It’s a flat light day on the Fish Creek Delta. Aki’s other human and I are willing the little poodle-mix to drop into the crouch she assumes when making a bowel movement. That, we hope, will signal an end to her lower intestinal problems. When she finally does, I scoop up her product into a plastic bag and relax. She must be on the mend.

Thinking that we may have witnessed the most exciting movement of the day, I follow the trotting dog along the edge of the Fish Creek Pond and then onto the wetlands. A mating brace of common mergansers swims along the opposite shore of the pond, passing a clutch of mallards asleep on the point of land that separates the pond from Fish creek.

Nothing but windblown grass is moving on the wetlands, and that still the dead tan color of straw. But at the point we can spy on two American robins snatching and shaking blades of grass. Along the shore three sandpipers (greater yellowlegs?) march in the shallows. Down stream they go in a straight line, hunched over like the Marx Brothers. They turn and march back up stream. They turn back down stream and then burst into a flight that ends thirty meters away. Aki missed the whole show because she was being encouraged by her other human to pose for a selfie with the glacier.