Fundación Loros Field Journal
Those who live alongside the animals every day — caretakers, biologists and vets — share what they see in the field: releases, rescues, encounters with local wildlife.
Monday, May 18· By Alejandro Rigatuso
On Wednesday, the 13th of May, the EPA returned to the tropical dry forest what had always belonged to it: an adult male three-toed sloth, rescued and rehabilitated by that same agency, ready to resume his life among the…
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Friday, May 15· By José Marin
On May 15th, José Marín made his way down an earthen trail where branches and trees arch overhead to form a natural tunnel, the ground carpeted with dry leaves and small stones that crunch beneath every step. At the far …
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Friday, May 15· By José Marin
José Marín was walking alone through the scrubland when the dry leaf litter began to move. It wasn't the wind — it was baby iguanas, ten of them, darting through the undergrowth with that nervous velocity that young anim…
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Wednesday, May 13· By José Marin
From a high point in the reserve, José Marín stopped mid-stride and lifted his gaze. Among the dense vegetation blanketing the hillsides, nearly swallowed by the deep green of the slope, the tin rooftops of the release a…
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Friday, May 8· By Alejandro Rigatuso
A few weeks ago, Sombrerito — the Amazonian parrot tagged B12 — arrived at the Fundación Loros facilities with a wound that would change him forever: he had lost an eye, most likely in a fight. What followed were days of…
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Friday, May 8· By Alejandro Rigatuso
It was Maicol who found them that January, near the ridge of El Peligro, camera at the ready and eyes wide open. In the crown of a papayote in full bloom — that tree of yellow flowers that lights up the forest like a bur…
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Friday, May 8· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Alberto llegó temprano al santuario con las manos vacías y se fue con varias cajas llenas. Mayo es un mes generoso en Los Loros: los mangos ya estaban amarillo-anaranjados, pesados de madurez, y los mamoncillos colgaban …
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Thursday, May 7· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
On the hill of Los Guardianes del Paraíso, Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza was walking through the rain when he came upon an orejero — Enterolobium cyclocarpum — that seemed to have dressed itself in celebration just to rece…
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Tuesday, May 5· By Alejandro Rigatuso
At 8:19 in the morning of May 5th, Omar opened the door to aviary #3, and B174 lingered for a moment on the threshold. He was a yellow-crowned amazon — Amazona ochrocephala — his green plumage set alight by the morning s…
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Sunday, May 3· By Alejandro Rigatuso
On Sunday, May 3rd, Alberto arrived at the release site with the day's food and found what the team had been hoping to confirm: the five newly released scarlet macaws (*Ara macao*) are still close by. Four of them had st…
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Friday, May 1· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
On April 22nd at noon, Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza opened the hatch and the parrot B214 flew out toward the trees surrounding Fundación Loros. The bird had arrived with battered feathers, but during its rehabilitation it…
Read chronicleFriday, May 1· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
That day, the sun showed no mercy. In aviaries 1 and 2, the birds knew it before anyone else: before the heat had even become unbearable, they were already seeking out water, shaking themselves in the drinking troughs, t…
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Friday, May 1· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
That day at Fundación Loros, the work began early — and it began with the hands. Two volunteers pulled on their gloves and arranged aluminum trays with papaya, mango, starfruit, sunflower seeds, and peanuts — a careful p…
Read chronicleFriday, May 1· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
There are months at Fundación Loros that are set apart by a particular kind of uproar: the mango months. Omar Enrique Berdugo was making his rounds through the aviaries, phone in hand, when he decided to capture what he …
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Thursday, April 30· By José Marin
That Thursday, in the sector known as El Tamarindo, a gray-furred sloth decided to cross the road at the least expected moment. Farmers Gustavo Orozco and Rafael Orozco spotted it before anyone else and didn't hesitate —…
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Wednesday, April 29· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza was walking alone through the Los Guardianes sector when the tree stopped him cold. It was tall, heavy with long pods that hung like green fingers, bearing seeds of a burning red he couldn't r…
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Wednesday, April 29· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Carlos saw them arrive together, as they always do: all seven. The group of tití monkeys appeared this morning among the branches of the rubber tree growing beside the casa Paraíso, moving with that restless agility so p…
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Tuesday, April 28· By José Marin
There are builders in the reserve who need no tools. José Marín knows them well. This morning, while making his rounds through the pie de monte sector, he stopped before a slender tree — and there it was: pressed against…
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There was a little of everything that day: the scaled green of nine iguanas, the restless yellow of eleven canaries released in individual cages and then as a group, the red and blue of five guacamayas who had been waiti…
Read chronicleMonday, April 27· By Alejandro Rigatuso
