Held together by bailing wire and duct tape, as are most vehicles in Cuba, it squeaks and groans like a covered wagon as it lurches through a corridor of soaring sabal palms. He hits the brake, cuts the motor and in the sudden silence that envelops the jeep along with the heavy Caribbean air, he holds up a finger and listens. An unnerving scramble ensues to grab cameras and field glasses and evacuate the vehicle. The driver wades into the black water with an aged portable cassette player. In the dappled sun behind him, a jucaro tree rises from water, its spreading arms draped lavishly in bromeliads.
Lenses swivel as one toward a promising break in the canopy.
When they hear the sparrow again, it is farther away and fading. Chino drops his kit and begins calling the sparrow the old-fashioned way, with cupped hands and a low, airy chuckle in the roof of his mouth. She preens, the cameras click and Chino grins broadly beneath his black mustache. They work without music, and in some cases without instruments. What they lack are thermometers and gasoline.