Posts Tagged ‘birds’

Mar
08

Birds of Panama, part 4: Darien Lowlands

Posted by Leigh in Animal Fun Facts,Animal Information,Featured

This is the hut in the Embera village where we stayed during our Harpy Eagle adventure

This is the hut in the Embera village where we stayed during our Harpy Eagle adventure

In Chiriqui, Jose said “Quetzals and Harpy Eagles, two birds that cancel flights and change iteneraries.”  I thought he was just referring to our plan change for the quetzal, but I was wrong.

After we flew back to Panama City, we were supposed to fly into the Darien region, take a boat up a river, and stay at a lodge in the jungle.  But on the trip in January, they did not see Harpy Eagle, so Jose made some changes to give us a better shot.  (Again, no guarantees, but he seemed pretty confident.)  So to get our goal for Darien, we had quite an adventure.

Before heading into the Darien, Jeremy and I took one precaution for hte sake of wildlife: we disinfected our shoes.  Darien is one of the last places on the planet without chytrid, a fungus that is killing off frogs and other amphibians.  While it hasn’t been proven conclusively, people carrying it in on their shoes is strongly suspected as one of the main ways the fungus is spread.  So we disinfected our shoes before we went.

Instead of a plane, we took the van to Darien.  This was a 4 hour drive, which included 5 National Police checkpoints.  We stayed in a town called Meteti, at a hotel that had air conditioning (and only cold water in the shower – woohoo, refreshing!).  Then we took a boat (which was part of the plan already) up a small river that is only navigable at high tide.  Our destination: the Embera village of Mogue, where we stayed with the tribe in an elevated hut for two days.  It was definitely an adventure, which reminded me more than a little of reality TV.  During this trek, including the drive, we stopped and looked for birds (of course), getting several Darien specialties, including a Golden-green Woodpecker which Jose had only seen once before.

The juvenile Harpy Eagle on the edge of the nest, taken at a distance

The juvenile Harpy Eagle on the edge of the nest, taken at a distance

On our only full day in Mogue, we went on the Harpy Eagle hike.  This was a 2.5 hour hike through hot, humid jungle to the nesting site of a Harpy Eagle.  We started early, so the hike in was not too bad, and despite Jose’s warnings that the chick might not be there, we saw the eagle.  A large juvenile bird, standing at the edge of the nest.  We got close enough to see it through spotting scope and binoculars, but not close enough to scare it. 

The nest was in the top of a Cuipo tree, the huge, deciduous emergents of Panama.  The tree that held this nest would have taken three people to hug at the base, and the top stuck out above the canopy.  The trees lose their leaves in the dry season, to conserve water, which made it a lot easier for us to see the nest.

This is where the patience part comes in: once we were at the nest, we waited to see if an adult would return.  Waited, and waited, for over 2 hours.  Of course, the chick was big enough that the adults didn;t have to come back while we were there – and they didn’t – but it did mean that we got lots of time to watch the chick.  And time to rest – we got to hike back out during the heat of the day, which was very exhausting, and I was glad that I had been able to sit for a while before that part of the adventure.

Tour Travel Tip #4: Be flexible and accepting.
Without a change in plans, we wouldn’t have seen the Harpy, by far the best bird of our trip.

I am an admitted lister, focusing on getting the new bird, the species that I haven’t seen before.  But I did learn one important thing on this trip: the most memorable birds are the ones that show you a bit about themselves.  We saw a Black Oropendola calling (which involves leaning so far forward it looks like it will fall off the branch), a Golden-capped Manikin dancing (including his moonwalk impression), and we heard Keel-billed Toucans croaking like frogs.  So yes, we saw 374 bird species and I added 291 birds to my life list.  But I also got to learn more about the animals and habitats of a very cool part of the world.

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Mar
06

Birds of Panama, part 3: Chiriqui Highlands

Posted by Leigh in Animal Fun Facts,Animal Information,Featured

This huge hummingbird, a Violet Sabrewing, is only found in the highlands

This huge hummingbird, a Violet Sabrewing, is only found in the highlands

 Finished with the Canal Zone, we flew into David, in western Panama.  Once we drove up out of David and into the highlands, I noticed several things that were very different from the canal zone.  Forget that we were there in the dry season; there was mist every day and even some rain.  This is where we got into some serious cloud forest.  There were some exciting birds, but up away from the rainforest, there were fewer species, and we had to work harder to see them.  We stayed in Volcan, near Volcan Baru National Park (it’s a dormant volcano), and our big goal for Chiriqui was the Resplendant Quetzal. (I also told Jose I wanted to see a Long-tailed Silky-Flycatcher, to which he responded, “We’ll see many.”  This means about the same as “We’ll see more,” so I wasn’t worried.)

There are some impressive birds in the Chiriqui highlands, including giant hummingbirds and day-glo tanagers.  We also saw a Tropical Screech Owl near our hotel, and the stars at night were just amazing!  We did see several Long-tailed Silky-Flycatchers (always flying away before I could get a picture), but the Quetzal was a more difficult story.

In the dry season, especially from January to March, quetzal is a difficult but consistent bird.  Consistent, because they feed on wild avocados – find a tree where they feed, and you are almost guaranteed to see one.  The difficult part comes in getting to them, because they live at high elevations and spend their time up in the canopy.  So they are a hike-up-a-hill, strain-your-neck kind of bird.  But even if most guides don’t guarantee quetzal, they at least expect to see them.  So quetzal should have been on the list the first day of Chiriqui, right?

