16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
east wall, and when Stephen had told him all
he knew about albatrosses, which was not inconsiderable,
he having sat with them for
hours at their nesting places on Desolation Island,
sometimes lifting them off to look closely
at their eggs – all he knew, particularly about
their flight, Eduardo spoke with great eagerness
of the guacharo, a very singular bird he
had discovered in a vast cavern near Cajamarca
in the Andes, a vast cavern indeed, but
scarcely large enough for the prodigious
number of guacharos that tried to get in, so
that some were left outside. It was one of
these that Eduardo came upon, fast asleep at
noon in the darkest place it could find, the
hollow underside of a fallen tree, a bird about
the size of a crow, something like a nightjar,
something like an owl, brown and grey,
flecked with white and black, large winged,
fast flying. A strictly nocturnal bird, yet feeding