The Birdman's Daughter. Cindi Myers

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      For Daddy

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 12

      CHAPTER 13

      CHAPTER 14

      CHAPTER 15

      CHAPTER 16

      PROLOGUE

      There are joys which long to be ours. God sends

       ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds

       seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so

       they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon

       the roof, and then fly away.

      —Henry Ward Beecher

      For a man who’d spent his childhood on the arid plains of west Texas, the jungle was a place of magic. Martin Engel had hardly slept the night before, anxious to be on the trail again, completing his quest. He’d roused his companion on this trip, Allen Welch, from bed at 3:00 a.m. “We’ve got to be there before dawn,” he’d reminded Welch. “We’re going to have good luck today. I can feel it.”

      Martin’s intuition was seldom wrong. Some people complained that he’d had more than his share of good luck in his pursuits, but Martin preferred to depend on hard work and experience. Over the years he’d taught himself everything there was to know about his quarry.

      Still, there was something mystical about the hunt, a point in every search where he found himself locked in, putting himself on a different plane, trying to think like the ones he sought.

      Martin was a birder. Not a backyard hobbyist or vacation afficionado. He was an acknowledged champion, a “big lister” who had seen more different kinds of birds than only a handful of people in the world.

      Seven thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight. Today he was trying for seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty. On this trip he planned to clean up Brazil. When he got on the plane to head home to Texas, he would have seen every bird that existed in this country’s jungles and plains. The promise of such an accomplishment made him tremble with excitement.

      He and Welch were at the trailhead by 3:30. Welch slugged coffee from a thermos and stumbled over roots in the path, while Martin charged forward, eyes scanning the canopy overhead, binoculars ready. Even at this early hour, the air was thick and fetid around him, the ground beneath his feet spongy with decay. His ears filled with the whirring of insects. Insects meant birds.

      He reviewed his quarry in his mind. The Pale-faced Antbird, Skutchia borbae, with its dark rufous head and black eye-patch; the Hoffman’s Woodcreeper, Dendrocolaptes hoffmannsi, with its straight blackish bill and the brown to rufous-chestnut upperparts; and the Brown-chested Barbet, Capito brunneipectus, with its distinctive chunky silhouette. They had haunted him for months now, taunting him with the blank lines beside their names on his list, lines where he would record the date, time and location of his sighting of them.

      He’d seen the Pale-faced Antbird his first day out this trip. He and Welch had scarcely stepped onto the jungle path when it flashed by them, lured by the sounds of a Pale-faced Antbird call Martin had played on the tape deck strapped to his pack. The other two had been more wary. He’d hunted three days for them, scarcely noticing the sweat drenching his clothes or the hunger pangs in his belly or the cotton in his СКАЧАТЬ