Panama: Pipeline Road and Old Gamboa
An American Kestrel, the first of our trip, bade us farewell when we finally tore ourselves away from the Ammo Dump to visit an even more famous Panama birding site. But first we stopped to pay our respects to a local celebrity.
That smudgy form is a Great Potoo, well and aptly named. Luis told us that the locals believe that the bird’s nocturnal singing emanates from the mouth of a witch, and watching this strange beast snooze away, I wondered if perhaps they weren’t right.
Pipeline Road, easily the best-known birding location in the entire country, is a quick drive from the Albrook Inn, and though Yenia and Luis found the morning disappointing, I thought we had great luck. My favorites were a pair of White-whiskered Puffbirds down one of the streams, the male posing stolidly at close range for the whole time we watched him.
We had a long wait at the Gatun locks, but, as birders will, found plenty of ways to amuse ourselves. Black iguanas were on the roadside, and a fine colony of Gray-breasted Martins gave me my best views of that species ever. Tropical Kingbirds and Tropical Mockingbirds were joined by a pair of Saffron Finches, beautiful birds but, alas, introduced.
Luis had chosen a route that might give us two of my most-wanteds, and as usual, he did not disappoint. After a pause for an Osprey and a Tricolored Heron, we wound up looking out over a close-cropped field occupied by two Southern Lapwings.
Not only are they stunning in themselves, but the species is rapidly, explosively, spreading north, with recent sightings from Florida to Maryland, and it’s great to be prepared.
And my other desideratum showed up soon thereafter. For literally decades, I have dreamed of Red-breasted Blackbirds. We ended up seeing a good dozen males, and glimpsing a couple of females, out in the tall grass, and enjoyed listening to their thin buzzy songs. My childhood reading made this bird the representative of the tropics, and to see it, finally, made my day.
But there was more to come. Old Gamboa Road is a spectacular place, though it was our first real experience of horrible humidity and abundant mosquitoes. But the birding distracted us nicely, at least until it started to pour rain on us.
We lingered at the Summit Ponds, where Lesser Kiskadees and a Green Kingfisher hunted over the waters occupied by a Capped Heron. Blue-crowned Motmots were obviously breeding nearby, as they kept flying out over the water and perching on the shady edge; we never succeeded in keeping track of them as they delivered their prey, however.
I was watching a Southern Rough-winged Swallow when my eye caught a slow movement on the opposite bank, under a thick growth of palms: Could it be…?
It was! An adult Agami Heron, slowly stalking under the vegetation, its chestnut belly aglow and that incredible bill inscribing vast semicircles when it moved its white-crested head. Too far away for pictures of the photographic type, but that is one image burned into our minds forever.
