Love in the bongas, warmth in the box

On March 14th, Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza set out to walk the sanctuary and found that life was in a hurry. In the vegetation surrounding the bonga trees, brown-reddish bugs — possibly from the family Rhopalidae or Coreidae — were mating on leaves riddled with the very holes they had left behind while feeding. And as if the bonga had called everyone to gather, high up in its crown two porfus were doing the same: mating unhurried, swaying in the mid-afternoon breeze. Deeper inside, in the aviary, three loritos had found shelter in a wooden box that Omar himself had built to shield them from the cold and the harsh sun. There they were, all three of them, still and settled, like those who know well where to stay when the day bears down. By the time he reached lago dos, the afternoon still had something to offer: a morocollo and a polloneta moved across the mirror of water with that quiet ease that birds only carry when they feel no one is rushing them. Omar noted them down, closed the logbook, and let the sanctuary keep its own pace.