Light rain at the lake today. There are the usual birds of the last few days: reed warblers, coots, bardoongooba shovelers, marangana wood ducks, kwirlam the swamphen, nolyang the moorhen, yet, ngoonan, wimbin, hardheads. Plus today there’s also the nankeen night heron, a seagull and now what I believe to be a swamp harrier, all long-wingspanned and orange brown, flying low overhead. I notice only the coots make a noise in the grass on the other side, but then in comes one solitary seagull to chase the harrier away (two other seagulls fly in support) to the northern part of the lake, where the harrier pursues two black winged stilts…and then is gone from my vision.

The duck and other bird numbers at the lake are rising. Water levels must be about 1.36 metres. I don’t know if other water options are drying up. There’s the black duck, the grey teal, the pink ear, the shoveler, the dusky moorhen, coots, black winged stilts, seagulls, egrets. No musk or wood ducks or swans seen at the south end today. Water dropping, birds appearing.

I arrive at the lake today, and soon after start talking to a fellow with binoculars. I ask him if he’s seen anything in particular today. He says some musk ducks just south of where we were. I ask if it was mother and young—he said he thought so—two young. I walk down—there are pink ears and bardoongooba the shoveler, a couple of hardheads, yet the black duck and ngoonan the grey teal, and a little further out the mother with two young—kadar the musk duck. The mother is diving down and one of the adolescents is following wherever she happens to pop up, often receiving whatever she pulls up in her beak. The other young one is spending more time on its tail—pruning, preening, plucking—only slowly coming over after each of its mother’s surfacings, generally missing out on whatever food there might be, and then returning to the tail.

The fig trees are either going or being pruned at the south end of the lake. Their (introduced) wood is too soft and inviting for the (introduced) polyphagouns shothole borer which likes to introduce a fungus that it farms in the holes inside. This is seen as too much of a threat for (introduced) agricultural trees such as avocados on the city’s edges. And seeing as there is no (introduced) chemical strong enough to kill them, the (introduced) land managers of the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development have decided to remove (introduced) limbs or whole (introduced) trees.

Maybe I have been confusing boodoo the bluebill for my new friend eroodoo the hardhead for some time. Maybe not. I see the differences clearly now: hardhead has white tip on bill end, white undertip to tail, white of eye; other features, though, are somewhat similar. And today I notice that I have another diving duck on my hands.

I come across a dead koolbardie magpie in the the grasslands and big eucalypts not far from where a large branch fell down by the owl nest. His back is to the sky, all black and white, and his beak is tucked in under him—under his chest. He is in a small cupping of dark sand—not grass—and the earth seems to hold him there, like that…or his body at least; this bird of the sun, this being of the stars and skies.

Before seeing a dead koolbardie magpie I’m at the eastern viewing area again. And in the reeds below, unseen for much of the last few weeks, I see the female kadar musk duck with two young, now not so small, paddling away from the reeds and rushes and from my interruption. A little later there is koordji-koordji the reed warbler at the top of the reed, near the seedhead, the whole thing bending slightly with its little weight, and the lake so still that the entire scene is mirrored clearly in the water below. To my right is the paperbark that is always there, but today I take special note of the many dozens of layers of its skin, folded in, folded over, layering and layering like limestone. There is the sound of coots in the water, and the sound of quenda the bandicoot in the dry rustling and leaves.  

Walking the grassland and large tree area of the lake today, approaching the last of three known tawny frogmouth nests, and I see that a large branch has fallen down and now sits near the base of the nest. On getting closer it’s clear that the branch would have fallen right on the nest in the tree next door if a couple of smaller branches hadn’t deflected it and caused it to fall slightly further east. On standing at the canopy of the now fallen branch, I look directly up to see if the owl is still there in the nest—and sure enough she is.

What a moment that must have been to hear the tearing of the bark of the tree—maybe in the night—and then to hear it come crashing down onto your own tree, only to miss by a couple of wingspans. I look at her now. She remains perfectly still.