I’m back at the lake this year,
thinking I may have left it behind.

I’m on the verge of illness, with clear skies
and a gentle south westerly.

I get to the gazebo and am slightly disappointed
there’s someone already sitting there,
not looking like they’ll be moving soon.

A woman, about 70, faces north, reading a bird book.
Yes, I look over her shoulder, but then
I settle in, standing, looking west.

Something lands in the paperbark in the water nearby,
slightly bigger than a honeyeater, but then I lose it.
Soon after, there’s something on a branch, facing me,
chest mostly white, turning itself slightly to reveal
a flashing blue of wings and an oversized beak.
Kanyinak.

“Kingfisher,” I say to her, not knowing how she’ll respond,
“probably sacred.”
“What?” she replies.
“Kingfisher,” I say again, and point to the branch.
“Oh!” she cries, “You know I have never seen one,”
she says in Scandinavian accent, “even though
I have been looking for many years.”

At that moment, he turns around
and gives us a full view of his blue-green back.
“Oh!” she says again.

“I saw you with a bird book, so I thought you might
be interested,” I venture. “I’ve only ever seen a couple here.”

We end up talking for the next hour or more.

“Why do you come here looking at birds?” she asks.
“Well, I guess we have many to look at.”
“Yes, but we also have many in Sweden—
there are birds everywhere.”
She points at the birds on the nearby signs:
“I have seen many of these here,
but not this one: the kite, or the kestrel.”
“They’re here sometimes, so too other raptors like
hobbies and harriers,” I reply, but we have to translate sometimes
from Noongar to English to Latin to Swedish
and back again.

“And I have seen the ducks,” she says.
“Have you seen the musk duck or the bluebill?” I ask.

“I tend more to hear birds
than see them,” she says.
“I am part of a group for birds in Sweden.”

Soon after, a female and an adolescent bluebill appear,
and I point them out—she seems dubious, mainly due to their
lack of blue bills. But then she says, “look, there is the male!”

“And over there, near the trees, that bigger duck, sitting lower
in the water, with its tail up, that’s a musk,” I tell her.

We talk about colonisation, about the USA, about all the
signage for everything in Australia.
We talk about volunteerism, about her family here,
about the approach of 2029 (200 years of Western Australia).
We talk about migration and multiculturalism.
We talk about places in Sweden I have been,
places in Western Australia she has seen.

Soon after, a harrier appears to the north.
“Oh!” she says again.

There is more.
Eventually I feel it is time to go.

“My wife is probably wondering where I am,”
I say. She asks for my contact details.
“You have the same initials as my daughter.”
“What is your work?” I ask.
“I am a psychologist.”

“Thank you for pointing out the kingfisher,” she says,
“I will always remember that.”