Raaa raaa raaa at Cerro Peligro

There was something in the air above Cerro Peligro that morning. Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza sensed it before he saw anything: a chorus of alarm calls — raaa raaa raaa — that shattered the hillside's silence with the clarity of someone who has spent years learning to read that language. Eighteen guacamayas, two chejas, and two loros were staring upward, tense, their eyes tracking something circling high above the ridge. It was a gavilán. It moved in wide, unhurried loops, but it was not alone. Several goleros wheeled alongside it — those dark, patient birds that, as Omar has come to understand through years in the field, will drift alongside predators in the air to confuse potential prey, sowing uncertainty before the real danger arrives. An ancient, wordless strategy, and one the loros of the reserve know all too well. The gavilán never struck. It kept circling, then drifted away. But the flock did not stand down immediately — the alarm calls said everything: at Cerro Peligro, the birds let nothing pass without giving it a name.