On the 27th of April, along that shaded corridor running between the casa Paraíso and the sector of los Guardianes, three tamandúas mexicanas touched the soil of Fundación Loros for the first time. They had been brought …
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Sunday, April 26· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Ranger Omar opened the door of aviary #3 — in that corner of the reserve everyone here calls the bosquesito — and waited. On the other side stood B68: a yellow-headed Amazon parrot, green band on his leg, feathers the ex…
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Sunday, April 26· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
There are days when Fundación Loros seems to want to reveal everything all at once. On a recent walk through the sanctuary, the forest unfolded an abundance that was almost too much to believe: more than twenty-five spec…
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Sunday, April 26· By José Marin
José Marín was walking through the humid forest of Fundación Loros when something white amid the leaf litter caught his eye. On an old log, surrendered to decay and draped in moss and creeping vines, a family of mushroom…
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Omar found him without much searching: there was B214, settled at the feeding station in the small woodland near Casa del Paraíso as though he had owned the place for years. The parrot — one of the individuals from the r…
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Friday, April 24· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Más de cuarenta estudiantes del Colegio Cojowa llegaron al santuario de la Fundación Loros un lunes de mayo, y no vinieron con las manos vacías. Traían carteles que ellos mismos habían dibujado y rotulado sobre cuatro es…
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Friday, April 24· By Alejandro Rigatuso
That Friday, Maicol headed out into the sanctuary with the Sony Alpha camera Alejandro had lent him, and what he found was a cast worthy of any stage. The military macaw (Ara militaris), banded B101, perched on a weather…
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Wednesday, April 22· By Alejandro Rigatuso
On April 23rd, with the morning still cool over the Decameron aviary, Omar opened the doors and four cotorra carasucia parrots stepped out into the open air. Until that moment, they had known the world only from within: …
Read chronicleWednesday, April 22· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Some scenes need very little explaining. Omar knew this when he raised the camera and simply pressed record: parrots among the mango-heavy branches, pecking at the ripe fruit with that precision of theirs, letting rinds …
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Wednesday, April 22· By Alejandro Rigatuso
From the foothills of Arenal to the summit of cerro El Peligro, José Marín — head of security for Fundación Loros — walked every stretch of the trail today and confirmed something worth putting on record: the entire rout…
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Wednesday, April 22· By Alejandro Rigatuso
This April 22nd, Alejandro walked the sanctuary's trails with his camera over one shoulder, and the day gave him everything. The most significant moment came at aviario #1: the Amazonian parrot B173 FL-VN was released. B…
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Wednesday, April 22· By José Marin
The dirt path of Sector El Peligro concealed, among its dense vegetation and midday shadows, a vertical surprise: seven columnar cacti rising above the shrubs like silent sentinels. José Marín moved among them one by one…
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Wednesday, April 22· By Alejandro Rigatuso
There is a green sign planted at the edge of the property, where the open ground meets the shadow of the forest. It says what cannot be done here: no hunting, no burning, no logging. It is managed by Fundación Loros and …
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Wednesday, April 22· By Alejandro Rigatuso
There are entrances to the reserve that appear on no map as marked trails — they are paths that time and the passage of people drew without permission. La manga del pueblo is one of those. José knows it well, and that is…
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Wednesday, April 22· By Alejandro Rigatuso
José Marín had been walking the hillside for a while when he found the spot. He wasn't looking for it — it came to him, the way good places tend to do. From that summit at coordinates 10.4281°N, 75.2449°W, the entire san…
Read chronicleTuesday, April 21· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Along the green corridor that bridges the farms El Paraíso and Los Guardianes, on April 22nd, EPA Cartagena opened the cages and released the held breath of 37 animals returning to the wild. Nine canaries shot toward the…
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Tuesday, April 21· By Alejandro Rigatuso
On Tuesday, April 21st, Omar arrived at the sanctuary with a day that few can match: three releases of loros reales in a single dawn. One by one, B180 from aviary one, B228 from aviary two, and B60 from aviary three spre…
Read chronicleTuesday, April 21· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Not long ago, José Marín had spotted just one among the trees of the piedmont sector — a single tití cabeciblanco, still, with no apparent company. It was the kind of sighting that leaves more questions than answers. But…
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Tuesday, April 21· By José Marin
José Marín headed out alone into the piedemonte sector, his signal barely strong enough to send a GPS location every now and then. Along the way, he came across two trees worth adding to the record: a camajorú standing t…
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Monday, April 20· By Alejandro Rigatuso
This morning, two baskets brimming with ripe mangoes set out from Vista Hermosa — yellow-orange, heavy with that sweet, dense fragrance that only freshly cut fruit carries under a tropical sun. Some bore the dark spots o…
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Sunday, April 19· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
