344 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
cently, but the excessive rain had made things too uncomfortable 
for them. It was eerie in the extreme when I tried to find my way 
back; the night was pitch black, and as I scrambled through the 
dripping undergrowth alone my main concern was whether the 
bulb of my torch would give out. It was a great relief to get clear 
of the forest onto a path, although I still had two raging torrents 
to wade through and a precipitous hill three hundred feet high to 
scale. 
In spite of the rain I made this long tiring journey twice daily 
in order to look at my nets, but conditions were completely against 
catching anything. However, my efforts were not wasted, for on 
one occasion when I was sheltering beneath the overhanging rock 
and thinking how devoid of life the forest seemed to be and of 
the long dreary walk home through dripping vegetation and 
swollen streams, a picathartes arrived as silently as a phantom and 
settled on a sapling only a few feet away. He saw me at once, and 
after craning his rather long neck he flew off, but landed only a 
few yards away and then continued his retreat by progressing 
over the forest bed with a succession of tremendous hops. This 
cheered me up enormously, for I-felt as I sat alone in this wild 
stretch of jungle, far from any human being, that I had ex- 
perienced the sort of thrill that comes rarely in a lifetime. I was 
encouraged to make the strenuous journey, always in the rain, 
time and time again, and I was rewarded once more by seeing a 
pair of picathartes arrive at the rock-face. It was an exciting mo- 
ment, for being partly concealed I was able to observe them only 
fifteen feet away, sufficiently long to realize that picathartes is 
one of the quickest and most alert creatures of its size in the whole 
of the bird kingdom, which probably explains why so few people 
have seen it. 
In the meantime, my captive specimen was thriving on the 
larvae of beetles, termite nymphs, grasshoppers and meal-worms. 
Soon he learned to eat small pieces of raw fresh-water fish and 
fresh meat, but live insects comprised the bulk of his food. 
For weeks on end my clothing was saturated, and owing to the 
difficulty of keeping dry feet, I gave up the struggle and wore old 
shoes with no socks. The result was that water and mud squelched 
loudly through the cracks as I made my way along the water- 
