Saturday morning at the lake again. My wife Katie and I are at the gazebo. And over on the (re)new(ed) eastern shoreline—a spit formerly watery, now dry—next to an all-black swan, sits an all-white bird, about two-thirds the size of his neighbour. There are also some ibis nearby in their melaleuca perch; but almost immediately I ‘know’ the all-white bird is kakka bakka—the western spoonbill. He is preening and pruning his white feathers with his long white bill which was, at first, unseen, but which comes gradually into greater view, with the spooned-out tip on its end.

The ibis with their long, curved, almost-proboscis-like bills good for spearing down deep into cracks and softer earth; the spoonbill with a long straight bill with rounded tip good for wide swinging arcs over slightly submerged ground, like a prospector surveying for gold.