An Amazon Parrot That Could Not Be Identified

Alberto found the parrot on the floor of Aviario 1. It was an amazon — brilliant green plumage, yellow markings on the head, a red flash across the wings — the kind of bird anyone would have recognized in flight, yet that morning it lay with its beak open and its feet stiffened, bearing no ring or tag to tell its name. The photographs and video the team captured show the signs of trauma: ruffled feathers, an unnatural posture, soil and grass around it like mute witnesses to what must have been a brief and decisive struggle. Apparently, the Ara severus that shares the enclosure was the other protagonist in this story. Chestnut-fronted macaws are temperamental, territorial birds; living alongside them is never without risk — especially when space is contested with the kind of intensity that only birds who were once wild seem to know. How the conflict began, or how long it lasted, remains unclear. What remains is Alberto's careful record, and the team's, and the question that always stings a little more when there is no ring: how long had this parrot been with us, and what was its name?