Little Known Warbler of the Northeast

Two years ago the 200^th anniversary of the scientific discovery of the Connecticut Warbler passed, as far as I know, uncelebrated, even unmarked by anyone in the birding community. During the autumn of 1812 one of the fathers of American ornithology, Alexander Wilson, the immigrant sometime-school teacher from Scotland determined to describe all of the birds of his new homeland, the United States, collected a specimen of a large, furtive warbler and named it for the state he had shot it in. Since that day, remarkably little knowledge has been uncovered about the Connecticut Warbler's biology. In spite of an army of birders carrying an array of technically advanced optics and communications devices, despite eBird, HBW Alive, and BNA Online, Oporonis agilis, the "agile autumn bird" (Gruson 1972), remains an obscure, little known forest species. 

We have learned that the Connecticut has a loud, rollicking song, sung in a voice somewhat reminiscent of the voice of an Ovenbird or a waterthrush. The authors of the recently published The Warbler Guide present sonograms of three song variations  and summarise the species’ song as “1 section of 3- or 4- Element Phrases repeated 3 or 4 times (only shared with Common Yellowthroat); irregular, jerky, percussive rhythm… [with a] staccato, emphatic quality.” I like to transcribe the typical song as a fast, loud ringing “chippy chuppy, chippy chuppy, chippy chuppy” which is unlike the song of any other North American warbler.

Philadelphia Vireo - one of the species added to B.C.'s bird list by Cowan and Martin in 1938. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

We have also determined that the Connecticut Warbler is a long distance migrant that crosses the Gulf of Mexico via the West Indies on its way to and from its wintering grounds somewhere in South America. Exactly where its wintering range occurs is poorly known. There's an odd 2000 km gap between known wintering sites in northern South America and wintering sites in Amazonian Brazil. It could be that the birds collected in the northern part of the southern continent were mostly late autumn migrants, and the Connecticut Warbler spends the winter in a region of Amazonia where oddly enough it is the only North American migrant in the neighbourhood. All of the other birds are resident tropical species.  

The Connecticut Warbler has revealed to us only the most basic information about its breeding biology.  Over 70 years passed between the collecting of the first specimen known to science and the discovery of the first nest. In 1883 Ernest Thompson Seton, later to gain fame as a popular writer of animal stories and one of the founders of the America Boy Scouts movement, happened to see a small brown bird flush from a mossy mound in a tamarack swamp near Carberry, Manitoba. Like several other New World Warblers the Connecticut nests on the ground, often in a hummock. Seton's discovery, though pleasing to Seton,  did not open the flood gates of scientific enquiry concerning the Connecticut Warbler. Safe from spying ornithologists in its mosquito-loud northern forests, the Connecticut Warbler remained obscure.  Forty years later in the 1920s 2 or 3 more nests were found, this time near Belvedere, Alberta, but the discoveries didn't clarify a thing. From the discovery of a few more nests over the years to the present, even the most basic information remains to be discovered about this warbler. A single 1961 study conducted by Lawrence Walkinshaw and William Dyer, based on a single nest in Michigan, has remained the source of most information regarding the bird's reproduction but it makes for pretty thin reading. The Birds of North America Online account, which sums up most of what science knows about the species is still full of words like “unknown”, and phrases such as“further study is required”.

Is it little wonder that American birders often “need” Connecticut Warbler on their life lists? The bird migrates very late in spring, often well after almost all other warblers have already started nesting. As Pete Donne writes in Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion (2006) “Running from one to two weeks behind the flood of most warblers, Connecticut Warblers arrive in Florida from early to late May and reach breeding grounds in late May to mid-June.” This inconvenient schedule conflicts with the mid-May field trips at places like Point Pelee and other migration spots. Many Americans see or hear their first Connecticut Warblers on special June excursions to northern Minnesota, Michigan or Wisconsin, the only states where the bird breeds within the contiguous United States. With the remaining 90% of its breeding range sprawling in an arc from southwest Quebec northwestwards across Ontario, through the central parts of the Prairies Provinces and northeastern B.C., the Connecticut Warbler still requires birders living across southern Canada to make special excursions into the southern boreal forest to find it. In British Columbia, the majority of birders live around Vancouver and Victoria. For them to add the Connecticut Warbler to their provincial lists, they must travel to terra incognito, the Peace River area.

