Lucky Bird?

In 2006, during our first visit to the community of La Corona in the famous coffee-producing district of San Ramon, Matagalpa, two of my students had a brief encounter with the parakeet of one of our host families:

I asked whether such a practice really was part of local folklore, or if perhaps our students had been pranked. We are still not sure which is the case, but returning for our tenth-anniversary celebration, we found the same bird in the same kitchen. So maybe this ritual did bring it good luck!