He lives with his family in New Orleans. Together with a small team of creatives, they run a design practice based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. I should be precise: I believe that I saw one. What is it Catholics say?
If you do, no proof is necessary. No proof was possible, in this case, because it was too dark to observe anything but her black feathers and the red circle rimming her eye. She fled from view in a manner that was distinctly secretive , to use the word favored by the bird guides. My sponsors, I appreciate, will not easily believe such a wild claim from a volunteer with no scientific training; just a few months ago, after all, I was sitting in a windowless cubicle in a business park east of Baton Rouge, charting histograms of hospital inpatient claims.
Perversely I have the heat to thank for this. According to Sibley , the pre-dusk hour is her preferred time to venture out of hiding to hunt isopods, tiny crustaceans that feed on decay.
I was walking the trails, having already toured the campsites and conducted the few experiments I can manage in darknessβboring soil samples for the land density study and unburying bags of peat for the saltwater intrusion experiment.
I begin my circuit on Beryl Pass, because of the three trails it has the fewest snakes I end, in full daylight, with Hidden Bayou, which has the most. Just beyond the first mile marker, I came around a bend and it was underfoot. The bird froze. I froze. She must have been shocked. With a shudder that pinched her tail feathers, she came to life and dashed into the reeds. A beat later I heard a furious flutter of wings, likely not the rail herself but another bird alarmed by her sudden incursion into its territory.