The Peace River country was the last area of the province to be settled by white people. (Though the first fur trading posts within B.C. were established, albeit briefly, along the banks of the Peace  between the Alberta border and Hudson Hope.) Real settlement, mostly agricultural, occurred from the 1930s onwards. The area was so poorly known biologically that the first detailed survey of its birdlife didn’t take place until 1938, decades after the basic avifauna of southwestern British Columbia was known. And it was in the forests of the Peace, of course, that the Connecticut Warbler had been living since at least the last ice age, a fact that wasn’t even hinted at until almost mid century.

In May 1938 the B.C. Provincial Museum sent young biologist Ian McTaggert Cowan and an assistant, Patrick W. Martin, by truck from Victoria to Tupper Creek at the south end of Swan Lake south of Dawson Creek. Their purpose was to survey the vertebrate fauna of the Peace River Block, as it was then known. They had very little to go on: even though fur trading forts had first appeared along the river as early as 1797 little information had been gathered on the non-game creatures.

Cowan and Martin set up camp on the west side of Swan Lake on 5 May 1938. They collected and made observations from this camp until 8 June when they moved about 100 kms northwards to the south end of Charlie Lake near Fort St. John. On 19 June they returned to Tupper Creek where they remained until 30 June when they left for Victoria.

Cowan and Martin’s surveys of the Peace River area, published in the provincial museum’s first occasional paper (1939), added several species of birds previously unrecorded to the British Columbian list including Franklin’s Gull, Philadelphia Vireo, Black-and-white Warbler, Bay-breasted Warbler, Cape May Warbler, Ovenbird, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Common Grackle, Le Conte’s Sparrow, Nelson’s Sparrow, all now known to occur regularly in the Peace River area. They were also the first biologists to discover the Connecticut Warbler within the political boundaries of the province.

An extreme enlargement of a male Connecticut Warbler  southwest of Dawson Creek, June, 2014. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

On 22 June 1938 Cowan and Patrick shot the first Connecticut Warbler ever recorded in British Columbia. The bird was a male singing every 50-55 seconds in a grove of young aspens “below an open stand of large poplars, aspens and white spruce.” (p.50) On 24 June about half a mile away another male was singing in climax aspens. A gunshot, presumably from a shotgun discharged by either Cowan or Martin, caused an additional four other Connecticuts to sing. The collectors bagged two of the five birds.

For many years this episode was almost all that was known about the Connecticut Warbler within British Columbia. Sight records slowly accumulated from other locations in the northeastern including Fort Nelson. During my fourteen years investigating the birds of the Fort St. John area I saw or heard the species only a few times. It wasn’t until Mark Phinney began systematic forest surveys around Dawson Creek that the Connecticut Warbler was found to be a local summer resident in aspen forests in the South Peace. Finding a nest, however, was another matter altogether.

To give my readers an idea how hard it can be to find a nest, cunningly hidden on the forest floor, I refer them to a fascinating yet not well known book written by the American bird photographer William Burt. From 1984 to 2000 Burt pursued little known birds for his book, Rare and Elusive Birds of North America. The book contains entertaining narratives of his searches as well as sharply focused photographs of birds within their nesting habitats taken with a large format camera. In search of a Connecticut Warbler’s nest, Burt searched a Tamarack bog near Waskish in north-central Minnesota for two summers. The habitat was open park-like woods “full of mounded moss and ferns and scanty grass and horsetails.” At least six males were singing from an area about sixty to eighty acres in size.

In spite of the relative abundance of singing males, Burt found no nests that first year.  In fact, other than the robust singing of the males, he saw no evidence that the birds were reproducing. Only twice in weeks of watching did he see warblers carrying food only to almost immediately lose track of them.

His second summer began on 10 June with the same woodland “ringing with the songs of males”, but this time he decided that a more systematic search was needed so he laid out ropes on the moss to mark grids. He painstakingly searched the resulting corridors mossy mound by mound. Still he was unsuccessful. Finally he began concentrating on birds calling a sharp peet or whik, alarm notes. One morning, brushing away spider webs, ducking under fallen timber, braving the loud clouds of mosquitoes, as he was moving toward another calling bird, a small bird burst from the mossy mound near his feet. He looked down, parted a few fronds of fern and saw a “grass-lined cup with three brown-specked whitish eggs.” He had his nest.

Two days later there was a full clutch of five eggs. Not wanting to risk disturbing the female, he made only short daily checks to ascertain the nest’s progress. He was waiting for the chicks to be 4 days old before moving a blind near the nest. On 4 July 4 of the 5 eggs had hatched. On 7 July there were five chicks. On 9 July he brought his photographic equipment with him only to find that the nest was empty. Something – a weasel, a jay, a predator – had taken the young. Reflecting upon his efforts to find a nest, William Burt states, “I don’t think there’s any bird in North America, including the black rail, whose nest I’d less want to ever have to find again.”

