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.)

A couple of weeks ago I was standing by the lake’s edge one morning, with chai, when from behind came a thunderous tearing crack, followed very soon after by a crash. It was a couple of days after rains, so I thought it might have been a branch falling from one of the larger gums. On the lake, meanwhile, all the purple swamphens, plus a couple of roaming Australian shelducks, had all paused what they were doing, and fully extended their necks, craning to see what had caused the noise. For me the noise, while audible, was not so significant, but for the birds it seemed to be of utmost importance. Their pause continued, waiting for anything to follow, but nothing came. Eventually the swamphens began mostly moving slowly towards their hideout in the reeds; the shelducks stayed put—for a couple of minutes they seemed to move more cautiously, their necks still extended, until gradually one by one they began retuning to their morning work.

Today I again passed by the branch fallen from one of the large gums. Someone had dragged it back from the walkway so that its snapped end seemed to extend almost directly from where the trunk met the ground, its smaller branches pointing up, its leaves no longer green but a crumpled, dryed-out brown. I looked up to where it had fallen from, and followed another branch still attached with leaves still green and life-filled. And maybe it is this simple: What is life? It is that which is perceived, with all organs open, when I look at the difference between the clump of dried, rusty leaves of the fallen branch, and the vibrant springing green of the ones higher up, still attached.

I have often looked at the dryer lake and thick green grass and wondered what it would be like to run it—to step out into it and go. This day, instead, I walk with a small group of mostly family out onto what is a kind of island or spit during the wetter months, but now a dryland edge of the north-east corner. My companions sit by what in winter would be the lake’s edge, grass now lapping against the shore, somehow still held back by this once high-tide line. I get up at one point, and take a few steps out into it—out amongst the grass—thinking snakes would be avoiding the heat of the day, or else preparing somewhere drier for winter to come. I don’t go too far—a few paces maybe—and am surprised to see an immediate up-surging of life. With each step a little flurry of white-winged moths (or maybe butterflies—small winged insects in any case). I take another step, and more fly up out of the depths of the stems of grass, then fall back into it again. Another step, another puff of small, white, flying life. Even now, amongst all this dryness, all this death— the life of the lake.

At the northern end of the lake—in these dry months when it’s not a lake of water but a lake of grass—the dead grey tree stumps stick up out of the shifting ground of green. And up on the highest of these branches, on a sharp point where trunk once thrived but then dried and split, there sits—in silent, steely repose—a bird of white; the only things giving it away is its form and slightly lighter colour than the trunk and branches. It sits and watches and waits. I have seen it before, and later, on other days—one day appearing from the grass to return to its perch, the black splashes on its wings enough to name it—the black shouldered kite. Bird of the northern lake, now dry.