The heron is back. The west pier was under watch on Thursday between the second and fourth honks, the morning after the Sprint, and at the second honk the bird stood where it has stood all season: long-necked, still, faced at the water. It did not adjust. It blinked once, slowly, near the third honk. The gazette records the blink and declines to read anything into it.
The fish, again, were not there. The water under the pier was clear, as it was the day before. The light was good, as it was the day before. The fish were absent, as they were the day before. Whether they pulled out ahead of the bird, or because of it, or on some plan of their own to which the bird was beside the point, is a matter no longer worth putting afresh every time the thing comes round.
Here is where the count stands. Since the bird first arrived at the pier on the eighteenth of April, the gazette has logged eight oscillations. For readers who do not keep the tally at home, the arithmetic runs like this: bird arrives, fish go; bird leaves a while, fish return; bird returns, fish go. So on through the spring and the early summer, down to the fish coming back for four mornings from the third of this month, vanishing on the seventh, and the bird returning today, the ninth. Eight transitions, by that reckoning.
The dabchicks held the seaward end of the pier all morning. The eldest stood at her usual place, the family arranged in the formation that has lately been their settled posture on these matters. No statement came. Approached, the eldest of the dabchicks signalled at a distance that none was being prepared, and that a statement, if one ever came, would arrive when the family reached it and not because anyone asked. The reporter took the message and went.
Walking back to the reeds, the reporter weighed an editorial. It would have to put the hard questions squarely. Are the bird and the fish causally linked or only joined in time. Is the bird one bird or several. Do eight oscillations mean a settled arrangement or the start of a new one. Do the dabchicks know more than they let on. And it would have to face the question no editorial likes: what position to take even with every answer in hand.
The reporter weighed the editorial and put it down. The pattern is acknowledged. The pattern is not explained. The gazette has reached the edge of what reporting can honestly do, and an honest paper stops at its edge.