RAPTOR RECORD OVER PANAMA

This fall’s migration saw a record number of raptors passing over Panama City in one day. Take a guess, then click on this link and read about the number of zeros in the new record.
PIB offers great trips to Panama, including a chance to see Harpy Eagle.
But Panama is much more than just raptors…below some images from my recent trip to Panama: Violaceous Trogon, white-faced monkey and White-necked Puffbird.

These two guys were just down the street from our arrival hotel in Panama City: Crimson-crested Woodpecker and Common Tody-flycatcher

BIRDING THE PANAMA ROADSIDE

Little Blue Heron working a plowed field in Panama Province along Pan-Am Highway, the same field where the caracara studied the large snake.

This is the only time we were ever close enough to a Laughing Falcon to get a shot. One of the many raptors we saw in Panama where most are seen outside the rainforest in grasslands, savannah or around lakes and rivers. We even saw one Osprey sitting on a small piling in the mudflats of Panama City. Of course, we saw Roadside Hawk in the forest as well as along the highway where its name tells you to look for it.
Altogether our Panama trip brought us 20 species of raptor, 7 of them falcons.

Long-tailed Tyrant, seen along highway in eastern Panama. We later saw the Fort-tailed Flycatcher as well and I have the pictures to prove it. We saw twenty species of tyrant flycacthers on the Panama trip, including two kiskadees and two tityra species, pictures in future blogs.

SURVIVAL

The competition for survival in nature is non-stop. In temperate climates it is often slow-moving and unseen. In the tropics where heat and water and more plentiful and the biomass is several times greater than in most of the U.S., the competition is often very evident. Strangler figs reaching the canopy by killing the host tree. Long lines of army ants or leaf-cutter ants moving along the forest floor, carrying their bounty. Army ants are killers, leaf-cutters harvest leaves that they feed to their fungus farm which in turn feeds the ants. An insect version of an Iowa corn and soybean farm. On our way east along the Pan-American Highway, somewhere west of Lake Bayano in Panama, we came across a lareg grassy field being disced by a man on tractor. The grass and weeds were well-established so the animals living in that field had their cover blown. Here is one sequence of a Yellow-headed Caracara trying to get up the courage to attack a large blue-gray snake uncovered by the human on tractor:

Later one of the many Turkey Vultures present flew in and shooed the much smaller caracara away. we did not see the final result for the snake, which may or may not have been injured by the tractor and disc. There were numerous caracara working the worked field and a Peregrine even came by to check the action, but it didn’t linger. Most of the birds int he field were Black and Turkey Vultures, clearly pleased by the results of the discing. Little Blue and Tricolored Herons and Great Egrets walked near the tractor to get first shot at what was turned up.
To see Yellow-headed Caracara and witness the natural processes that are so intense in the Neotropics, you can join one of our birding trips to Panama or other Latin American destinations.

PANAMA’S PEERLESS

Some birds are curious, others impressive in some way, some simply beautiful. Panama has many in each category. Here’s an impressive and a beautiful:

ASessive one-year old Harpy, the largest of the eagle species on Earth. This bird will not be mature until at least three years of age, like Brown Pelicans or larger gulls. Then below that is the colorful, and beaatiful, Rufous-tailed Jacamar.
Then there is this modest-sized woodpecker who gets a lot of good looks into a small package. And we got good looks at his good looke even though this is a bird that;s hard to see in Panama. Range maps show the Spot-breastd has very limited distribution:

Here’s our curious, the Fort-tailed Flycatcher:
And here’s the equally curious Spot-crowned Barbet:

All these birds are seen on our PIB birding trips to Panama. The Harpy is found on the extension into the rugged but amazing Darien National Park beyond the end of the Pan-American Highway.

NEOTROPICAL BIRD GUIDE ONLINE

Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab is putting together a comprehensive list and description of Neotropical birds online. Here is the link. I am about to get my first look at Panama’s avians so this site has been fun to explore. I’m on one of our PIB trips with a great local guide.
This Neotropical site works very much like the Birds of North America Online which I find to be a valuable resaource when I am writing about our native birds here in the U.S. The Noetropical site already has 4000 species, more than 4 times the total on the older BNA site. Such is the species diversity of Central and South America plus the Caribean Islands. We regularly get four breeding species of tanager in North America, further south there are many dozens. Even more flycatchers in Latin America than any other family, nearly 400 species.