In the mid-afternoon hours, near aviaries #1 and #2 of the Fundación Loros, Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza watched the first one arrive: a green parrot that landed in a papaya tree and began pecking into the orange flesh of…
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Sunday, April 19· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Near the boundary of the Piedemonte farm, where the land of Fundación Loros takes its leave before yielding to another landscape, there stands a walnut tree that carries the story of a long journey. Its seeds arrived fro…
Read chronicleSunday, April 19· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
On Tuesday, April 7th, Caldique made his way to lago Los Borrachos — within the grounds of los Guardianes — carrying a mission that had already been half-fulfilled since morning. Earlier, beneath the green shade of the f…
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Sunday, April 19· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
That Sunday, without anyone asking him to, Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza gathered stones from the sanctuary garden and began arranging them on the earth, one by one, guided by nothing but imagination. When he finished, the…
Read chronicleSunday, April 19· By Omar Enrique Verdugo Cabeza
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…
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There are trees that, though they bear no fruit, give everything. The male mamón growing in front of the Fundación Loros park is one of them: with no seeds to offer, it has spent years as shelter, feeding ground, and sil…
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Saturday, April 18· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Carlos found him first, near the Foundation's house. He was still, his green plumage intact but his right eye shut, as though carrying the weight of a fight no one had witnessed. That was how B12 appeared — an Amazonian …
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Saturday, April 18· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Alejandro arrived at the sanctuary with a branch in hand and a single certainty: the mamón de mico is always green. The tree, known to science as *Melicoccus bijugatus*, stands alive and active somewhere within the 520 h…
Read chronicleThursday, April 16· By Alejandro Rigatuso
In the sector known as la casa de Paraíso, where the trees cast their shade and artificial nests stand waiting for feathered tenants, the bees had arrived first. Entire colonies had moved into the boxes that the Fundació…
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Wednesday, April 15· By Alejandro Rigatuso
At the coordinates Alberto shared from the reserve, the reddish earth and small stones kept a secret among the branches: a yellow-green fruit, barely open, its white flesh peeking shyly toward the light. It was a cotoper…
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Wednesday, April 15· By José Marin
There are trees that need no argument beyond their own presence. In the pie de monte sector of the reserve, José Marín stopped in his tracks before one such specimen: a thick trunk wrapped in grayish bark, branches openi…
Read chronicleWednesday, April 15· By José Marin
José Marín was walking through the Pie de Monte sector when a movement in the foliage stopped him in his tracks. It was a squirrel cuckoo —Piaya cayana— moving with the unhurried calm of a creature that knows exactly wha…
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Wednesday, April 15· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Omar saw her arrive this afternoon, calm as ever, settling quietly near Casa Paraíso. B87 — a chestnut-fronted macaw, Ara severus, her green tag clearly visible among her feathers — was returning from Reserva La Ciénaga,…
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Wednesday, April 15· By Corina Leonor
Corina Leonor was walking with a group of tourists through the scrubland when someone lifted a dry pod from the ground — dark, weightless, spent. It was a loofah pod — possibly from *Leucaena* or *Enterolobium* — discove…
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Tuesday, April 14· By Alejandro Rigatuso
On the trail that climbs from the Y de Broche toward the cerro peligro, there is a tree that gives no warning: it simply appears, laden. Alejandro found it that way, without ceremony, its clusters of yellow-gold fruit pr…
Read chronicleTuesday, April 14· By Corina Leonor
Near the pre-release enclosure, where the titis make their final pauses before returning to the wild, a ceiba decided this Tuesday that it was time to let go of what it had been holding. Corina Leonor found it like this …
Read chronicleTuesday, April 14· By Alejandro Rigatuso
On a Tuesday in April, at the farm La Ciénaga, María José — wife of one of the workers — came across an unexpected visitor: lora B87, alone, perched, and visibly parched. She was no biologist, no ranger, but something in…
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Monday, April 13· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Bent over the dry, clay-heavy earth of Los Guardianes, Jender — caretaker of this corner of the reserve — opened holes one by one to receive the seedlings that had arrived that day: sapote, papaya, anón, limón, and guama…
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Monday, April 13· By Alejandro Rigatuso
That Monday in April, Carlos and Alberto set out into the sanctuary with empty baskets and returned with three distinct flavors of the season: mangoes with green and yellow skins, ciruelas costeñas — that Spondias purpur…
Read chronicleSaturday, April 11· By Alejandro Rigatuso
Maicol was making his rounds through the macaw release zone, near cerro Peligro, when he spotted it: a gavilán sabanero perched with the calm of a creature that knows exactly what it's doing. The *Buteogallus meridionali…
Read chronicleSaturday, April 11· By Alejandro Rigatuso
This afternoon, at the aras release point, the silence was broken by something unexpected. The guacamayas drifting through the area began to vocalize with urgency — that piercing cry that leaves no room for doubt: someth…
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