There are many places in the world where you have to get up early to drive or hike to where you can see some birds. Panama, it seems to me, is the sort of place where you have to get up early and stand around on your front porch to see the sort of birds that will take your breath away! At least that was our experience at the Hostal Casa de Campo, where we spent our last (alas) two nights on the Panama La Verde circuit.

The beginnings of the rainy season turned out to be a perfect time to visit, too. Over breakfast on the terraces, we could watch Crimson-backed Tanagers and Black-striped Sparrows feeding their young, while both Buff-throated and Streaked Saltators were busy singing from the tops of the trees. Rufous-tailed and Snowy-bellied Hummingbirds competed with Bananaquits for nectar, and Golden-hooded and Blue-gray Tanagers were everywhere.

Sooner or later, of course, you have to leave even the birdiest of yards (and the tastiest of breakfasts!) for localities farther afield. Cerro Jefe is a beautiful place, high and commanding, with birds worthy of the setting. A male Black-and-yellow Tanager was a stunner, and an odd popping call turned out to be a lutea-type Hepatic Tanager, sounding nothing like our familiar northern birds.

It defies logic and expectation alike, but each new site was better than the last! We fell asleep at Sierra Llorona to the grunting hoots of Mottled Owls, and awoke the next morning to find the feeders covered with hummingbirds and Chestnut-mandibled Toucans in the trees.

Sierra Llorona Lodge has a beautiful series of trails behind it, and we couldn’t resist heading down one of them before breakfast. White-tailed Trogons, which we’d heard along Old Gamboa Road, sang but refused steadfastly to let themselves be seen; suppose I’ll just have to go back someday….

At one point we were watching a Squirrel Cuckoo moving through the foliage, when a feathered form flashed in to land above our heads. A quick look at that median throat-stripe and it was obvious what it was.

The bird was utterly unconcerned at having landed on top of us, and perched long enough for all of us to admire the first juvenile Double-toothed Kite I’d ever seen, and the only member of the species we would see in Panama.

Breakfast called, the delicious spread we’d come to expect on our tour; but still we hurried, wanting to have a little time along the well-wooded entrance road before we had to leave. And I’m glad we did. A Black-breasted Puffbird perched unmoving above us, immediately propelling Sierra Llorona to the top of my world’s-best-driveways list!

 

 

I can’t think of a better name for the Park Eden B&B, situated as it is inside a true paradise of a garden. The day we spent there was the rainiest we had in all of Panama, but it didn’t much matter: the birding was soo good on the beautiful grounds that we didn’t feel like we were missing much anyway!

Common Tody-Flycatchers were attending a nest above one of the nicely sheltered benches, and as soon as the rain let up a little, Rufous-capped Warblers and Black-striped Sparrows came in to the bird baths to splash around. Tropical Kingbirds and Social Flycatchers occupied the wires as raindrops permitted, and Barred Antshrikes, every bit as crazed as I’d expected them to be, were singing and carrying on.

We did make one sortie into the weather, to visit the Gaital Nature Preserve. Swallow-tailed Kites were common overhead, and though birds were hard to see in the dense vegetation, we eventually enjoyed great looks at a number of Tawny-crested Tanagers. This wasn’t a species I’d been particularly eager to see, but happily the bird “didn’t look like its pictures in the birdy book,” instead a very lovely creature with a bright golden crown.

 

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.

The Ammo Dump, Pipeline Road, Old Gamboa Road: only a birder could find the romance in names like that! On our return from Chiriqui, we found not just the romance but the birds, lots and lots of birds, on what turned out to be one of the most exciting days of the entire Panama La Verde circuit.

It started with a fine Yellow-headed Caracara on the roadside, a species I’d first seen the day before over Los Quetzales. This one was obviously interested in the highway carnage of the night before, and simply flew up into the low vegetation when we stopped to admire it.

The Ammo Dump, a series of small ponds near the Canal, was a revelation.

Wily and elusive Wattled Jacanas wandered around at our feet, and both Green and Striated Herons were out in the marsh. An adult Rufescent Tiger-Heron flushed from the roadside and led us to a well-concealed stick nest, where a juvenile perched, teetering, on the edge. All of this took place under the weirdly watchful eyes of Greater Anis.

It had rained a bit early that morning, so there was lots of bathing and preening going on. Rusty-margined Flycatchers, wet and bedraggled, perched up close and obligingly revealed their wing-edgings, just in case there was any doubt.

And it went on and on, a new bird a minute. The biggest shock, one that left me so dumbfounded as to forget to use my camera, was a White-throated Crake blithely wandering across the road in front of our vehicle. It’s all about timing and luck, of course, but ours was right on that day!