Some days the lake offers a clear view into things. There are levels to this—-depths. But you still have to look through the things of it. Like today: juvenile shelducks, more than one hardhead, a couple of small cormorants, corellas in a tree, wood ducks in the wood, swans and stilts at the jetty, crows lifting leaves with beaks under fig trees at the south end, the sound of djiddy djiddy with its young, wimbin and teals and bardoongooba ducks. Coots shoo swamphens. An adolescent shelduck shoos other ducks. Hardheads dive. And you remember the reed warbler, from before.