On 19 June, 2000 Mark Phinney of Dawson Creek found the first Connecticut Warbler nests in British Columbia. That day the nest contained 5 eggs. On 8 July it held 5 well-feathered chicks which left the nest by 10 July. The nest, like most of Phinney’s sightings of the warblers, was southwest of Dawson Creek in pole-aged aspen (25-40 years old) with a general southerly aspect. This habitat is obviously quite different than the Tamarack swamps described by Seton and Burt and other observers in Manitoba and Wisconsin. Nor does it particularly match the older mixed forest of aspen and White Spruce where I had found the birds in the Fort St. John area. Clearly the Connecticut Warbler occurs in more than one type of forest; however, that doesn’t mean that the bird is particularly adaptable. It isn’t. Across its breeding range the species seems to be fussy in its habitat choice and in general avoids areas where the forest is grazed by cattle or broken up by clearings, seismic lines, transmission corridors and other human developments. 

If you’re interested in more information about the Connecticut Warbler here are the references I used while writing this piece:

Bent, A.C. 1953. Life Histories of North American Wood Warblers. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Burt, William. 2001. Rare and Elusive Birds of North America. Universe Publishing, 300 Park Ave. South, New York, 10010.

Campbell, R.Wayne, Neil K. Dawe, Ian McTaggart-Cowan, John M. Cooper, Gary W. Kaiser, Andrew C. Stewart, and Michael C.E. McNall. 2001. The Birds of British Columbia, Volume 4, Passerines: Wood-Warblers through Old World Sparrows. University of British Columbia Press, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z2.

Cooper, John M. and Suzanne Beauchesne. 2004. “Connecticut Warbler” pp. 1-10, in Accounts and Measuring for Managing Identified Wildlife – Accounts V. 2004. “www.env.gov.bc.ca/wld/frpa/iwms/documents.Birds/b.connecticutwarbler.pdf”

Cowan, Ian McTaggart. 1939. The vertebrate fauna of the Peace River district of British Columbia. British Columbia Provincial Museum Occasional Paper No. 1, Victoria.

Dunne, Pete. 2006. Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion. Houghton Mifflin C., 215 Park Ave. South, New York, 10003.

Gruson, Edward S. 1972. Words for Birds: A Lexicon of North American Birds with Biographical Notes. Quadrangle Books, NY Times, 330 Madison Ave., New York 10017. 

Pitocchelli, J., J. Bouchie, and D. Jones. 1997. Connecticut Warbler (Oporornis agilis). In The Birds of North America, No. 320 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C. 

_____, _____, and ____. 2012. Connecticut Warbler. (revised. The Birds of North America Online. 

Stephenson, Tom and Scott Whittle. 2013. The Warbler Guide. Princeton University Press, 41 William St., Princeton, New Jersey 08540.Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Taylor, Peter (editor-in-chief). 2003. The Birds of Manitoba. Manitoba Naturalists Society,

Birds and Berries

Late summer is enlivened for me by the ripening of wild fruit and the appearance of the fruit-eating bird in our local gullies and thickets. These berry thickets, found throughout the Valley, provide birders with exciting birding opportunities during otherwise quiet times.

The classic berry thicket in the North Okanagan grows around almost any drainage, pond or lake, or often in a narrow dry grassland swale that may once have channelled glacial water thousands of years ago when the surrounding ice sheets were melting. Now the folds of the drainage contain bushes and short trees that  provide birds and animals with an annual summer feast. Drawn by the bounty, species like Swainson’s Thrushes and Western Tanagers, normally hidden in upland forests, become temporarily abundant and often more visible than usual as they strip the berries from the bushes.

Choke Cherries are favoured by many species of birds and mammals including Black Bears, Red Squirrels, Ruffed Grouse, Northern Flickers, American Robins, and Cedar Waxwings. The seeds are regurgitated or excreted and thus are spread far and wide by wildlife. Photo by C. Siddle. 

The major fruit and berry species include Saskatoon, hawthorn sp. , Chokecherry, Pin Cherry, Red-osier Dogwood, and Blue Elderberry. Trees attractive to birds and found growing around the berry thickets include Douglas Maple, Trembling Aspen and Douglas-fir.

