Notes from the water's edge

There is a concrete culvert where the creek meets the channel, and for three autumns now the same great blue heron has stood on its lip like a doorman.

The tide tables had this one circled for a month. Minus tides in early September land at a civilised hour here, and a −1.2 opens up the lower shelf that is usually under a metre of surge.

People ask what I use, so here is the whole system. It took four years of abandoned apps and half-filled notebooks to arrive at something this boring.

For a few weeks every spring and autumn, Vaux's swifts use an old brick chimney near the library as a roost on their migration.

Three days of rain, the first real storm of the winter. I went up the creek trail as soon as it eased, partly to see the water and partly because I'd been inside too long.

A slow day on purpose. I walked the oak loop with a hand lens and no plan beyond looking at lichen, which I have walked past for years without really seeing.

For about two years I carried a big telephoto lens on every walk.