This illustration was created for Fundación Atlántida's 2025 Art Challenge, where Salvadoran illustrators were invited to create a piece centered around Salvadoran wildlife, including birds, bats, and butterflies. My illustration features 3 black-headed saltators on a mango tree.

My description for this piece reads:
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"A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to go birding for the first time ever with some friends that were visiting El Salvador. We did 8 hours of birding between El Espino Ecopark and El Boquerón, and it honestly was one of the best experiences of my life. El Salvador is rich in biodiversity, and it’s amazing how many cool nature places are so close to the city. During my tour, I saw many different kind of birds eating a range of fruits; from guavas to oranges to mangos.

El Espino was originally a coffee plantation that opened up as a nature tourism eco park in the year 2000, and although the predominant vegetation is coffee, there’s other protected trees such as Cacao, Cinnamon, Avocado, Guava, and Mango. This piece is inspired by what I saw during that experience, and although I didn’t get the chance of seeing the black-headed saltwater up-close, this is how I would imagine it existing in it’s habitat. This bird is known for living in coffee and cacao plantations, as well as in areas close to the water. The black headed saltator’s (also known as pepitero cabezanegra) name comes from the Latin «saltator, saltatoris» which means ‘dancer’ or 'jumper.' The Black-headed Saltator generally is loud and noisy, and known for being sociable. I wanted to portray its happy and outgoing personality through its different poses and how it’s interacting with its environment in this composition."