A Birthday Among Palms and Blue Feathers

There are birthdays celebrated with cake, and there are birthdays celebrated with a bucket of Manila palm fruit and a flock of hungry parrots. Omar Enrique Berdugo's was the second kind. This morning he walked out to the guardians' point, where a palm heavy with clusters was waiting for him — fruits at every stage of ripening: the tight green ones, the half-blushed pink ones, and the deep red ones ready to fall. He cut them down, arranged them in the bucket, and carried them to the Fundación's feeding station with the calm of someone who has made that walk many times before and knows exactly what comes next. What came next was the usual uproar: green parrots — possibly amazonas — and blue-headed parrots (Pionus menstruus) descending on the feast both inside and outside the aviary. Among them, the individual registered with the green ring B17 FL-VN, who seized his cluster in one foot and worked it over with a beak full of conviction — the conviction of someone with no intention of sharing. Omar watched them, he says, feeling happy. No further explanation was needed: to have spent the day like this, among feathers and bright-colored fruit, is as good a reason as any to mark another year.