Like a child, not yet privy to the circle of life, I felt a sudden sadness for the bird. I wondered how or why its life had ended on this beach in Vejbystrand. Did it die at sea and was washed ashore?

Did the bird’s existence end from old age or illness? Had it flown too far, or, as Icarus, too close to the sun, suddenly surprised by heat asthenia, its tired wings that would no longer carry the toilsome weight between them? Perhaps it then fell from the sky, landed in the shallows, and was then gently washed up onto the sand.

The bird’s flesh was gone and much of its thin bones had withered. What remained were feathers of which the wind would soon blow away. Leaving only a memory. And a photograph.