The first real cold front of the year has arrived, bringing lightening, thunder, wind and rain. Up to this the rest has been mere tropical lows dipping down, I would say. But the lake today looks almost full, or full to where the grass has advanced over the long summer at least. And the scouters of the last few weeks have brought back mates. From four yet Pacific black ducks yesterday we now have three or four dozen. The janjarak black winged stilts have remained in numbers—half to one dozen. Six nymiarak shelducks chase one another—one stands near five swans that sit among the grass of the western bank, pulling it up. Kwirlam the swaphen is still here of course, now outnumbered. Kanamit the welcome swallow swells up and down in a moving cloud in the south east corner. And about a dozen marangana wood ducks keep under the fig trees in their usual spot to the south. It’s almost as if they’re all adopting their positonings. Anyone seing the lake today and at its equivalent level at the end of last year might say: ”This place does not change! Even the very birds are the same.” 

I look around and the black and shelducks are actually swimming; and actually gliding down and landing on the water—although I do watch two black ducks come into land where a dozen or so stand amongst the puddles between the red-coloured ground cover, reaching out their feet to the water and, abruptly, suddenly, pulling up short. The swans on the other side, mostly in the grass, still stand. The wood ducks do a bit of both. And the ibis seem to have moved even further north, preferring the dryer bits. No more seagulls today, they seem to be a kind of pioneer, a first responder, though easily despondent; something in them knowing this is not typically their place, or mostly only with first rains.

While something in all these other birds seems to know this is their place, waiting patiently for first rains, sending testers, and then come the numbers. Something in them seems to know. A kind of patterning. But not a kind of thinking. There’s no doubt, or judging. They are following a kind of topography. A kind of languaging. One spoken here for eons. They do as they must—as they are directed by a patterning of the seasons without room for any reasoning or freedom. Not like us. We have to chose something—to live in accordance with a greater lawfullness…or not. One is naturally nature. In the other—something must be created.

There’s been some more rain overnight and the seagulls and ibis and Pacific black ducks are back at the lake. The water has spread almost all the way to the jetty on the southern side, and has started to link up with the other puddles slightly north by the rushes and reeds. There must be about 30 gulls on the water’s eastern edge. I don’t see the ibis at first, but they’re even further east amongst the red ground-covering plant, dipping their long protrusions of beaks down into the dryer (but now-slightly-less-so) parts of the lake, claiming something there brought by rain to new life…and death. There are half a dozen black-winged stilts, two Pacific black ducks paddling in the centre, sending little ripples out from their efforts—plus another two I see a bit later in the northern part, sitting down upon the water, hoping to float, but then having to stand again. I wonder where the shelducks have gone—none left this morning, but then I spy a group of six larger ducks circling above the lake, before flying to the east; they have white underwings, but from this angle I can’t tell if they’re shelducks or wood ducks or what—amazing what a change of perspective will do; I watch them fly by, and turn back to the lake, only to see two shelducks come in from the north—were they two that peeled off?—to land on a shallow stretch, by the jetty, only recently wet. 

But before the ducks I watch all the seagulls, previously quiet, start up a gradually growing racuous, first one, then another, growing louder, then many, then in a small group they suddenly, noisily, lift off, with most of the others joining them, except three, then two, as the rest fly higher in a noisy white cloud, disappearing off to the south west—ocean or river; a third then reappears and lands near one of the others, while the more solitary gull stands by the water’s edge to the north. And if I hadn’t seen their great departure and had only arrived now I would have thought there had only been but three gulls at the lake this morning (plus kwirlam the purple swapmhens frolicking to the north, and kanamit the welcome swallow flying low overhead, and dilibrit the magpie lark and djidi djidi the wagtail in the mix. the sound of the grey butcherbird, kookaburras to the south and east dipping down for food, the odd wardong on the water’s edge, half a dozen dotterels, a little buff banded rail suprising me not far from my feet,  and a faroff bird on dead tree limb in the northern part of the lake—a kite maybe—plus all the rest.) For what’s revealed in a moment must be joined to other moments, as best we can, in imagination—forward and backwards—resting as we must on the data of these momentary bits, and our own inner activation. But still, nice to be reminded of the bits we must miss.

After the first rains came some birds, perhaps we could say ‘the usual suspects’. Now after more rain we again go to the lake and find water filling, growing wider (or else the water table rising), and for the first time since it reached its serious dryness, yet—the Pacific black ducks—are back; there are about half a dozen, some of them even look as if they’re swimming, or at least floating. White ibis again, straw necked ibis—rain-time opportunists. The two shelducks are back again, coming and going as they have been these last few weeks and months, often doing their best spoonbill impersonations in the shoreline shallows. Wayan the whitefaced heron is here, so often as he is, in the backdrop. More janjarak black winged stilts—maybe half a dozen. Dotterels still, maybe a couple of new arrivals. And of all things we see a swan—sitting on the water at one point; two days later he’ll again be gone, as will the Pacific black ducks. But more janjarak will come. Wayan will stay, as will the dotterels and shelducks. And, eventually, the other ducks too will return, and all the others. Yet another breathing in and out in the bigger breathing of the seasons and the year, both for water and for all its attendants/attendance.

