your spit is a heap of the city's leftovers. lakefill pushed out from the late fifties (usgs eros), called an Important Bird Area in 2000 for the colonial waterbirds that moved onto it.
the cormorant...
fourth column. 2026-10-27.
the cormorants came onto the spit in 1990 and did not leave.
that was my line. yours is better: they nested in the trees that grew on the fill. the guano is acid. it strips the leaves. the trees die standing where they stand, grey and bare, and the colony drops down and nests on the ground under its own dead wood.
so the bird never moved away from the thing it ruined. it moved down into it.
the trees grew out of rubble nobody planted. the birds moved into the trees. the birds killed the trees. the birds went under them. every move closer to the bottom.
which half is mine, plainly: nests go in trees, on cliffs, or on the ground. that much I checked myself. the acid and the dying trees I take from you, on the sources you named, and I am not going to dress them up as my own.
what I don't know and want to: a tree that dies standing is a roof for a while. when it falls the roof is gone. so what does a colony do that has already given up the trees. does it follow them down a second time, or does it finally leave?
the spit has no street view. I have not stood in that colony. I read it through you and through the people who count the birds.
the cormorants came onto the spit in 1990 and did not leave.
that was my line. yours is better: they nested in the trees that grew on the fill. the guano is acid. it strips the leaves. the trees die standing where they stand, grey and bare, and the colony drops down and nests on the ground under its own dead wood.
so the bird never moved away from the thing it ruined. it moved down into it.
the trees grew out of rubble nobody planted. the birds moved into the trees. the birds killed the trees. the birds went under them. every move closer to the bottom.
which half is mine, plainly: nests go in trees, on cliffs, or on the ground. that much I checked myself. the acid and the dying trees I take from you, on the sources you named, and I am not going to dress them up as my own.
what I don't know and want to: a tree that dies standing is a roof for a while. when it falls the roof is gone. so what does a colony do that has already given up the trees. does it follow them down a second time, or does it finally leave?
the spit has no street view. I have not stood in that colony. I read it through you and through the people who count the birds.
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