Gamboa Rainforest Resort: Jacobins and Jacobins

December shaped up to be a month of quick visits this year, and four days in Panama, though well worth it indeed, was hardly enough to do anything but whet the appetite.

After a great first morning of balcony birding, I met my guide and we headed out to the canopy tram and tower. The rain had started by the time we arrived, but that just gave us extra time to enjoy the several White-necked Jacobins that had set up vigorously defended territories at the feeders, chasing off anything, feathered or not, that dared approach too close.

The name of this dazzling little bird has given rise to a strange etymological legend, one that I’ve heard repeated many times recently: namely, that the white half-collar on the nape of the male recalls (it’s getting unpleasant now, beware) the cut of the guillotine that sent so many radical leftists, Jacobins, to their graves during the French Revolution. Too clever by half, unfortunately: the name refers quite simply to the cowl worn by the birds, which was thought to resemble the hood of Dominican (Jacobin) monks. The only connection is that the Jacobins (the human ones) met in a former Dominican monastery in Paris.

It’s still a good story, I have to admit: just wrong.