A couple of months ago someone at the lake said to me, “My wife and I have decided that the water isn’t going down any further because it’s reached the water table.” Something in the way he said it made me sceptical. And, anyway, I try not for explanations but for portraying. And so, in the meantime, though I have gone away and come back again, the lake, it must be said, has not dried out completely, though hot dry weather has persisted. And when it has rained new puddles have formed, but they too have not dried out during further hot dry weather that followed. So, without reaching for an explanation (perhaps failing), but reaching through portrayal, which my shoreline colleagues have somehow added to, we might well be forced to say that we are not looking so much at the drying water of the lake sucking itself away; but rather the breathing of the water level of the whole area—the so-called water table. If so, it is less a case of something drying from the outside in (or topside down), but rather something rising and falling from the inside out (or underside up).

At the lake again today I see Kwirlam the purple swamphen in a little puddle of water by the edge of the reeds he likes to inhabit this time of year. This bath sits under a little dead-log overhang, and seems now just deep enough for him to sit in and make a few red-beak head-dives under the water and then spill this over his back and wings, wetting his feathers. He does this rapidly—over and over again—diving down head first, while crouching, with the water falling over his back. After a dozen or so of these, he steps out and shakes himself a little in the sunshine.

At the lake today I see three manatj corellas head south over the pools of water. There have been many on the streets of Cottesloe closer to the ocean pecking at the cones of Norfolk pines and, maybe, other roots and seeds. But I realise it’s been a while since I’ve seen many here—these three seem to look down at the water, but decide to keep on flying. I lose them after a while, or look away, only to find a short time later koolbardie the magpie chasing three more manatj—or maybe the same—out over the lake, away from the golfcourse and trees. 

Djeran, adulthood season; first rains, without the rain.

We are deep into the season of adulthood, butting up against the season of fertility. And still the water hasn’t come. Kwirlam the swamp hen has been running around the lake today, chasing one another, and there is plenty of room to run. There’s mud and grass, but not much water, and only a few other birds in the morning sun: a couple of shelducks, three black winged stilts and a handful of little noodilyarong black fronted dotterels. Other than that, it’s a wide open field to chase and hunt and flap and fly and run. And they do, one on one, past each other, their red beaks low low to the ground, their black bodies moving on their whirling legs, their purple chests bent down. Sometimes they move so fast they might as well spread their wings a little and fly for a time, their feet protruding behind—until they come to land again—then letting them down early, reaching for the ground. 

Seasons have their laws to follow, even if the rains don’t come.

I arrive at the lake this morning and there seems to be one helluva racket amongst the birds by the big trees to the east. Not only are the lorikeets all screeching, wardong is crowing up a storm, and jakalak the red wattlebird is giving away his true name loudly, incessantly. And even old dili-brit the magpie lark is there singing out his high-pitched protest. I see koolbardie the magpie on a branch or two, though he doesn’t seem to say much—one of the few. And I wonder if there might be a raptor circling higher, or even perched among the trees, for they don’t seem to be chasing much, or evading either. It’s just an all-round protesting cacophony. I walk the path and approach the lakeside edge, and there spot a few people looking up at a forking ledge amongst the gums. And there in one little hollow sits a still and furry morning goomal, the possum, awake in the day, kept awake no doubt by all this bothering. Some town official has been keeping the birds at bay, or at least that’s what I gather from what I overhear the nearby people say. I walk a little south, and look up at him, all pink-nosed and big, black eyed. I go and watch the lake for a while, and wait for the whole thing to pass over, the whole thing to subside. Eventually people seem to move on and even the birds do too. I walk back a little and look up at the little fella in the tree. There is no more screeching. Jakalak remains though, looking on inquisitively, jumping from branch to branch. The official is doing a lap to catch lead-less dogs, while someone keeps on filming and taking photos, wanting me to know everything she’s just learned: “The ranger threw sticks at the birds; not usually out in the day apparently; probably traumatised, the little thing.” Someone on a bike stops to ask me if it’s a koala; their accent is South African. They then immediately suggest “or a possum” before I can reply. I can see his little limbs are shaking. He’s licking some of them. I walk around the other side of the tree—he doesn’t seem bloody or pecked at, like one I saw here a year or two ago, in nearby tree, who had a run-in with the crows. I consider calling the same person I did back then, and waiting for him and wildlife officers and more town employees to come. But goomal looks like he’s stopped shaking, I can’t see any blood, and the birds seem to have moved on for the most part. Last year the possum eventually moved to another tree. And I wonder what more could be done for this one now. So I get on, no birds left screaming, no people left to bother him, for now.

(Post script: I come again the next day and, from that spot at least, he is gone.)