The deal is, trucks drive to the end of Leslie St. and dump their loads of clean fill, broken concrete and twisted rebar into the lake. After a short while they started driving out onto the crap they dumped previously, and now there is a peninsula extending over a half dozen kilometres into the lake, extending abortive trunks of land in haphazard profusion. Life has had its inimitable and counter-entropic way with this land, and all but the newest parts of the Spit are filled with flora and fauna. Each time I've been the wind has been howling like a live thing, and it's been very cold. Still, the birds populate this strange bit of land in astounding numbers.
Ducks swim the inlets and coves and nest in the tall weeds off the road.
Echelons of cormorants narrowly arrayed against the fierce wind speed with purpose and intelligence to places unknown. Gulls fill the sky and nest by the thousands in astonishing profusion, the ground perilously thick with straw-wrapped eggs clothed in brown speckles. The windward side of the island rings with the keening of terns, arrowed paragons of flight. There are many small birds too, but they've been held close to the earth, perching against the unrelenting pressure of the gale. Goldfinches and robins flit across the tops of the weeds, and red-winged blackbirds haunt the shrubs and the wild unpruned apples.