Azul was left alone

Azul was left alone.
Nobody said it, but he knew.
He stayed up there, at the top of my roof, between broken tiles and open sky, with one fewer shadow in his flight and a new silence in the afternoons.

I watched him day after day. At first there were two inseparables: they came down to the wire, moved closer to look, explored the hole in my roof with caution, and chose that corner as their refuge. A simple gap, but enough for them to go on with their lives after perhaps having escaped a cage. I could hear them from my bed — it was like having them right beside me; they made a lot of noise vocalizing and gnawing the wood. There was something about that scene that filled me up, as if something small and perfect were finally feeding my soul.

But one day she didn't come back, and he did. On March 3, 2025, just ten days after arriving at their new home, the pair of lovebirds didn't enter their refuge before the sun gave way to nightfall. That day I only saw Azul arrive; his yellow-and-green companion would never appear again.

After nearly two weeks of watching from one of the gaps between the tiles and my apartment facade, my bond with him grew stronger each day. My need to know about their species grew by the second, and I started to worry about what I read online — every page said this species always lives with company, and that when one lovebird is left alone after losing its mate, grief tends to make it "fly to the birds' sky."

I began to observe Azul's behavior. The other lovebird who had shared his whole daily routine was gone — flying near my building, perching on my roof, gnawing the wood. From that point on, he started spending more time on the roof of the building across the street or on the wires, and he let out the sound I had come to associate with a call for his inseparable to come join him.

He did it once, then again, then again. Sometimes he stood at the edge, looking inward, as if waiting for the other to appear, or as if trying to understand something that had no explanation. Then he started sleeping alone, in the same gap, with the same cold and the same routine — a sight that twisted my heart and deepened my worry. To make things worse, in nearly two weeks since his arrival I hadn't seen him eat. I tried almost every fruit and he never came close, until the desperation of imagining the worst for the lonely lovebird led me to buy birdseed from a pet shop. That's when I discovered that the only thing he eats is canary seed, and that wherever he had been before, he was apparently given no other option.

That's when he started coming closer — not to me, but to the food I left on the windowsill. At first he came down with mistrust, like someone who doesn't want to be seen in their vulnerability, but hunger has its own rules. His nervous flight slowly became routine: he came down from the roof once, twice, three times a day, until, on the sixth night, after his relentless calling and his solitary nights, he decided to fly for the first time beyond the roof facing my bedroom.

That day, at 5:30 in the afternoon, it started to get dark. It was time for him to come back, but that evening was different: his exploring led him to a new refuge and he didn't return to fill my nights with that sound that had become something real to me. I'll admit I had trouble falling asleep; I couldn't stop thinking about the lovebird — his future, whether he'd find canary seed somewhere else or another companion — because I had never seen a lovebird in the wild, never outside a cage. It was too soon for another loss, because I still hadn't — and still haven't — come to terms with what might have happened to Azul's yellow-and-green fisher to leave his faithful companion alone.

The next morning was the test: would Azul's absence mean he had simply drifted away and not come back? I got up early and stood at my window to wait for the reason I hadn't slept: I wanted him to return to eat, and to his home in my roof. Out of nowhere, I saw my little blue-winged parrot fly toward the water pipe above my window. From there he watched me, vocalized, and scanned the area to see if there was food worth coming down for. I took his makeshift dish — I had never kept birds, because I hate animal mistreatment and the unjust sentence of bars — and filled it with canary seed. I didn't imagine that would become my routine: Azul kept coming, but only to eat; no longer to sleep.

I learned to be there. And I don't mean just opening the window and leaving food. I mean really being there: not going out, canceling plans, staying in so I could open up when he arrived — because if I left the dish out, the doves stole everything. I started reading the sky and learning his schedule; I learned to pick out his call from all the other sounds, and he, somehow, understood that if he called, I came out. Sometimes one soft vocalization from the pipe in front of my window was enough.

I watched him while he ate. He always faced me, watchful — not with tenderness, but with the look of someone who doesn't want to be caught again — and I never pushed it. Even when my heart said "stay," he kept reminding me that the realest love has no cages.

I named him "Azul" for his white-and-sky-blue plumage, and because since he was left alone he started painting my days with melancholy.
I became his guardian from a distance and, without knowing where he spends most of his day, his witness, his wait — a person haunted by scenarios that shatter my peace: that he falls into cruel hands, that a predator puts out his eyes, that I'm gone one day and he finds no food. But I also understood something that hurt and freed me at the same time: I am not his refuge. I am only a stop in his flight.

I know the day will come when he doesn't return; I think about it every time he takes longer to arrive. I wonder if he found company, if he found another corner, if he's all right. It terrifies me to think I had been planning to move, to leave this place, to travel — but now how do I do that? It hurts to imagine he could go hungry without this meeting point. But however much it worries me, I don't consider trapping him. Because if there's one thing Azul taught me, it's that freedom is the language of the soul.

He left me many things:

• The art of waiting without demanding.

• The courage not to possess.

• The love that shows itself through respect.
  And a certainty: the deepest bond doesn't always need contact; sincere presence is enough.

Sometimes I let myself hope that someday he'll come not just to eat, but will look at me differently — trust more, make a gesture, play, do something that tells me he remembers me too. But if that never happens, that's fine, because I will always remember him.

Today, writing this, I feel happy because my little lovebird keeps coming: sometimes once, sometimes twice, even three times a day. It's been more than two months since he arrived and since his companion left and never came back.
Today I can say that these little parrots can be strong, that they can survive grief. And if one day I see him flying in a group with other birds, or maybe with another lovebird — free, happy, with company — I won't cry; I'll close my eyes, say his name quietly, and think:

"Azul was left alone… but then he found the sky again."

Analysis and reflections from Fundación Loros

Azul's story gives us, above all, the power of empathy and respect for wildlife. His silent voice as he waited alone in that roof-tile hollow reminds us that every lovebird is an individual with emotions, routines, and shared memories. By recounting his patient waiting and his nervous flight toward a window where he found only birdseed, the author recovers "the art of waiting without demanding" and the value of "not owning" a living being.

Azul also teaches us the limits of our intervention: it was the narrator who chose not to confine him, who learned to read his call and offer food without forcing it. That mutual trust, built through constant presence, shows that responsible care is not about holding on — it is about honoring the instinct to be free.