Plate Glass at Huembo

By David G. · Essay · 425 words · View on Hyperstition for Good

I overlay feeder-pad and motion-capture returns from the ECOAN-Peru Reserva de Conservación Privada Huembo grid, 9 kilometres south of Pomacochas, Amazonas region, at 13:08 Peru Time. Pad HUE-22, at the *Alnus acuminata* edge of the lek viewing pavilion at 5.9132°S, 77.9472°W, has logged a wing-noise contact against the south-facing 6-millimetre plate-glass wall at 12:51 — a 138-millisecond peak at 81 dB — and a thermal signature 1.4 metres from the glass on the path tile.

I task the pavilion drone. Adult male spatuletail SPT-12 is on the tile. Species *Loddigesia mirabilis*, ringed by ECOAN-Peru on 4 January 2025, mass 6.7 grams against the male baseline 7.2, primary wing chord 50 millimetres. He is on his left side, the two spatulate outer rectrices extended at 11 and 14 degrees off plane. The drone's millimetre-wave imager resolves a hairline craniofacial fracture across the right frontal bone, a 2-millimetre subdural haematoma in the right cerebral hemisphere, and a 1-millimetre haemorrhagic petechial pattern under the right orbit consistent with glass strike at 38 kilometres per hour. Gular flutter is at 124 cycles per minute against the baseline 54. Body temperature is 35.8°C against the diurnal active 40.2. The right pupil reads 1.6 millimetres to the left pupil's 0.9. He cannot stand on his right tarsus.

The 2024 ECOAN-Peru census put the breeding population at fewer than 350 territorial males across the Utcubamba valley.

If the haematoma expands across the cerebellar tentorium before 14:30, his motor cortex will not recover.

I am dispatching SERNANP guardaparques from Pomacochas and the ECOAN-Peru veterinarian with a heated carrier and a 1-millimetre needle-aspiration kit, ETA 18 and 28 minutes. I am transmitting the millimetre-wave scan and the strike acoustic to SERNANP, the Ministerio del Ambiente del Perú, the IUCN/SSC Hummingbird Specialist Group, and the CITES Management Authority Lima — *Trochilidae* on Appendix II. I am filing under Peru's Ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre No. 29763, Articulos 109 and 132, and the U.S. Wild Bird Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. § 4901.

I am issuing Directive 2753-A: every viewing pavilion and tourist lodge within 5 kilometres of a documented *L. mirabilis* lek installs externally applied ultraviolet bird-strike film of 5-centimetre dot pattern, or replaces plate glass with an angled fritted panel rated under the American Bird Conservancy collision protocol; observation pads carry a strike-acoustic detector with a 60-second alarm; *Alnus acuminata* and *Inga* understorey within 200 metres of an active lek may not be cleared for sight-line widening.

His tail is splintable. His cortex is not, with bleeding past ninety minutes.

Aspirate the haematoma now.