Flowers beside the cage, waiting for wings

Carlos Andrés Matas Contreras arrived at the release site this morning with his camera ready, and was met with a surprise of color: the buganvilia had burst into red-magenta blooms right along the edge of the wire mesh enclosure, and at its base, wild petunias — Ruellia simplex — were opening their purple corollas as if they had spent weeks rehearsing this welcome. In the photographs he brought back, the release cage stands framed by that floral outburst, with the green hills of the sanctuary rolling behind it beneath a sky scattered with white clouds. There were no parrots that day, no wingbeats to document. Only the quiet landscape, the fence, and the flowers growing at their own unhurried pace against the mesh — reminding us that the reserve goes on living even when there is no one left to release, and no one yet to receive.