Birds drawn to such places include Ring-necked Pheasants, California Quail, Ruffed Grouse, Mourning Doves, Calliope Hummingbirds, Rufous Hummingbirds, Black-chinned Hummingbirds, Red-naped Sapsuckers, Northern Flickers, and Pileated Woodpeckers (attracted, in particular to the fruit of Virginia Creeper). Taking advantage of open perches and easy access to flies and to flying insects are Western Wood-Pewees, Willow Flycatchers (open, marshy habitat with red-osier dogwood thickets), and various empidonax species. Most prominent of the flycatchers are Eastern Kingbirds initially in family groups and later in autumn flocks fond of the white Red-osier Dogwood berry. Occasionally even a silent Olive-sided Flycatcher or two, down from the mountain forests, may appear on its way south.

Hawthorns (Crataegus sp.) are principally eaten by Cedar Waxwings. Photo by C. Siddle.

Vireos are typical berry thicket birds and are easily attracted by pishing. There is something in a vireo’s personality that will not let the bird pass by a good pish without investigating. Cassin’s Vireos, whether in molty plumage early in August or in feather perfect plumage later in the month, can be counted on to appear, while it’s a rare Red-osier Dogwood thicket that doesn’t hold at least one Warbling Vireo. Red-eyed Vireos are more conspicuous in mid and late August than at any other time as they fuss and scold their way south from thicket to thicket.

Insectivorous most of the year, Warbling Vireos become serious consumers of Red-osier Dogwood berries in summer and fall. Here an immature with quite yellowish underparts (common) is responding to my pishing. Photo by C. Siddle. 

An interesting thing about Warbling Vireos is that for 10 months of the year the species is highly insectivorous. Only in August and September does the Warbling Vireo consume fruit.

House Wrens are common in family groups, the young birds still showing fleshy gapes at the corners of their beaks, while Ruby-crowned Kinglets don’t usually begin to appear in numbers in the valley bottom until September.

Swainson’s Thrushes, along with American Robins and Cedar Waxwings, are the poster birds for these berry-bird aggregations. Coming out of the forest proper beginning in late July to feed in the thickets of the gulleys and draws, Swainson's Thrushes remain shy, only occasionally appearing at the edge of vegetation but commonly calling softly "whit" notes that reveal their presence. From mid September onwards Hermit Thrushes, that spent the spring and summer nesting in the boreal forest zone from about 1500 m and higher above sea level, replace Swainson’s in the more heavily wooded thickets though never in such large numbers.

A Red-eyed Vireo responds to my pishing. Photo by C. Siddle.

Swainson’s Thrushes call a diagnostic soft "heep" as they cross the night sky during nocturnal migration. It was one of my favourite sounds when I was a teenager in Mission, B.C. running home from a friend's house to make my schoolnight curfew. Overhead invisible in the inky sky Swainson’s Thrushes also hurried on their way. Nowadays it’s a rare night that things are quiet enough for my old ears to hear Swainson’s Thrushes still calling their muffled "heeps". Mostly the road past our house is a longitudinal din, what with rednecks tromping the accelarators of their jacked-up pick-ups, and plump boomers seeking the thrill of the open road in their loud fatly flatulent Harrys.

Seeming to become more uncommon each passing year, the Evening Grosbeak is usually seen gobbling sunflower seeds  at a feeder. On Silver Star Mtn. a female-type makes an absolute mess of more natural food, Saskatoon berries. Late July 2017. 

Just as Warbling Vireos are inseparable from Red-osier Dogwoods, so Gray Catbirds love their Blue Elderberry bushes. But catbirds in late summer are apt to pop up almost anywhere even occasionally in suburban yards.

Gray Catbirds and Blue Elderberries (Sambucus racemosa).  Photo by C. Siddle. 

European Starlings and Cedar Waxwings are among the most conspicuous of the berry eaters, perching atop snags where they can command a view of their surroundings. The sharp notes of a starling are often the first warning that a predator has been spotted, for the berry aggregations attract not just songbirds, but predators like Merlins, Sharp-shinned Hawks and Cooper’s Hawks.

By late August Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped warblers will be seen passing through the gulleys among the fruit eaters. Occasionally a skulking MacGillivray’s Warbler will be among them.  Around the drowned sticks and thickets aurrounding waterbodies a Northern Waterthrush, a bird that used to regularly breed in riparian tangles along the Valley bottom but which now is mostly restricted as  nesting bird to high elevation ponds, may give its sharp, loud call note as it constantly dips its hind end and climbs amid the stalks above the water. Wilson’s Warblers are also high elevation nesters but pass through the Valley at almost all levels on their way south, bright yellow birds among the many shades of green shadows around the thickets.

