Ground zero for birders of the world, Pipeline Rd. delivers incredible birdwatching opportunities any time of the day. In fact, our favorite sighting of the day was a toucan spotted at 1pm (for the non-birders out there...birds are most active at dusk and dawn but we stayed out all day and still had fantastic birding opportunities). We decided to spend our last days in Panama in Gamboa because you can walk to Pipeline Rd. and Soberania Parque Nacional straight from the town. Our first afternoon was spent wandering around the first mile or so of the road, which begins right next to the Panama Canal.
Panama Canal
One of our first birds was this guy (or gal). We still are not sure who this is; raptors are so hard to identify unless you are David Sibley! Could it just be a Coopers hawk? Not sure... anyone have suggestions? This hawk was flying right by the canal and landed on a telephone pole to take a closer look at us (in this photo he has his landing gear out).
Panama is the land of the tanager and oriole! Here are some of the species we saw in a few hours of wandering around Gamboa (clockwise from the top left): Male crimson-backed tanager, blue-gray tanagers on feeder (male and female), female crimson-backed tanager, and yellow-tailed oriole.
We set out to spend our last full day in Panama along the Pipeline Rd, in the national park, and at the Panama Rainforest Discovery Center. It was a soggy day in the rainforest, but occasionally it stopped raining long enough for us to take our jackets off. Thank goodness humans are waterproof and that it was warm out - it didn't really matter to us that it was raining because the bird sightings were still out of this world.
Jay spotted this lovely butterfly that we think is called "the postman" butterfly. In terms of wildlife sightings, we had great butterfly and bird sightings.... I had been hoping to find a sloth, but I don't have a trained eye to spot one so it never happened. We probably should have hired a guide to help us spot other wildlife, but I think we did pretty darn well by ourselves. The B&B we were staying at in Gamboa, Ivan's B&B, was run by a super sweet man who had loaded his old Panama Canal house with bird books. So we spent our evenings pouring over their books and writing down the names of the birds we saw. Ivan would even join us, look at our photos, and help us identify the birds.
The rainforest discovery center had a neat tower that you could pay an absurd price for to climb up above the canopy. We sucked it up and paid. Shit - when else will I be in Panama? I've got lots of countries to visit. It wasn't a huge surprise that it was awesome up there. Lucky for us there was one other couple at the top with a smartypants guide who was pointing out birds to his clients and we mooched off his knowledge and spotted critters we might have otherwise missed completely (like the white-necked puffbirds) or not been able to identify (such as the snail kites). We stayed long after the other couple left, but didn't spot much after that because it had started to rain pretty hard and the birds probably hunkered down underneath the canopy.
Here are some of the other awesome birds we saw during our day around Gamboa (clockwise from the top left): Juvenile tiger heron (either rufescent or fasciated), purple gallinule, the ever-so-intelligent great-tailed grackle, gray-headed chachalaca, and a plain-brown woodcreeper.
Although every new bird was a highlight, we were pretty darn well blown away by a little wooden shelter in the rainforest that had about six hummingbird feeders. We got up there and couldn't pull ourselves away from the hummingbird insanity - we must have stayed for a few hours! They were everywhere! Fighting, feeding, fighting, feeding, and whizzing right past you so close that you felt like they would take out an eyeball. Pretty freakin' amazing! Not to mention that it provided great photo opportunities if you had the patience to wait for the right shot.
Julie and the hummers
Jay took the best photograph of the most common hummingbird at the feeders, the male white-necked jacobin.
Other species from the top left are the long-billed hermit, female something??, male white-necked jacobin, two male white-necked jacobins fighting, immature male violet-bellied hummingbird??
Jay discusses coffee and hummingbirds
On our way back from the hummingbird spot, we heard a loud bird overhead and after some time Jay finally figured out where it was. It was a keel-billed toucan - a bird we had been hoping to see all along. A great final sighting as we made our way back to town.
The morning we left Gamboa and headed the airport the sun treated us to a gorgeous sunrise over the Canal and the sky eventually turned from pink to blue. The bad weather was leaving the day we were leaving. Figures. While I think we will head back to Africa or Asia again for our next vacation, Panama was perfect for a close-to-home vacation that was filled with lovely people, great birds, good diving, and some entertaining bus rides!
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