Erica Montoya and the Treasure of Every Corner

Some visits you don't easily forget. Erica Montoya arrived at the grounds of Fundación Loros like any other visitor — camera ready, eyes wide open — and left carrying a treasure: images that wander through nearly every corner of the sanctuary. In the aviary, two parrots dressed in green and blue regarded her from their branch — one of them bearing the green band B119, a small marking that tells us everything about who that bird is and where it's been. Deep in the forest, two scarlet macaws (*Ara macao*) posed among the branches in that blazing red that needs no filter, and somewhere in a shaded bend of the path, two black-and-white primates rested with the ease of creatures who know, without question, that the tree belongs to them. But the moment that speaks most powerfully on its own was that of the cotton-top tamarin (*Saguinus oedipus*) — that small, critically endangered creature found nowhere else on Earth but Colombia — gazing straight into the lens while it ate papaya and guayaba perched on a log. Erica shared every image without needing to be asked twice, and wrote that the photographs would live in her gallery as a treasure. We feel exactly the same way.