A drab autumn-plumaged Western Tanager in a Saskatoon bush. Photo by C. Siddle.

The Western Tanager is a common fruit-eater, coming out of the forest like the Swainson's Thrush to reap the benefit of the berry bushes. Don't expect to see the yellow and black males (wearing a small red cap in the spring) however; most late summer and autumn Westerns are studies in green and yellow.

Spotted Towhee in molt from its brown sparrow-like plumage (seen on its head in this case) and its more adult like black, white and rufous. Photo by C. Siddle. 

Towhees stay in the same brushy habitat throughout their spring-to-fall residency in the Okanagan so it's not surprising that they are seen in the fruit thickets. Juvenal Spotted Towhees, initially streaked like overgrown Song Sparrows, molt into new sets of adult-like feathers while juvenal Chipping Sparrows, among the most common of mid-August sparrows, shows streaked underparts until they molt into the plain unstreaked gray chests and bellies of their immature plumage.

Cassie's Finch gobbling Saskatoon berries halfway up Silver Stare Mtn, .late July 2017. Note how the squashed fruit obscures the beak, possibly even temporarily staining it. 

One or two Black-headed Grosbeaks can usually be found among the hawthorns, while Lazuli Buntings like elderberries and are most commonly seen in mid-to-late August in drab female-like plumage. House Finches are common and conspicuous atop thickets but Cassin’s Finches are much more local and can look awfully scruffy and confusing to birders at this time of year. Finally, completing the suite of birds of the gulleys and thickets of late summer, are American Goldfinches, always present where there is water for them to drink and bath in.

Red-osier Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) with its small white berries. Note the red stems which separate this species from the common Snowberry Bush which has similar looking fruit. Osier is an Old French word for willows used in basketwork. Photo by C. Siddle. 

Some thicket sites where birding can be rewarding:

NORTH OKANAGAN

Gray Canal Trail – Vernon

Gray Canal Road

Glenhayes Rd – Gray Canal section

Goose Lake – Vernon

Kalamalka Prov. Park – thickets around Cosens Bay

Southern sections of Otter Lake Rd – toward Armstrong

Desert Cove Estates – along Deep Creek

Birding late summer thickets may introduce the observer to identification challenges due to  molt, unfamiliar immature plumages, and excessive feather wear. Believe it or not, this is a Cassin's Finch. Photo by C. Siddle

LAKE COUNTRY

Beaver Lake Road – access to best habitat limited

Winfield Creek Preserve

CENTRAL OKANAGAN

Chichester Wetland Park

Railway tracks behind Scandia – Kelowna

Mission Creek Regional Park – Sutherland Hills division

Kalamoir Regional Park

House Wren fledgling. Photo by C. Siddle.

SOUTH OKANAGAN

White Lake Road between St. Andrews and the Observatory

Sawmill Lake

McIntyre Road, Vaseux Lake

The interactions of birds and berries is an intricate subject with many features that I have not touched upon in my superficial introduction. If you are interested in exploring the topic, try Birds and Berries: A Study of an Ecological Interaction by Barbara and David Snow. 1988.  T&A.D. Poyser, Town Head House, Carlton, Waterhouses, Staffordshire, England.

Juvenal Lazuli Bunting. Photo by C. Siddle.

Birding with Special Ed

Every July for the past three years we have babysat our friend's dog that I will call Special Ed, to give you a hint of the joys and the troubles we have consequently experienced. Ed doesn't travel well so when our friend, Donna, heads south for a well-earned break from school teaching, she takes her older dog, Toby, as a well behaved travel companion but delivers Ed to us. Our house becomes Ed's summer camp. Along with Ed comes cans and bags of his special diet, though if Ed had his way, he would eat almost anything including, we've discovered, grapes, lettuce, apricots, carpet fluff, all carbohydrates, the odd coffee bean, jujubes, dental floss, and Q-tips.

Donna also delivers his toys - one small plushy flying saucer that squeaks when you press it, and a tug toy my wife braided out of soft but tough felt. Rarely does he play with his toys. Sometimes during a long nap he might rest his outsized muzzle on the tug toy as a sort of nose pillow; otherwise he ignores the items. Unless I happen to pick one up to visually suggest a game of fetch. That's when Special Ed exhibits his predominant personality trait - insecurity. When there's something Ed can't figure out, like having a toy tossed to him, or some other event that happening quickly or loudly or both, Ed reacts by barking nervously. Tail and head down, he scuttles out of the room as if I had yelled at him and raised my hand in anger. Weird.

