📍Serengeti National Park, Tanzania The lilac-breasted roller is among the most visually excessive birds on the continent. Nine colors in the plumage, depending on the light and the angle, running from cobalt to turquoise to a chest the color of faded roses. In the Serengeti, it perches on the high branches and the termite mounds and watches the ground with a patience that looks decorative until it doesn't. This one had already done the hard part. The grasshopper had been caught and brought to the rock and beaten against the surface until it stopped knowing where it was. What came next was the oldest sleight of hand in the bush. A precise upward toss, a repositioning in the air, a catch that would align the insect head-first, the spines pointing away from the throat that would swallow it. The roller has been doing this long enough that the sequence has no hesitation. The grasshopper, briefly airborne, had approximately no idea what was happening. There is something almost cheerful about the whole thing. The extraordinary plumage, the efficient violence. The roller opened its beak, and the world briefly paused between one thing and the next. Then it didn't.
