The Parrot Between the Mango and the Mamoncillo

There are days when Fundación Loros seems to want to reveal everything all at once. On a recent walk through the sanctuary, the forest unfolded an abundance that was almost too much to believe: more than twenty-five species in flower or in fruit, from the pink vinca pressing up between the stones underfoot to the Albizia heavy with white blossoms like pompoms against a blue sky. The purple celosía flowered alongside the metal wall, the verdolaga spread its fleshy leaves over dry earth, and the wild café — that unexpected visitor — opened its star-shaped flowers with that scent that calls to mind jasmine. On the decomposing trunks, white and lobed fungi were growing, a quiet sign that the forest knows, too, how to renew itself from within. And then, in the midst of all that green abundance, he appeared: a parrot in brilliant green plumage with a reddish patch around the eye, perched in the canopy, pecking at fruit with the ease of one who knows exactly where he belongs. The pollinating insects were going about their business over the Ixora blossoms and the fuchsia-petaled climbers. It was, as someone who lived it said, what happens when the rains come and when the dry season holds: Fundación Loros blooming without permission, without warning, with all the wild generosity of the monte.