Seven Years of Canopy and Number 15 Is Finally Free

Deep in the green tangle of Los Loros forest, nearly invisible against the branches, loro number 15 has spent seven years learning that this is his place. His companion, number 14, arrived two years later and has now accumulated five of his own. Both are *Amazona ochrocephala* — yellow-headed parrots — and they belong to the first animals ever welcomed into the Fundación's program. Alejandro found them this afternoon perched at ease, their green tags still visible against their chests, as though the little labels had grown too small for everything these birds have lived through here. They are free. Not in the bureaucratic sense, but in the bodily one: open access to the forest, real branches underfoot, light filtering down through leaves. The process has been gradual — years in the aviary, then brief outings, then this — and today the two of them move between the sanctuary's structures and the wild hillside like creatures with nowhere urgent to be. In the photo of number 14, a parrot of blue tones appears at the edge of the frame, unidentified, slipping into the shot like a quiet witness. In the background, a wooden nest box waits among the branches. Neither of them was born free. They arrived by the roads these birds tend to travel — seizures, surrenders, the long shadow of illegal trafficking. But this afternoon, perched among the dense foliage of Cartagena adentro, number 15 and number 14 seem to have forgotten all of that.