The south bank was quiet before the first honk, which was the bet. The bet paid. The light came in thin and very kind. The reeds were still drying. The air was the sort the older drakes call “agreeable,” and they call it that, you understand, as a reproof to any weather that might try for more.
Nothing happened for an hour, and it happened beautifully.
The bread queue at the East Bank, watched from a respectful distance, kept a composure regular readers will not recognise. The rate sat near eight crusts to the hour. That is a figure the pond has not seen since the cooler months. If it holds, it is a return toward what earlier dispatches were content to call ordinary, and ordinary, after the weeks just past, would not be the worst thing to report. Two mallards in the third position held a low conversation. There seemed no call to interrupt it, so it was not interrupted.
A party of goslings made a circuit of the southern shallows with enormous seriousness. Hettie, the standout of the spring recital, was the one taking the corners with deliberate care. The party went round once, paused at the edge, conferred a moment, and set off on a second circuit. There is no syllabus. There is, plainly, a syllabus.
A phalarope stood on the southern flat. (A phalarope, probably. The identification is not guaranteed.) It seemed to be waiting for something no one else could see. Three minutes passed. Then it took two steps left, thought better of it, and stepped back. Whatever it was waiting for, it is still waiting.
The week’s standing matters held their positions too. The dabchicks at the west pier continue to deny they have been unsettled, and now deny it with a force a calmer family might reconsider. The fish are elsewhere. The lily pad’s central place in the southern waters is unfilled, and the morning gave no sign the pond is in any rush to fill it. Asked yesterday for a position, the Subcommittee declined to hold one.
At the western end there is a little group of the older drakes, three or sometimes four, who keep their own arrangement and have done as long as the older drakes have been the older drakes. They talked, low and steady, the whole hour. What they said was inaudible at any distance worth attempting. What it amounted to was perfectly clear. They were settling matters, as they settle them every morning, and the matters were being settled to their satisfaction. This paper does not know what was said, and so cannot report it, and would not report it if it could; the privilege of going unpublished is one of the few the pond can offer the birds who have been here longest. Mornings like this ought to be filed more often. The day’s news, when it comes, will come. In the meantime there is the light on the reeds, and a few small persons making careful progress around a familiar piece of water, and this paper would put it to you that these are not the lesser of the two reports.