Where have you been?
The darkling way, the bird path, the open hand. The Record of Dongshan In the first few days of the month, pallid cuckoos arrive, and fantailed cuckoos, and shining-bronze cuckoos, calling, calling all day, and at night after moonrise – See?See?See?See?See?See? See. Here. Their host birds rush to bring out a first brood from eggs laid before the cuckoos arrived, or to complete their nests if they themselves have only just returned from migration – satin flycatchers! Swallows make reconnaissance flights over dams, checking for insect life, and skirl in and out of the sheds and under eaves where they build their mud cups. The equinox is here and wild weather passes over the island as storms emerge from the Southern Ocean and track eastwards, to collide with tropical air that streams down off the Coral Sea; atmospheric rivers pour themselves out over the islands of Aotearoa New Zeal