In many other situations, Ed knows pretty much what is going on. Like all dogs, the Shetland Sheepdog, even a slightly defective one like Ed, knows that good things especially food come from human beings. And so Ed studies me as I enter the kitchen and approach the cupboards.  Ed may be a tad ackwards-bay in certain areas but in the subject of the location of food he's top dog.  It took him one short visit to the kitchen to learn that the dog treats are stored in the lower right cupboard. Ed also knows that if I am going to prepare a meal on the counter, the odd tidbit might fall onto the floor. And so he waits, patiently, for gravity to bring him a chance gift. As far as food goes, Ed is a perfectly normal dog.

What Ed abhores above all else is surprise. He understands that humans eat, cook, give him a treat, talk, sit, walk, sleep, and eat but he's always surprised, shocked even, when one of us coughs or sneezes. A cough comes from nowhere and he just doesn't understand it. He leaps up and barks loudly. A sudden sneeze sends Ed into a frenzy. Tail up, ears up, he involuntarliy dances, his barks overlapping into a roar. Other surprises that Ed should be prepared for but never is are the arrival of visitors, the shutting of doors, thunder, the turning on of any noisy appliance, and the forementioned tossing of toys. Ed also barks at things undetectable to human beings, sounds we cannot hear, smells we cannot detect and perhaps vapours caught in the passages of his narrow skull.

No matter how frustrated I become by Ed's sudden loud outraged outbursts, which prompt similar outbursts from me, I still like him a lot and find him a good companion. As a Shetland Sheepdog, though hardly a visual paragon of the breed - his narrow head is too big, his legs are too short, his body is too lumpy - he does like to herd Sonja and I into close proximity to him and he happily watches over us, which I guess is the other important part of shepherding. If Sonja goes to the basement and I go to the second floor Ed will sit miserably on the main floor and howl to bring us back to him.

Birding with Ed is slightly challenging. It's not that he chases, or even notices, birds. Honestly I can't remember a single instance of Ed reacting to a bird. It's as if he doesn't see them. In this regard he is much like your non-birding human friends, except Ed never complains that the damned birds wake him up spring mornings and that something should be done about all the "noise" they make.

Birding with Ed means walking with Ed, because he cannot abide riding in vehicles. There's no arguing about where he's going to sit, fussing with seatbelts, complaining about the funny smell in your car, or nattering about the birds we didn't see the ways your friends will so often do. So once again, Ed comes out as a better companion, mostly silent and mostly content to be on the end of a leash.

Ed does not tug on his leash to go faster. Unlike some human friends he is content to stay within a small radius with me as the centre of his attention, mostly, except when he finds something that smells intriguing on the ground. I wish I could say the same about my human birding companions. They wander, they chatter, and at times they apparently don't hear a thing I have said. OK, so they don't spend much time sniffing at dead things on the ground, but in comparison with Ed that's about all human birding companions have over my canine friend.

I know that some birders keep life lists for their dogs. I don't keep one for Ed for reasons I have already stated. I have a fantasy that one day some largish loud bird, say a Ring-necked Pheasant or a California Quail will bellow in Ed's ears and he will acknowledge that yes something disturbed him, but I know he will never ask me if we can get a better look at the bird, or ask me when are we going to see a Chukar. Again, Ed comes out on top of the dog versus human comparison.

But let me turn the idea of a list for Ed on its head. Let's face it, many of our lists are just a little frivolous. I know birders who keep lists of wild birds seen on TV, birds seen from the office, birds the lister has photographed, and birds copulating. I could start a list of Birds I have Seen but Ed has Ignored while on walks with him. Let's see ... he failed to acknowledge the Violet-green Swallows and White-throated Swifts that flew just above the rim of Cougar Canyon between Coldstream and Oyama a couple of springs ago. He was not impressed by the Canyon Wren that paid us a visit during that same walk or the several Townsend's Solitares that sang around the snags on the trail into the canyon. Once, atop Silver Star Mountain, his dog buddy, Toby, was startled when we flushed some young Dusky Grouse just a few metres in front of us but good old oblivious Ed was looking the other way and missed these chicken-sized birds entirely as they rocketed out of the fireweed.  Ed has missed the everyday and the rare. He has walked by the late summer flutter of goldfinches in the thistles and unknowingly passed into the shadow of a soaring Golden Eagle riding out a sudden spring storm. It would be fun to dig back into my fieldbooks and see what I could come up with for such a list.  Meanwhile, Ed, spending the final day of his summer vacation with us, is standing in the hallways barking at nothing in particular. Yes, I'll miss Ed when he goes home, but there's always next summer.

