En El Valle - March 5

After a late flight on Tuesday and an overnight at La Estancia B&B in Panama City, we woke up to the songs on so many birds! Our hotel was built on a steep hillside, and the feeders hanging over the cliff were constantly busy. The first Life Bird was the flamboyant Crimson-backed Tanager (coincidentally also the first bird photo, taken by J. Morlan) that I posted on this blog. The banana-bunch feeders (very common in the tropics - nicely low-tech) were constantly busy with Blue-gray Tanagers, Palm Tanagers, Orange-throated Parrot, Crimson-headed Woodpecker, Clay-colored Thrush, and the local squirrels among others. The feeders that we would fill at home with mixed seeds were filled instead with rice for the Variable Seedeaters and Ruddy Ground Doves. We got to enjoy all of this while having a nice breakfast on the balcony.

While we waited for our taxi after breakfast, some of the staff was watching a gorgeous and hefty green snake - a Bejuquilla - while it waited for its own breakfast of fowl fresca while draped over some branches. That was one camoflaged snake - the exact green of the local leaves and with a leaf-shaped-and-patterned head.

Our bus left from the busy Panama City station at about 11:30 AM and we arrived at about 1:45 in El Valle. The owner of our lodgings at Cabañas Potosi was at Massiel´s Restaurant wainting for us, and we had a terrific lunch there while Denny regaled us with El Valle information and lore. It was very warm - over 80 degrees - and we were glad for the shade while we watched the world go by, consisting mostly of pedestrians, buses of all descriptions, bicycles, mopeds, and very few cars. Denny took us to our cabaña next and we settled in. The cabañas are in lovely, lush setting and we started birding immediately! I took this photo to the right during the afternon shower, a regular pattern it seems. It is actually refreshing, coming after the heat of midday when we were wandering up the La India Road. Best bird - although not a life bird - was the Bay-headed Tanager, surely one of the most gorgeous of a gorgeous group of birds. We also saw a Red-thighed Dacnis, Blue-crowned Motmot, and Road-side Hawk and a bunch of others. I´d love to show you more, but here I am sitting in the internet cafe instead of biking down the street to the orchid farm! Ron is up in the mountains with our cabañas neighbors and "El Jaguar" - their local birding guide for the day. Hasta Luego!

Cecropia Leaves and Oropendolas

Yesterday I saw Patricia, a fabulous illustrator and wonderful friend. She has traveled and plied her artist skills many times in Central and South America, and I wish she could come with me to tutor me in observing and drawing it all. Maybe next trip. She keeps dried cecropia leaves on her desk to remind her of the spendors of the tropics. The photo below (read more) is from Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami, where - coincidentally - Patricia's brother once worked. These leaves are so distinctive that I imagine every traveler to the tropics would recognize them in some fashion.

By way of a conversation with Nancy and Denny (who we met while birding a year ago in Arizona and who told us about this Panama trip - they are going too), Ron learned about Xeno-Canto, a website that "shares bird songs from around the world." Ron doesn't know how he missed this. I suppose it is just as well - how would he even be ready to leave in morning if he had spent the past who-knows-how-long recording all those bird calls??? So, how about the call of the Chestnut-headed Oropendola? While looking at the photo below, go to this link and play one or more of the calls/songs that has/have a number listed in the "TIME" column. Cool.

The oropendolas are pretty interesting - colorful and conspicuous, and they make amazing pendulous nests in colonies high in the trees. We have frequently found them just by the sounds of their friendly chatter among themselves. The Chestnut-headed Oropendola (one of four Oropendola species in Panama) is common is some of the areas we'll visit.

And actually, we are pretty much ready to go. This is not typical for me. I hate packing, but Ron is a good influence on me. He even printed out a packing list, which has been very helpful. Anyway, we had a laugh tonight when our friend Lynn called about taking us to the airport tomorrow. She thought maybe we would want to load our stuff into the car tonight - ha ha ha!!! She has some impression that we are highly organized. How sweet she is.


So, next post from El Valle on Wednesday, perhaps.

Ridiculous to Sublime

Okay. We are almost ready to leave and there are some unresolved issues. How do we dry our socks in the tropics? Honestly, it is an issue when we are hiking most of each day. When we went on a birding trip to Ecuador a couple of years ago, we thought we had it figured out. The first leg of the trip was along the Pacific coast and - wouldnachaknow- it was cool and cloudy, meaning humid, for all four days over there in the very dry-looking hills. My QuickDri underpants never did dry completely, even the ones I washed the first night there. And the so-called QuickDri socks - this is the ridiculous part - actually seemed to absorb more water when I hung them up to dry! And things didn't improve even in high elevation Quito, never mind the Amazon Basin jungle lodge where we stayed next. And, yes, we did roll them in towels, "like a burrito" as they say, and stomp on them.

Well, Ron bought some Tilley socks for that trip and was fairly happy with them, so I bought some this time. Now we have 12 socks that look exactly alike, unless you compare the 6 of them that are slightly larger with the other 6 (mine). Here is my solution to that - I embroidered little leaves on the cuffs of mine with my nifty HiTech sewing machine. I don't want to be scrambling for socks that fit at some ungodly hour as we prepare to get outside to see the Rufous Motmot. And really, socks are important. The underwear thing will have to sort itself out some other way... Oh, right. Our underpants look quite different, even when damp.

And one other small thing - the socks available are very short. I think they should be advertised as "Summer Only Socks" in the temperate zone. I put them on today when going to shop for some sandals to take along, and I was freezing until I got home and put on Real Socks.

Now for the Sublime. By chance, today's Adirondack Almanac had a little piece on birds (thanks, Brian!) called Bird Cams To Calm Our Local Weather Woes. What an amazing treat it was to go to the links that took me to the tropics. One was a bird cam in Brazil, where I saw a Blue-gray Tanager (I think - see above to check out the real deal) and some hummingbirds flitting around some feeders in real time. I know they are out there and that we will see them soon!
And the snow continues.

Check Out Joe's Photos of Panama Birds!

Our trip organizer, Janice Jorgensen, has been sending us photos of birds recently seen in Panama that were taken by Joseph Morlan. Wow! He is a spectacular photographer of some spectacular birds. His colleague Robbie Fischer on their recent Panama bird excursion wrote a description of their experiences. Find both at this link: http://fog.ccsf.edu/~jmorlan/trips.htm 
Here are few of the photos. I guess you can see why Ron is pouring over the Birds of Panama Field Guide.

Bird Photo Labels:

• top right: Rufous Motmot (Morlan)
• middle right: Crimson-backed Tanager (Morlan)
• bottom left: Dot-winded Ant Wren (Morlan)
  

Ron & Cris' Big Adventure

Welcome to our collection of thoughts, notes, and photos related to our trip to Panama. We leave a week from today, and things are pretty well set for the trip. Just all those little projects that have be done first, like paying my NYS sales tax, stopping the mail, and preparing for potential disasters at home (like ice storms, power outages, etc.). You know - the things that make you crazy getting ready for a big trip! Fortunately, our friends Tom and Lynn are keeping an eye on the house and the weather for us.

BUT, it will be heavenly to step into warm humid air in Panama City. We'll travel by bus to El Valle (in the mountains west of Panama City) where we'll settle in for a couple of weeks. I have resolved to complete a drawing or painting and to do my yoga routine every day while at our little cottage. Ron will be swooping about looking for birds, and I certainly will be with him for a lot of that too. By the way, in the photo above we are doing a "binocular test session" in Florida  this past December. This photo of lush vegetation is from the web site of our little cabana.

And outside, the snow is softly and steadily falling. The forecast calls for 6 to 12 inches , followed by another storm later this week.