Panama: Purty Pitchers

Here are a couple of additional Panama photos to whet the appetite; more photos and more information are at www.panamalaverde.com and at birding@panamalaverde.com.

This Crimson-crested Woodpecker was the female of a pair we found the first day in the Metropolitan Park. In the course of the trip, we also got to see Lineated and Cinnamon Woodpeckers, along with an Olivaceous Piculet at the Ammo Dump; the most abundant picid, though, with us almost always, was Red-crowned Woodpecker, a diminutive Melanerpes with a loud voice and a boisterous manner.

Blue-and-white Swallows were common at higher elevations, nesting under the eaves at Los Quetzales. Gray-breasted Martin was found just about everywhere, and we got great looks at Southern Rough-winged Swallows a few times. Barn Swallows were a nice surprise at a couple of places, too.

I’ve always loved Tropical Kingbirds, ever since the first one Alison and I ever saw, years ago in Texas. I like this “action shot” because it shows the tail color so well, and because the bird, the palms, and the barbed wire say so much about the relation between humans and nature in the former Canal Zone, where I took this picture.

Roadside Hawk: what can I say? As usual, I found the relative scarcity (or at least the difficulty of finding) raptors in the tropics disconcerting, but we could almost always count on good views of a Roadside Hawk as we moved between sites. They were usually perched on the, uh, roadside.

As were Smooth-billed Anis.

We eventually scored 100% on Crotophaga cuckoos, finding Greater Anis at the Ammo Dump and a couple of Groove-billed Anis on our way to the airport the last morning.

Drop me an e-mail if you want any more information about the sites we visited or the birds we saw. See you in Panama, next time!