Ed at Cougar Canyon 2013. Photo by the author.

Maybe next summer he will be quieter. Maybe next summer he will find peace in the contemplation of nature. Why just this morning while Sonja and I were having coffee on the patio, I saw Ed notice, WITH INTEREST, a furry beige caterpillar rippling by on the cement. Hey, it wasn't a bird but it was a start.

Secrets of the Cuckoo

The discovery of a Black-billed Cuckoo calling from a brushy gully along Beaver Lake Road east of Winfield in early July, 2014 by Mike Force and Doug Kragh caused a minor gold rush of birders hoping to add the bird to their lists. But I don't want to tell the usual story of how birders flocked from far and near for a rarity; instead, I want to give some background information about the Black-billed Cuckoo as a species, for, as I quickly found out while browsing through a couple of sources of information, Coccyzus erythropthalmus is a fascinating bird.

The Beaver Lake Road Black-billed Cuckoo photographed by Mike Force, 4 July 2014. 

Here, in no particular order are some of my favourite facts. Unless I have noted otherwise, I found these in the 2001 Birds of North America account (No. 587) compiled by Canadian ornithologist, Janice M. Hughes.

1. Probably everyone knows that both Black-billed and Yellow-billed Cuckoos eat insects, and that the Black-bill, in particular, eats caterpillars, including spiny ones. But did you know that once such spines accumulate heavily in the Black-bill's stomach, it sheds its stomach lining, coughing it up as a pellet?

2. Again just about everyone knows that nestlings of most species can be divided roughly into precocial or altricial types. Precocial chicks hatch downy and ready to go. California Quail chicks are a good example. So are Killdeer chicks. In a few hours the precocial young of both species are running around, following one or both of their parents, learning what's good to eat and what's not.On the other hand altricial young are born naked and helpless. The chicks of swallows, sparrows, and American Robins are good examples. Usually their eyes are sealed shot for the first day or two, they have to develop strength to raise their heads and they are restricted to living in a nest, instead of running around like those baby Killdeers we find so adorable along the shores of our favourite wetlands.

Black-billed Cuckoos have altricial chicks, and since adult cuckoos are so slow moving and slightly reptilian, I had assumed that their chicks would take forever to develop. Not so. In fact, Black-billed Cuckoo chicks are among the most rapidly developing chicks in the altricial world. After an eleven day incubation period (1-3 days shorter than many more highly evolved passerines), the cuckoo chick can raise himself up, using his feet and his bill. By day 6 stiff looking feathers are beginning to burst out of sheaths. On day 7 the chick becomes fully feathered, the sheaths having completely burst open. Your average American Robin is still pretty obviously a glum looking, tailless helpless nestling at the same age. Also on day 7 the cuckoo chicks leave the nest to clamber about the shrubbery. They can hop as well as climb.

3. The Black-billed Cuckoo chick has a couple of interesting defence techniques. When another creature appears to threaten the chick it will assume a motionless sky-pointing posture, like an American Bittern. It may also bark and "voids brown, sticky excretion from cloaca, if handled." Charming. If all else fails, and the chick is handled, it will play dead.

The same bird. Photo by Mike Force, 4 July 2014. 

4. Parent Black-billed Cuckoos will fly at nest disturbers especially if they hear their young barking. They open their bills, spread their tails, droop their wings and call loudly while hopping around at the ends of branches.

5. The Black-billed Cuckoo is distantly related to the much more famous European Cuckoo which is an A-lister among the world's parasitic birds. The European Cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of a wide variety of other birds. Once the young E. Cuckoo hatches and feels an egg pressing against its back it has the automatic response to push whatever out of the nest. Thus the cuckoo kicks out its potential step brothers and step sisters and becomes the only nestling that its foster parents have to feed. The Black-billed Cuckoo generally raises its own young, but sometimes a Black-billed Cuckoo will lay and egg or two in another Black-billed Cuckoo's nest (intraspecific brood parasite). Some individuals may also lay eggs in at least 11 other bird's nests (interspecific brood parasite) including the nests of Yellow-billed Cuckoos, Chipping Sparrow, American Robin, Gray Catbird, and Wood Thrush.

