Back to sitting

It’s early morning and the sun’s rays are casting long shadows. The air is crisp. A slight mist sits over the lake. I am back sitting in my spot under the Moreton Bay fig. I haven’t been here for months. Not for seasons. Summer has come and gone, autumn and now winter too. It’s spring, almost a year since I first came here to sit and watch. I thought I’d keep it up as a regular practice; it was such a rich experience. But I dropped it. The busyness of doing got in the way of sitting here being. As the days drifted by into weeks, then months and seasons, I would think sometimes of the rufous night herons I had so loved to watch from my sit spot. I wondered if they were still around.

Now I cast my eyes out across the reed beds, looking for a patch of russet. I catch a bird-like movement but can’t see it clearly. I lift my binoculars and focus them. It’s a swamp hen. I can’t help but feel disappointed.

I sit and watch. Listen. It’s remarkably noisy. There is the hum of traffic on the road up beyond the edge of the bushland, but most of the sound is closer. I can distinguish at least three different frog calls, but can’t put a name to any of them. It’s something I keep meaning to work on, learning frog calls. I know a few, but none of the ones I can hear this morning. But really, the cacophony today is of the birds. The frog song is dimmed by it.

The swamp hens are raucous. A flock of corellas flies overhead, chattering loudly. Black swans trumpet their dominance and coo to mates. A raven lands in the tree above me and lets out its mournful caw. Something upsets a pair of dusky moorhens and they screech and race across the water in pursuit of something, but I can’t see what. Perhaps a tiger snake? I’m guessing, without proof. (Snakes have been seen around here recently; hastily erected signs warn of the danger. Me, I long to see one here, that little bit of wildness they symbolise so evocatively.)

Then I hear it – the three bell-like notes of a little grass bird. I stare into the reeds where I think the sound is coming from but can’t see anything. I hear it again, from further afield this time. My head and binoculars swivel in that direction. Still, I can’t see it. I hear it again and again, calling first from here and then from over there, close and then far and then from I don’t know where. Clearly more than one, calling to each other, either in attraction or warning – I don’t know which. My eyes follow where my ears think the calls are coming from but I don’t see anything. I have never seen a little grass bird. They are known to be elusive, yet common. I once heard of a photographer who had spent eight years in pursuit of this little bird before he managed to capture it with his camera. Strange how we feel that urge to see. The little grass bird is not, judging from illustrations and photos, an especially handsome bird. Its beauty is its voice, which is readily heard. ‘Tee-ti-teee, tee-ti-teee.’ I content myself with listening to it without seeing it, and resign myself to not seeing the rufous herons. I’ll just have to come back. I take the long route home, past the little patch of fairy orchids.

Inside

Most of my sitting this week has been at my desk. I am deep into the copyedit of my book. This is the phase where a professional copyeditor has been through my manuscript, picked up my grammatical errors and highlighted where I have assumed too much prior knowledge in my reader or simply fumbled with my sentence structure. It’s intense work going through her suggestions but I’m enjoying the process and know my book will be better for this attention to detail. I’m grateful to be working with such a fabulous team at Thames and Hudson Australia.  What’s for Dinner? is about the plants, animals and farmers that feed us and what our decisions mean for them, us and the planet. It will be out in the middle of next year – such a long process to create a book!

Thanks for reading,

Jill