The Swallows Knew First

Before the first drop fell, the forest already knew. Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza was making his way around the main house, past the aviaries and along the path that borders lago 2, when the sky had not yet given anything away. It was the swallows that sounded the alarm: a more restless flight, lower than usual, cutting through the air with urgency. Then the loros joined in with their calls, and behind them the other birds of the surrounding forest — all of them moving and vocalizing as if the downpour were already a certainty they carried somewhere deep inside. That moment — the entire forest anticipating the rain — was captured across eleven videos. There is no alarm in that collective song, but something that feels closer to joy: birds that know this place by heart responding to a signal that we humans are only beginning to learn how to read. Omar Enrique saw it, filmed it, and had the clarity of mind to recognize that he was witnessing something that unfolds every time it rains at the Fundación Loros — though there are not always attentive eyes around to notice it.