Sitting on the jetty at the southern end of the lake: the sun is out. Suddenly there’s a break in the still surface water and something is poking through—a stick? Then I see it moving. I search for the corresponding concept. The small head of a long-necked turtle, and it’s gulping air. It then looks right at me…and goes quickly back under.

Two shelducks in a mating dance, and shoo-ing kwirlam the swamphen. A bit later, all birds scatter and go on alert—wardong the crow is noisy in the trees; magpies too. Then a white bird flies out—a black shouldered kite?

At the lake today two swans dance near the gazebo—one breaks off to shoo a third swan away. Manatj the white corella shoos off a flock of small ducks—hard to see at this distance—most likely teals. Some other manatj swoop the purple swamphen. Even more manatj sit atop a dead tree within the lake. And then I see the faint hint of a turtle below the water. And, nearby, a male musk duck.

I notice that the early shovelers have gone from the lake as the water gets higher, while kadar the musk duck has arrived, diving down. With all this grass come many swans. Pacific black ducks and coots are here or there; the coots diving sometimes. Swamphens, rails, egrets rest or look for food on the side.

Sitting lower in the water, more fishlike, darker, rounder head, sleeker body, diving down sleekly like a rounded spear, or like water in water: the first musk duck of the winter season—the water deep enough now for diving of this kind. The bill is without the flap of the male. Female kadar.

Sitting on the jetty, south end of the lake, where feet used to hang over and hit water last winter, sun shining, 1.3 metres—rising 4cm this working week—and from out of the water, right in front of me, slipping through the still surface layer, pops the small round head on the end of a long neck of a turtle. Yerrigan/yaarkin/yagan.

Mid July; lake level about 1.3 metres. And the Swans’ nests have been built high. They stick out like little volcanos above the surface; built against future rising waters—waters that will rise in the time it takes for the the future to birth in cradled warmth—first of egg, then nest and feathers—so that eventually it may step off into waters still lower than the nest’s edges…into another liquid.

Clear sky minus some slight cirrus at the lake. It is cold. There’s a slight easterly at the river, but it is glassy at the lake. And today there is steam on the the water, and steam coming off logs in the sun. Fungus lives on a tree branch by the lake’s eastern entrance, white and wrinkled. A djidi djidy sits on the grass by the gazebo near the water’s surface; 1.26 metres. A swan shoes a swamphen. A swamphen shoes a coot. There’s a black face cuckooshrike. And wardong the old crow gathers a loose twig from a tree—he doesn’t fly straight to any existing nest but to another branch, where he sits a while watching me watching him; maybe he doesn’t want to show me the nest…maybe it’s the first twig of the one that’s coming next.

There is a kind of owl whisperer at Lake Claremont. I see her fairly often, and we have become kind of colleagues. She has rescued barn owls from the water, and from the attack of crows. She has no qualms about picking them up, or throwing something over them if only it will help. She’s been scratched and harassed in the process—by crows, magpies and owls. She looks for them, and finds them, amongst the trees beyond the edges of the lake; she tells me where, and sometimes I can see them too—like the tawny frogmouths to the east, or the barn owls to the north west in recent years. She tells me about other ones today. I look and look and cannot find them; not like she finds them, and they find her. And yes, she does (with no negative judgment intended) slightly resemble one.