“It’s a plastic bag,” she said. “No,” I said, “it was a big white bird.”

Returning to the bedroom and looking out towards the sea settled the matter, at least to our satisfaction. The white, bird-shaped splotch was no longer perched near the crown of that tree. Almost surely a bird.

The odd cast to the photo above can probably be attributed to my having taken it at maximum-zoom with the camera on a mobile phone, which I was holding pressed against the eyepiece of a monocular.