Wrong.  Last year’s rainy season was especially wet and windy, and the avocados fruited late.  Typically the fruits are ripe enough for eating by January.  This year, even by our trip in February, most of the trees were still unripe.  Meaning the easy way to see quetzal was not an option.  We hiked up a mountain the first day, hoping to see it, but no luck.  (We did add 40 birds to the trip list by the end of the day, including some very cool woodpeckers, but no quetzal.)  So Jose, our fabulous guide, contacted a local guide he knew, and we tried again on the second day.  After hiking up the other side of the same mountain (the dormant volcano, in fact), guess who spotted a male quetzal high in a tree, pretending to be a branch.  Yup, it was me!  Every trip we go on, I get one awesome spot, where I find a bird and everyone says “how did you see that?” and this trip, I got quetzal.  And I was really glad, too, because I was tired of hiking up the mountain (and honestly, that may have been my driving factor for detailed searching). 

Tour Travel Tip #3:  Be prepared to be patient.
You may have to look a while for a specific bird.  You are birding with people of different skills, so you may have to wait while others find the bird.  And you may have to sit and wait for a bird to show up, which we discovered in our final area, Darien.

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Mar
04

Birds of Panama, part 2: Canal Zone

Posted by Leigh in Animal Fun Facts,Animal Information,Featured

A blue-crowned motmot in Gamboa

A Blue-crowned Motmot in Gamboa

The first part of our trip was based mainly in the Canal Zone, split between the Panama City area on the Pacific side and Gamboa, about halfway to the Caribbean side.  The isthmus of Panama is only about 50 miles across at the point of the canal, so it was relatively easy travel between these two areas.  Our goal for the canal zone: 100 new life list birds, and a sunbittern if we could get it.

Thanks to the canal, there are several large national parks in the area.  These are areas that were left undeveloped as a military buffer zone, which have now been converted into an ecological corridor.  The parks are home to some amazing animals; we saw a tamandua and a coati, as well as hummingbirds, toucans, and many other impressive birds.  The coolest bird of our first full day: the common potoo, which we saw holding perfectly still pretending to be a broken branch, with a fuzzy baby imitating the adult perfectly.  In Gamboa we saw bright birds called motmots; if you want to see one in person, we have a few in the Tropical Bird House rainforest here at the zoo.  Motmots nest underground, excavating burrows into dirt slopes.  We saw a rufous motmot near a nest – in fact, a few of the people on our trip missed seeing the bird because it flew into its hole.  (It came back out a little later, so everyone eventually saw it.) 

A Coati in Gamboa

A Coati in Gamboa

We got to spend a day in the foothills near Panama City, at a place called Cerro Azul.  I learned two important lessons here, which are listed in the travel tip at the end.  Let me set the scene.  We were walking through the rainforest; it was warm and humid, although cooler than it had been in the lowlands.  There was no breeze, and we were all sweating.  All around we could hear the high pitched whine of the cicadas, a sound very similar to a circular saw being used in the distance.  We were descending a hill, slipping a little in the damp leaves and dirt.  Jose was playing a bird call through a tiny speaker attached to his mp3 player.  When the bird called back, he held up his hand, gathered us all together, and told us to stay close, move quick, and be quiet.  We got very close to where the bird was calling, and my husbband and I were rewarded with a quick glimpse of a dark, fast bird.  That was all we saw of the Black-crowned Antpitta, although we heard it call again in the distance later. 

The two lessons from our Antpitta Experience?  That’s Tour Travel Tip #2: Trust your guide, and stick close. 
When Jose told us “Don’t worry, we’ll see more” what I learned he meant was “this bird we are working on is way cooler than that very common bird, so don’t get distracted.”  And the closer I was to our guide, the better my chance of seeing the cool bird that might drop back out of sight any moment.

If you were wondering about our goal, we most definitely got it: we saw the sunbittern (briefly, as it flew) and by the third day of the trip, I had added 108 new birds to my list.  Finished with the Canal Zone, we flew west, toward Costa Rica and the Chiriqui Highlands.

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Mar
02

Birds of Panama, part 1

Posted by Leigh in Animal Fun Facts,Animal Information,Featured

One of the many scenic views we enjoyed in Panama.

One of the many scenic views we enjoyed in Panama.

My husband and I just returned from a two-week guided birding tour to Panama.  We went with a tour company based in Panama called Birding Panama, and we were lucky enough to have one of the owners, Jose, as our guide.  Including us, there were 5 people on the tour, plus Jose.  We traveled to three different regions of the country, spent every day birding, and saw mammals, reptiles, insects, and of course, LOTS of birds. 

The Houston Zoo has a relationship with the Summit Nature Park in Panama, and we are actively involved in conservation projects in the region.  With this series of blogs, I hope to share with you a little bit about the country, the ecology, and the animals of Panama.

Tour Travel Tip #1: Bring an alarm clock. 
Traveling with a group is time-dependent, and some of the places you may be staying may not have a clock, or even a phone, in the room.

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Apr
19

What do birds use to make their nests?

Posted by admin in Animal Fun Facts

Rare Red Bird of ParadiseDid you know that birds use all kinds of materials to make their nests, like sticks, grass, dryer lint, shredded paper and string? Each species of bird makes a unique kind of nest all their own.

During our Earth Day celebrations this weekend, we had a “Build the Best Nest” activity where we acted like birds to build our very own nests. We don’t need feathers and a beak to make awesome nests, just look at all the cool designs people came up with!

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