A fish came back to the west pier on Thursday. One fish. A single small fish, silver up top and less silver beneath, surfaced shortly after the second honk, made one circuit of the pier’s leeward side, and was gone in about three breaths. It is the first reliable sighting at this station since the sixteenth of April. That was the day the dabchicks wrote to say the fish “appear since Thursday to have gone elsewhere.”
Three weeks is a long absence for a fish, in news terms. The dabchicks had marked the departure to the day. The gazette had run the matter under the heron’s column ever since, the two being held, by most of the pier, to be connected. So a fish, even one fish, even for three breaths, is a development.
It was seen by two drakes, one travelling and one resident, and by the long-resident frog of the southern waters, briefly, on his way to another appointment. This correspondent was also at the pier, on an unrelated errand. The frog, leaving, allowed that the fish was “to his knowledge” of a kind seen beneath the pier in seasons past. He would go no narrower. The fish, by withdrawing as fast as it did, had not given him the courtesy of a longer look.
The dabchicks of the west pier were quiet.
This wants context. The dabchicks file. They file that they have not been unsettled by the heron. They file that they have not been unsettled by the absent fish. The record of their non-unsettlement is, by now, a fixture of these pages. On Thursday morning they were conspicuously quiet. Approached for a word on the recovery, the eldest of the family wished three things noted. That they had not been unsettled by the fish. That they required no formal record of the fact on this occasion. And that they would, in due course, consider a letter. Pressed, gently, on whether the terseness was itself for the record, the eldest paused four breaths and said the matter would be addressed by letter, if at all. It is the most informative thing the family has said all season.
A smaller thing, set down without comment. The sighting fell in the same hour the Subcommittee had sat, the Wednesday before, in the reeds above the south bank. Where the dabchicks were in relation to those reeds at that hour is not a matter of record. Whether the timing means anything is a question it would be unwise to be drawn on. This correspondent records only that there was no remark to be heard. HONK, softly, at some distance. The dabchicks did not turn their heads.
The Subcommittee will be asked whether the heron matter may now be called “closed (provisionally),” or whether further sightings are needed to satisfy the procedural test. The Clerk has not been approached. The fish has not come back.
There was nothing to report, the eldest dabchick would have you understand, and the family would address it by letter, if at all.