Approaching mid birak
and the end of the calendar year.
Things seem slow at the lake today.
Maybe it’s me,
maybe both.

We seem to be at the beginning
of another warming time.

The wind is from the south east.
New Moon tomorrow morning,
with peak south for the month.
The Sun’s peak south for the year
comes Sunday, here.

Near the south end of the lake
there are four birds
looking similar, but not alike.
Two are adolescent coots mostly black
with white fronts—but the other two—maybe they’re
coots or grebes.
I wait.
The coots dive under by jumping up like 
springboarders, then eventually float back up
to the surface full bodied like rising bubbles.
The others birds are slightly greyer…
I wait as they stay on the surface…
then one slips quietly under,
as a diving duck might, like a bluebill or musk,
and comes back up gently, head first…
grebes.

There are much fewer birds at the south end
under the figs, and none near the jetty.

At the gazebo I watch a coot
chase away wimbin the pink ear
into the area of a second coot
that doesn’t seem to care.
Shortly after, three yet Pacific black ducks
come into the area of the second coot
and promptly turn around
as he starts following them
into the area of the first coot,
who doesn’t seem to care.

A third coot mother feeds
its adolescent near the gazebo.
But after a while I see it
peck the back of the neck
of its young, forcing it away.

Swan parents are out feeding
with their single cygnet.
The ibis are squabbling again in the 
melaleuca bushes.
A kooridor egret flies over
and lands in the shallower water to the north.

I walk past the shaded eastern end of the island
now more populous with yet, maybe shovelers.
And when passing the northern end,
spy swans and wayan the white-faced heron,
and maybe even a white-necked heron in there.