Thursday morning, Martin Cox and I are making the circle at Echo Park Lake, 7 a.m. Martin is an avid bird watcher, and most of what I know about the waterfowl at the lake comes from him. This morning, there are a couple of dozen exercisers -- joggers, Tai Chi practitioners, walkers. Almost all of the people are moving around the lake in a counterclockwise direction, and Martin and I are going the opposite way. Usually, I choose counterclockwise, too, for no particular reason except habit. The homeless people have not yet arrived with blankets and sleeping bags to snooze on the lawns. I am guessing that some of them keep their things, and sleep, behind Vons on Liberty Street.

Martin and I are talking about the semi-rare Ross's goose who lives at the lake year-round, keeping company with the domestic and Chinese geese.

Martin says Ross, as he calls the goose, is a good example of a certain type of Echo Park resident: one of a kind, came from somewhere else, got separated from its flock, landed here by accident and liked it, keeps odd company. That's the gist of how Martin described the goose, whose gender we don't know. It's a tiny thing, by goose standards, the size of a mallard duck, with delicate features, almost all white but with a flare of black tail feathers. Most Ross geese nest in the far northern reaches of Canada and in Alaska. This one now swims close to Martin and I, calmly taking a look.

Then Martin spots a night-crowned heron fishing on the cement bank of the lake, the second heron we've seen. A few minutes earlier we walked underneath a great blue heron that was sitting high in a eucalyptus tree, its neck curled close to its body. I've seen it before, on the island, which, though connected to the "mainland" of the park by a gated bridge, is off limits to most humans. Martin believes there is a heron nest in the park somewhere, and a few moments later we see a brown speckled heron juvenile.

Like myself, Martin worries that the Prop. O-funded cleanup of the lake will upset the very specific ecosystem here.

The level of activity at 7-something a.m. is much higher than it is at noonish, the hour at which I have usually seen the lake. Cormorants are fishing, the ducks are swimming faster, turtles are not yet sunning. The sun has not yet dried the grass, and so no people practise guitar, play chess or lounge or sleep. The pigeons and other birds are not yet napping. The grebes are busy, but they always seem busy, even at high noon.

Martin has been told by a parks and rec person that the lake is home to some ancient large bass -- huge things that eat the other fish (which are stocked for recreational fishing) and are big enough to eat ducklings on ocassion. People fish for the bass but rarely catch them.

At the lotus bed Martin and I both marveled that there are still blossoms, even a few buds, this late in the season. The other day I counted fourteen. (I had said to myself that if I counted twenty I would blog them.) There are thousands (or at least many hundreds) of pods getting ready to drop. They look like brown shower heads, and they also remind me of radio receivers, tilted or upright, tuned to the music of every direction.

I have been hoping to see a particular mated pair of ducks: the male is black with a large tuft on his head, and the female is white with crisp brown patches. I usually spot them near the island. A friend of Martin's named them Hairdo and Dulce. Today Martin and I see two other black ducks with tufts, but no sign of the pair. Perhaps we'd have met them had we walked counterclockwise.