PICK PANAMA FOR A PERFECT BIRDING HOLIDAY (2/16/01)

Six of us recently flew to Panama City from an ice-encrusted New England to a warm and welcoming environment. A local guide took us out the first morning for a half-day of birding, including a visit to a lek of performing green hermit hummingbirds, and then got us on our way to the Canopy Tower, a short distance north of the city.

The Canopy Tower has quickly become a world-renowned mecca for every type of nature lover. A former radar tower used in the defense of the Panama Canal, its geodesic dome sits atop a high hill surrounded by tropical forest. From the bustling activity of half a dozen hummingbird feeders near the entrance to its open deck five stories up, the Tower offers birders 360 degrees of incredible opportunities to see a great variety of birds and mammals “up close and personal.”

From dawn to dusk, atop the roof or in the dining and lounge areas one floor below, a parade of wildlife, as well as the passage of boats through the Panama Canal, holds the attention of viewers. Bird specialties which we enjoyed on a daily basis included blue cotinga, one of Latin America’s loveliest (and scarcest) birds, keel-billed and chestnut-mandibled toucans, red-capped manikin, blue dacnis, green honeycreeper, black-headed tody-tyrant and green shrike-vireo, along with a succession of warblers and tanagers.

On the premises were ten species of hummingbirds, slaty-tailed trogon, rufous and broad-billed motmots, collared aricaris. A large contingent of coatamundis (raccoon-like animals) patrolled the rear arena of the tower hoping for kitchen scraps, and every evening the staff attracted a kinkajou with a banana placed at eye-level spot for our pleased viewing.

Another prominent plus of the Canopy Tower is its proximity to other great birding areas. The Pipeline Road, known world wide as a premier birding road, is only a few minutes away. It lived up to its reputation with violaceous trogon, cinnamon and other woodpeckers, woodcreepers, antwrens, antbirds, antshrikes, purple-throated fruit-crows, wrens and flycatchers.

The highlight, though, was our encounter with two army ant swarms, the most-sought after phenomenon in Latin American tropics. When army ants are on the march, they eat any insect, small reptile or rodent in their path. Consequently, these creatures flee in an effort to escape the marauding ants. Unfortunately for some, they bolt right into the beaks of waiting birds. Only certain birds attend these ant swarms, but those that do are most unusual and are very special treats for their human observers.

We stood transfixed for nearly an hour while we were treated to plain-brown and black-striped woodcreepers, bicolored, ocellated, chestnut-backed and spotted antbirds, bright-rumped attila, and grey-headed tanager, all intent on catching their prey. We were only a few feet away from this woodland amphitheater, but the birds were too intent on their work to notice us.

As we crisscrossed Panama by plane and by van, we noticed many of “our” birds, and I couldn’t help comparing them to what we call “snow birds,” those New Englanders who migrate to Florida every year to escape our winter woes. It is always a rewarding experience to observe our nesting birds in their winter habitats.

Just as our homo sapiens snow birds seek warmer climes when cold weather threatens, insect-eating birds must do likewise. And just like their human counterparts, these birds usually mingle with a new set of companions and often lead a very different sort of life than they do up north. And so it was that while we were in Panama, we enjoyed our bird friends in totally different surroundings.

Have you ever craned your neck until you began suffering from “warbler neck” to see a chestnut-sided or Wilson’s warbler? In Panama, you don’t have to do that. They are either at eye level or, as was the case frequently with the Wilson’s, on the ground in beautiful plumage, their black caps shining in the sunlight! Black-and-whites, black-throated greens, Tennesses, American redstarts, prothonotarys, yellows and bay-breasted warblers were busily feeding amongst scarlet tanagers, thrushes, house wrens (not our migrants but a native variety) and tropical warblers that do not migrate north.

Seeing these diminutive birds such a great distance from their summer residences always rewakens our astonishment. We had spent a not-too-easy three-and-a-half hour trip by air to Miami, followed by a 3-hour flight on to Panama City. The birds had flown, often nonstop, all the way from our East Coast to the same destination and certainly weren’t catered to as we had been by airline personnel! Imagine being only 4 inches long and weighing a small fraction of a pound and flying that same distance under your own steam! How can they do it?

Actually, these remarkable feats that occur on our planet are little understood today, even as astronauts walk on the moon and perform seemingly miraculous exploits in space. We do know that before departing across the ocean, birds consume a lot of food and build up their body fat. These fat reserves are what give them the energy to fly long distances. For some bird species their ultimate destinations are still unknown.

Panama gave us a new perspective on bird life. In fact, here’s how one of the participants, Ned Handy of Barnstable, described it:

PANAMANIA

We heard that Panama was for the birds

. So we came to see

And saw: Plain Xenops;

hummingbirds on mountaintops;

motmots, trogons and jacobins

(but jacamars were “might have beens”);

for the tinamous

just a peak had to do;

and that daily dose of avian culture—<

a sky filled with floating vultures;

not just any vulture would do,

we even saw a King or two.

To see them circling, four or five,

made one cherish being alive

And we drove from sea to sea:

from the Pacific to the Atlantic

over mountains with trees gigantic;

from the Atlantic to the Pacific

the birding was terrific

It was just as we had heard

See Panama for the birds.

If you go, here is the URL of the Canopy Tower: www.canopytower.com. Not only can you learn a great deal about this place, you can make reservations and arrangements to be met at the Panama City airport.