In still-dim light just past dawn, I cycled the parkway to Aplin’s Weir, revelling in my freedom of motion and in the chorus of birdsong awakening the city of Townsville. Magpie geese honked nasally, a great bowerbird rasped out scratchy hisses, and rainbow bee-eaters trilled rolling vocalizations thick with avian burr. On the far side of the Ross River, in Annandale, I paused to observe a male Australasian pipit perform courtship flights above the lush, brackish wetlands. The small, striped bird flew upward from his shrubby perch, after which he interspersed bouts of hovering – each of which he concluded with a shouted “twzeer!” – with forward glides, as though he were rather shakily writing a sentence across the sky. On my return to the house, I sat at my writing desk, watched house sparrows foraging in our yard, and composed Avian Portraits III.