The birds at the lake have adopted the regular pattern of recent days and weeks. In the centre it is mostly coots, a few hardheads, and maybe a couple of shelducks. Towards the north, on dead tree stumps, are a couple of kakak cormorants. Manatj also find dead log spots to walk their white feathers down to the water. The rest of the birds, though—mostly ducks—stick to the more shallow edges, occasionally flying forward in a crowd towards the lake’s centre if anyone pauses too long on the walkway, or doubles back; in there are teals, shovelers, pink ears, black ducks, but also stilts. I walk the edge today around to the jetty, and resting there on the bank are some black ducks as well as wood ducks; one black duck has a couple of young with it still. A black winged stilt stands on the nesting spot left by a coot at the end of the jetty. He flies off when I arrive, doubles back around, makes a lot of complaining noise while bobbing his head up and down, lands on the shore to the west, then retakes his position once I leave. Water levels are 1.27 metres and falling.

I walk towards the gazebo—there are maleleucas flowering white and full along the branches. A swan sticks its head up above the seeds of the grasses. An ibis is busy in the grass further north. A night heron lands on the bush with other ibis. At the gazebo I notice an abandoned swan’s nest with another stilt perched upon it. A coot has some new chicks. Two swans dance slowly together while another eats grass nearby, not far from four small cygnets eating too. 

More stilts walk high in the north west shallows. There are many high pitched songs amongst the tuarts to the north of the lake. And near the north east corner a cloud of white-tailed black cockatoos fly over.

Amongst it all, there are boys playing cricket, and a girls school on some kind of scavenger hunt with nature-based observation stations scattered around the lake; they seem to notice some lorikeets, but not the cockatoos. The eucalypts in the park are shedding their kindling bark for the fire of summer. Further into the parkland as I approach the car, a woman sits on a bench—she has about seven dogs running around nearby, one of whom wishes to say hello. And then I pass by a group of corellas in the grass eating the seeds of a yellow flower like cat’s claw—a kind of smaller dandelion; they go past the full flowers themselves, leaving them, but instead specifically seeking out the the older ones that have gone to seed.