Before a flight to Melbourne there is time to visit the lake. It is 1.51 metres, just off the highest I’ve seen it this year (1.53). On the western side, as the northern path bends hard west, there are three yagan/yerrigan long neck turtles under the shallow water, and one is snapping at another. There are dragonflies on the southwest corner, and smaller ones still on the northern edge. Grass is still coming up through the water—a coot dives down to bring it up, while a swan puts down its neck to pull some out for its cygnets. There are other swans still sitting on big grassy nests.

Later, on the way to the airport, I see koolbardie the magpie flying next to us—we’re going about the same pace. I look over the driver’s shoulder and see we’re all clocking 70 km/h.

There is a group of three cygnets, and a group of two cygnets at the lake today. Their parents are all black, minus some underwing white, as well as the red and white of their bills, and the red of their eyes. The cygnets are all fluffy grey, save the black of their eyes and bills—they seem almost colourless. Same as the early purple swamphens are all black. Colour comes for them as the months arrive. Colour comes with adolescence and adulthood, with reproduction. Something arrives, the same way it does with the colour of the flowers on the plant. Same way it does with human beings coming of age. Same way, maybe, as poisons enter the plant. In the soul of the human being lives all the colour, lives all the flowering, lives all the poison that expresses itself in nature—all that comes down and enters the budding, growing life.

It’s already been a big day at the lake, and now the owl whisperer is telling us about some more tawny frogmouths she has found. She gives us directions to a general area, though the actual location is somewhat vague and hard to find without a specific tree description. I wonder if she gets frustrated that others can’t see them—not like she can. We walk to the area she mentions—in the parklands by the dog exercise areas. My nephew and I walk around, our necks bent up to the branches above. Nothing. She also said there was one in the same tree as last year, which is a tree I do know; and so we go and find one sitting there.

Yagan/yerrigan the longneck turtle under the water by the gazebo heading towards a kind of highway in the grasslands under the surface. “They really look like rocks,” my nephew says, comparing it to a nearby rock under water…which soon after also begins to move.

Konk nephew and I walking the east side of the lake and I notice by the side of the water, on an overhanging branch, the unusual form of a bird. It’s hard to make him out through the bushes—he’s bigger than a honeyeater, smaller than a crow or magpie, maybe even smaller than butcherbird or magpielark. He has the beak and head shape and overall form of kookaburra, though smaller. I think kingfisher, but from this angle it’s hard to see the back of his wings. I assume he’s azure. Not often seen here.

After a summer of dry lake and much grass, this next spring the grass continues to grow, but now through the water (of a wet winter), so that there looks to be as much grass as water in the lake. A lighter green and a darker green.

There are many dragonflies in the lower part of the lake at the moment—larger ones. Then, on walking round, on the northern-most border, under the figs and eucalypts, there are many smaller ones that spring up with our every step. With the increase of light and warmth they appear. And they appear with an increase of warmth and light.

There’s a dead duck by the jetty today, with some of its feathers plucked. Some say foxes, some say cats. Some say it’s the second one recently. Some weeks later I find a few Pacific duck feathers by the eastern viewing area too; and then someone has stuck the bones of what appears to be a wing into the top of the fence line, maybe to keep it away from dogs.