Southern Discomfort

Начало книги

"The construction drawings, plus the specifications to be described later, are the chief sources of information for the supervisors and craftsman responsible for the actual work of construction."

i

The male mockingbird teeters on the edge of a whitewashed brick wall and flexes his wings in a motion designed to flush unwary insects from the ground below.

Nothing.

He glides down to an open patch of sunlit grass between the wall and a rhododendron bush and again flicks open gray-feathered wings, exposing flashes of white.

A startled cricket hastily dives under a sheltering blade of centipede grass.

Too late.

The mockingbird pounces, tweezers it from the grass with a sharp and deadly accurate bill, then flies up to a crepe myrtle and checks for enemies. At the far end of the long wall, a big yellow cat drowses in the shade provided by tall rhododendrons, extravagant in lavender bloom.

They are old adversaries who long ago established a modus vivendi of mutual respect. He knows she would eat his babies were they left unguarded, but a warning chirr usually discourages her predatory nature. His nest is well hidden among spindly, difficult to climb twigs; and if she tries, his outraged screams will marshall other birds to hurl raucous threats and help peck her unprotected back.

Читать дальше →