northern part, sitting down upon the water, hoping to float, but then having to stand again. I wonder where the shelducks have gone—none left this morning, but then I spy a group of six larger ducks circling above the lake, before flying to the east; they have white underwings, but from this angle I can’t tell if they’re shelducks or wood ducks or what—amazing what a change of perspective will do; I watch them fly by, and turn back to the lake, only to see two shelducks come in from the north—were they two that peeled off?—to land on a shallow stretch, by the jetty, only recently wet. 

But before the ducks I watch all the seagulls, previously quiet, start up a gradually growing racuous, first one, then another, growing louder, then many, then in a small group they suddenly, noisily, lift off, with most of the others joining them, except three, then two, as the rest fly higher in a noisy white cloud, disappearing off to the south west—ocean or river; a third then reappears and lands near one of the others, while the more solitary gull stands by the water’s edge to the north. And if I hadn’t seen their great departure and had only arrived now I would have thought there had only been but three gulls at the lake this morning (plus kwirlam the purple swapmhens frolicking to the north, and kanamit the welcome swallow flying low overhead, and dilibrit the magpie lark and djidi djidi the wagtail in the mix. the sound of the grey butcherbird, kookaburras to the south and east dipping down for food, the odd wardong on the water’s edge, half a dozen dotterels, a little buff banded rail suprising me not far from my feet,  and a faroff bird on dead tree limb in the northern part of the lake—a kite maybe—plus all the rest.) For what’s revealed in a moment must be joined to other moments, as best we can, in imagination—forward and backwards—resting as we must on the data of these momentary bits, and our own inner activation. But still, nice to be reminded of the bits we must miss.