John Karges Loves Panama

PANAMA!!! How could I not go? It was to be a trip of a lifetime, of which I’ve already had several and hope for any number more.

Last year, I saw the alluring narrative posts and photos of the 2023 TOS guided trip to Panama and promptly sought info on the next one by contacting trip leader Susan Foster to add my name to the prospective participant list. It all came together for me and 12 others for the trip to be a go.

On August 26th, Canopy Family staff gathered up some of our group of participants from Panama City hotels alongside earlier arrivals and we set off to leave the bustle and cluster of the internationally cosmopolitan city for our first several nights’ stay at Canopy Lodge for birding and eco-touring around the lodge grounds and to nearby natural areas and wild lands. Many had started their bird lists upon landing, and we certainly added more en route to the Lodge with roadside birding and a rendezvous of our two minibuses at a Starbucks, with Magnificent Frigatebirds overhead and Gray-breasted Martins.

Canopy Lodge is nestled in a densely wooded valley tributary that drains into El Valle de Antón, near the town of Antón. The spacious and comfy lodge is multi-storied guest accommodations with a large open air communal dining area and viewing and photography areas close to bird feeding stations of fruit, and hummingbird feeders. A perennial stream flows by, and the feeders, the stream corridor, the surrounding floral gardens, and the opening of the forest overhead all offered wonderfully rich birding opportunities with birds in clear view as well as some of the local native mammals like agoutis and red-tailed squirrels, without having to walk far at all. 

 And here and now, first and foremost, our Canopy guides are to be heralded and commended. In a word, they were FANTASTIC for the entirety of our Panama birding visit. From their introduction until farewells, they were gracious and generous, knowledgeable, affable, and helpful. Led by our noted professional staff guide Carlos Bethancourt, who stayed with us most of the entire time, he and his colleagues’ knowledge and recognition of bird calls and songs, their ability to spot and pinpoint just about any bird, and then share its location with laser pointers (appropriately deployed to not disturb the bird) or put the bird in their fine spotting scopes for everyone was exemplary and a delightful successful way to conduct a birding tour. Their ability to “whistle in” birds was augmented with some use of playback recordings and they even sometimes recorded calls they’d find useful on future tours.

Much of our time was spent in primary rain forest, sometimes approaching mountainous cloud forest, but also along forest edges, agricultural fields and pastures, wetlands and ponds, and a brief sojourn to the Pacific beach, and visits to public and private gardens. The richness and diversity of habitats provided the diversity of birds seen and there were many “lifers” for participants, one who got her 700th and then 800th, throughout our visit. I think the final tally for the group and the trip exceeded 280 bird species.

Skilled and well-equipped photographers were along and along with the digiscoped photographs the guides took, generously shared superb photos via AirDrop after nearly each day during the evening’s count-down review before dinner.

There were so many highlight birds for everyone, including several birds our guides were delighted to find and help us see, that it’s hard to know which ones to feature. Several groups of birds stand out as noteworthy because of their diversity, or colorfulness, or challenge for everyone to see well. The guides worked long and hard to “get” the furtive and cryptic Tody Motmot, probably spending some 40 minutes or so, to locate it for everyone in a relatively dense wooded thicket.

Atop the two birding towers in the forest, the 5-story high Canopy Tower and Rainforest Discovery Center’s spiral 174-step staircase 32m-high tower, both afforded us views at forest canopy height for treetop birding landing and foraging in the canopy and aerial views of birds flying by. Raptors included Bat Falcons, Semi-plumbeous Hawks, and Crane Hawks, along with parrots and toucans, swifts and swallows, and spectacular views of Blue Dacnis, Blue Cotingas, Cinnamon Woodpecker, and singing Slate-colored Grosbeak.  Both towers offer full 360◦ panoramic views for everyone, and there was quite a bit of dashing around the ring to see an announced bird. 

Birding in the forest at ground level along paths and roads was comparably rich but in a different manner. The keen auditory and visual skill of our guides was invaluable at calling in birds to view or detecting the presence of birds we might otherwise miss. Some forest birds were known to occupy territories where they could be reliably found, and this was particularly true for a Mottled Owl pair and an adult and fledgling Spectacled Owl.

In dense forests, for several species including furtive understory birds, especially birds like antbirds, trogons, woodcreepers, and manakins, we again relied upon the acumen of our guides to draw in, locate, and identify each one. Although we did not see an army ant swarm attended by the myriad birds that accompany a marauding swarm for prey, we did see one bivouac trail of army ants. The antbirds and other bird species that follow army ant swarms are a classic Neotropical ecological occurrence, which would have been a thrill so see, but we still saw a good variety of species that would do that. There were even jokes about seeing an “ant-whatever” considering how many diverse species are known to follow those ant swarms. Among the most memorable, and well-photographed, was a Streak-chested Antpitta.

During times between field treks or at the lodges before and after meals, many folks spent time at the hummingbird feeders and viewing stations. The revolving kaleidoscope of diverse and squabbling hummingbirds kept birders busy and challenged the photographers trying to stay focused on this hummingbird as an even more spectacular one made an appearance or ran someone else off the feeders. By my review of the daily tallies, we had 18 hummingbird species throughout the visit, and most are splendid even if some seen only briefly. The diversity of Neotropical birds is no more on display than by the variety of hummingbirds, flycatchers, ant”-fiil-in-the-blank” birds, woodcreepers, and tanagers. Add in mixed species flocks, which were often the situation, and it was nearly overloading to see this one or that and keep track of everything everyone was seeing (thank you, eBird!).

Our visit was split between the Canopy Lodge near Antón and the Canopy Tower near the Panama Canal. The Canopy Tower is fabulous, between the birds at treetop height and overhead, the hummingbird swarm at the feeders, and the incongruity of having oceanic ships plod by. At each of our lodges, the food service was abundant and scrumptious, the rooms comfy and tidied daily, and the hospitality by all Canopy Family staff just grand.

The tower, a 5-story former U.S. military installation repurposed into an ecotourism lodge, is a fantastic base to bird from, and from which to launch local excursions to nearby wetlands and forest-lined lagoons rich with bird diversity including waterbirds.

We were fortunate also to visit the Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal during some stormy, rainy weather that would have made birding challenging. After the Imax theater historical documentary, were fortunate to watch a ship pass through the locks and another entering the locks. It was a fine addition to an already superb and ultra-rich birding tour to Panama.  Thank you, TOS.