Sitting in the rain

I sit with my back against a buttress root of a huge Moreton Bay fig. The brim of my Akubra hat is not quite wide enough to stop the rain pattering gently against my face. I hold the brim with my fingers, pulling it hard on my head to counter the determined lift of the wind. I’m relatively sheltered here beneath the fig, the canopy above breaking the fall of the rain, but not stopping it entirely. Already, the rain has soaked through my trousers. They cling to my thighs, cold.

The sounds are different this morning. The rain and wind dominate. The distant traffic can barely penetrate their barrier. I hear it only in lulls between the rain squalls. The swamp hens are active despite the weather and raucous enough to be clearly audible. The first two mornings I sat here, I saw a pair mate on a patch of reeds just near me. A quick act of copulation followed by a shake of the feathers and on with fossicking through the reeds. Now there is just one on that patch and I suspect the female is sitting on a clutch of eggs in a nest in the reeds, hidden from sight.

The pair of black swans glide by, their two cygnets trailing. I am relieved and delighted to see they still have two today. Three days ago, they had four; the next day, three; and yesterday just two. I feared something had found their nest and would come back nightly for a cygnet dinner until the larder was empty. Checking the cygnets was one of the reasons I came down this morning, despite the weather. Yet it’s untrue to say ‘despite the weather’. My curiosity is so piqued by this process of sitting in nature that I was keen to come down, to see how different it was this morning with the change of weather. Just over a week into this new way of exploring nature and I am hooked. I reflect on the curious source of events that led me here, to be sitting in the rain looking for Nankeen night herons.

It began with a gift. My dear friend Janet Paterson (aka The Walking Scientist) gave me a subscription to Maggie Mackellar’s Substack newsletter The Sit Spot as a birthday present. It opened three doors. The obvious one was that it introduced me to Mackellar’s wonderful writing and the delight of receiving The Sit Spot each Tuesday. I highly recommend it. I also highly recommend Mackellar’s memoir When It Rains, a moving and lyrical exploration of grief and recovery.

I was intrigued by the notion of a sit spot. Mackellar explained in her first newsletter that she had come across the sit spot concept in Jon Young’s book What the Robin Knows, so I bought and read Young’s book. It is about bird language and connecting to nature, about learning how to observe and know what is going on around you in wild nature. It’s an eye-opening book and one I wish I’d found years ago. Central to his teaching is the notion of a sit spot, a place outside in nature (or in a suburban backyard if that’s what is available) where you go and sit daily to unobtrusively observe, with all your senses, the comings, goings, callings and interactions of nature. He recommends at least 15 minutes, but preferably longer. A half hour. Or better still, a full hour.

I was drawn to the concept but a little put off by the North American examples in Young’s book. I wanted an Australian version with Australian examples to follow. I went googling and found Nature Philosophy, and its originators Sam Robertson and Kate Rydge. They were running a 7-Day Sit Spot Challenge, beginning a few days after I first came across their website. I signed up for it, even though I knew a prior commitment would make it nigh impossible for me to do every day. I would be away for three days of the seven. But what the heck, sometimes you just have to dive in.

So, I began. I opened the second door. I found a spot by the wetland near my suburban home. I have walked around the lake countless thousands of times over the years. It’s a half-hour circuit I do almost every day, often twice. I figured I knew the lake well. I can name most of the birds I regularly see there and for years have watched it fill and dry and change with the seasons. I’ve watched the brilliant rehabilitation efforts of the local friends group and have enjoyed the increased abundance of wildlife as the regenerated bush has come back to life. Putting aside my arrogance that I did in fact already know this place, I decided I would give the sit spot challenge a go.

After my first two days of sitting, I missed three due to my work trip. On returning, I couldn’t wait to get down there the next morning. Would the herons still be there?

The Nankeen night heron is a bird I had rarely seen in my previous rapid circumnavigating of the lake. A very occasional sighting on a particular fallen tree. But in the quiet, secluded spot I chose for my sit spot, I saw four or five on the first day. They flew in as a group on burnished copper wings, elegant in flight. They separated and settled in different locations. I watched them. Motionless until they moved, which sounds obvious, but the key is in the extremes. The absolute stillness as they stand and wait. The rapid movement as they lunge and grab prey.

They were there again the next day. I saw four of them, standing in roughly the same spots as the day before. I notice the rufous shape of them in the reeds, my eye already better at picking out their form. Slowly I realise it is perhaps two breeding pairs, but I don’t know that for sure. The truth or otherwise of the thought will become apparent with time. For now, I observe and wonder.

I’m struck by how I observe. It’s more feeling that looking and listening. I sit in my spot with my senses open and allow it all in. It sounds a bit kooky and the scientist in me is sceptical, but the feeling is real. The observations are real. The herons are a case in point. I sense them more than I see them. I get a feeling for where they might be before I see them clearly.

I wondered if they would be there again, in the rain. They still have to eat after all. I look around where I think they will be but can’t see any. Yet I know they are there. I sit, the rain pattering against my face and legs. I’m getting wet but there are no mosquitos today. Small blessings. My ankles itch from the plethora of bites from previous mornings sitting here.

I see a flash of familiar copper wings across in the reeds. There! There’s one of my herons, deeper in the reeds today that it has been. Another wing flash across to my left reveals another. I only see the two today but I know they are all there, going about their business.

I will just stay five minutes longer, I tell myself. Sitting and soaking (in more ways than one!). It’s hard to drag myself away, despite the rain. It’s all more subdued than on the days when the early morning sun rays slant obliquely across the water, yet so much is happening. The mother coot is still sitting fast on her nest and her partner is frenetically bringing her food. I watch the jerky motion of his swimming as he makes his way back to the next, his beak full. One of the chicks jumps down to greet him as he comes back and the mother squawks at it. It grabs a mouthful of food from its dad and disappears back under mum’s warmth. The pink eared ducks slip out from beneath the paperbark and today for the first time I see a tiny duckling trailing them. One of the adults swims off towards the reed beds and the other one and the duckling disappear back beneath the paperbark. The blue billed ducks and the dusky moorhens are also busy, and the Pacific black ducks fly through on the other side of the paperbarks. I suddenly realise it is a flyway. They always fly through there, as they leave and return. The swallows that I saw yesterday dipping and spinning above the reed bed across the water are absent today. No doubt they are hunkered down waiting for sunshine to bring out insects. It is not just me that has noticed the mosquitoes aren’t flying in the rain.

Finally, the cold dampness seeping through the seat of my trousers and the promise of a bowl of steaming porridge with blueberries makes me get up and head home. I carry with me a growing curiosity of this place I thought I knew. I am both overwhelmed by how little I actually know and thrilled by how much I have learnt in a few hours of sitting and observing. I will be back to sit. Again, and again.

Inside

The other door opened by Janet’s gift of my subscription to Maggie Mackellar’s Sit Spot newsletter is Substack. I had been thinking of writing some sort of a newsletter or blog for a long time but had not known quite where to begin. But in Substack I have found a platform that appeals to me and that I feel able to navigate with my less-than-enthusiastic attitude to all things computer based. So here I am.

Thanks for joining me.