"James Van Pelt - A Flock Of Birds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelt James Van)

article in one of his bird books that called them "avian cockroaches."
He set up his camera on a tripod and scanned the trees with the telephoto. Not
only were there starlings, but also red winged blackbirds, an aggressive,
native species. They could hold their own against invaders.
Carson clicked a few shots. He could edit the photos out of the camera's
memory later if he needed the space. A group of starlings lifted from some of
the trees. Maybe something disturbed them? He looked for a deer or raccoon on
the ground below, but couldn't see anything. The birds swirled upwards before
sweeping down river. He thought about invaders, like infection, spreading
across the country. Carp were invaders. So were zebra mussels that hitchhiked
in ships' ballast water and became a scourge, attaching themselves to the
inside of pipes used to draw water into power plants.
It wasn't just animals either. Crabgrass, dandelions, kudzu, knotweed,
tamarisk, leafy spurge, and norway maple, pushing native species to
extinction.
Infection. Extinction. And extinct meant you'd never come back. No hope.
Empty houses. Empty shopping malls. Empty theaters. Contrail-free skies.
Static on the radio. Traffic-free highways. The creak of wind-pushed swing
sets in dusty playgrounds. He pictured Tillie's video, the endless runners
pouring across the bridge.
Carson shook his head. He'd never get the count done if he daydreamed. Last
year he spotted 131 species in the fall count. Maybe this year he'd find more.
Maybe he'd see something rare, like a yellow-billed loon or a fulvous
whistling duck.
Methodically, he moved his focus from tree to tree. Mostly starlings, their
beaks resting on their breasts. Five hundred in one tree. A thousand in the
next. He held the binoculars in his left hand while writing the numbers with
his right. Later he'd fill out a complete report for the Colorado Field
Ornithologists. A stack of reports sat on his desk at home, undeliverable.
He couldn't hear the birds from here, but their chirping calls would be
overwhelming if he could walk beneath them.
A feathered blur whipped through his field of vision. Carson looked over the
top of his binoculars. Two birds skimmed the tree tops, heading upriver. He
stood, breath coming quick. Narrow wings. Right size. He found them in the
binoculars. Were they the same kind of bird he'd seen yesterday? What luck!
But they flew too fast and they were going away. He'd never be able to
identify them from this distance. If only they'd circle back. Then,
unbelievably, they turned, crossing the river, coming toward him. The
binoculars thumped against his chest when he dropped them, as he picked up the
camera, tripod and all. He found the birds, focused, and snapped a picture.
They kept coming. He snapped again, both birds in view. Closer even still
until just one bird filled the frame. Snap. Then they whipped past, only
twenty feet overhead. And fast! Faster than any bird he'd seen except a
peregrine falcon on a dive.
His hands trembled. Definitely a bird new to him. A new species to add to his
life list. And the bird he'd seen yesterday couldn't be a single, misplaced
wanderer, not if there were two of them here. Maybe a flock had been blown
into the area. He knew Colorado birds, and these weren't native.
He stayed another hour, counting starlings and recording the other river birds
that crossed his path, but his heart wasn't in it. In his camera waited the