6. Black-billed and Yellow-billed cuckoos are nocturnal migrants, a fact sadly revealed by the birds' fatal collisions with television towers in the United States and Canada. Black-bills winter in northern and western South America.

For more information about the Black-billed Cuckoo and 715 other species of birds that breed in North America check The Birds of North America Online http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/

The Star Road Project - an interim report

The Star Road Project - an interim report.

My doctor told me that I should exercise more. Convenient to my house is Star Road, all 1.7 kilometres of it one way uphill. Star Road used to be a section of Silver Star Road, until the switchbacks that form about half its length were deemed too much of a nuisance for drivers racing to the ski slopes. This stretch of Silver Star Road was re-routed over Simmons Road leaving  the switchbacks to the few people who live along them and to walkers like me. Star Road has become my grind. It gets me puffing everytime I walk it. And being a birder for life, I keep a bird list everytime I walk it.

Fig. 1 - Male Ring-necked Pheasant - one of the easiest birds to detect in spring along Star Road due to the males' loud crowing. All photos by Chris Siddle

Star Road begins near B.X. Elementary School and climbs the gentle slope that leads to the much steeper switchbacks. It has a few houses on its north side, nothing special except that a couple of  residents have young but tall Douglas-firs, always good to have around for raptors to perch atop or for Bohemian Waxwings to take refuge in between their short forays to feast on tree fruit. On the south side of the road is a large apple orchard that quail and pheasants pass through, but I'm not sure if any birds actually live among the apple trees. Occasionally a Varied Thrush or a few winter robins will try to eat old mushy apples and House FInches might sing around the branches of the fruit trees. There are lots of weeds around the orchard so it's a good buffer. Beyond the orchard is the canyon of B.X. Creek, the major creek in the northern parts of Vernon. A patchy riparian zone protects some stretches of the creek, a zone almost constantly under attack by locals especially contractors in search of gravel sources, but that's another story.

Year round, cool moist mountain air slips down B.X. canyon from Silver Star Mountain, creating a microclimate in which Western Redcedars thrive. There are two foot paths crossing B.X Creek now, the older heading upstream to B.X. Falls and a newer trail crossing the ravine at Star Road and heading south into the hobby farm country of Dixon Dam Road. The forest along B.X Creek contributes many of the interesting birds that eventually find their way across the orchard and along the hedges and through the weedy patches into my neighbourhood. Without the forest there would be fewer chances of seeing Great Horned Owls, Northern Pygmy-Owls, Red-tailed Hawks, Merlins, Hairy Woodpeckers, Townsend's Solitaires, Pine Siskins, Mountain Chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets etc.

Fig. 2 - Male Yellow-rumped "Audubon's" Warbler - a common migrant and uncommon summer resident along Star Rd. 

At the old horse ranch Star Road quickly increases its grade. It passes by the Grey Canal, once a very ambitious irrigation project that carried water from the high plateau on the east side of the Okanagan Valley to fruit farmers in Coldstream and north Vernon. Now the Gray Canal is a walking path that upon completion will enable a hiker to walk from the sunny slopes above Cypress Road in Coldstream, around the shoulder of Vernon Mountain, across the grasslands of the BX, across the valley at the north end of Swan Lake and down the Bella Vista range of hills to Okanagan Landing.

It's late winter. For the second day in a row fog has settled over the area. An American Crow caws from the schoolyard. In a few weeks two pairs of crows will nest in the shade trees where Star Road joins Silver Star Road. The parents are among the most cautious of birds. We have been living in the neighbourhood for almost 25 years, yet it has been only in the past three years that on hot days parent crows have brought their juveniles to the cool shade of the big Manitoba Maple that grows next door.

From late fall throughout the winter Common Ravens patrol the hillsides, and as winter becomes spring the crows are unfailing in rising swiftly to chase the ravens out of the area. Crows seem to know how rapacious their close relatives can be and at nest time take no chances. They chase first and don't ever ask questions. Great egg thieves themeselves, crows know what ravens are looking for in the spring.

Fig. 3 - When  a Great Blue Heron occurs along Star Road, it is usually an adult flying to or from the 24th St. colony or a bird hunting mice in farm fields. 

Today fog shrouds the old orchard but close to its northern edge, just behind the ragged edge of snowberry bushes I come upon male California Quails calling "Chicago" to the cold world. Yes, spring is on its way.

A Song Sparrow perches several feet off the ground in a bare sapling as if to sing, but I haven't heard one sing yet this month. Any day now.

Juncos are beginning to get tuneful on those rare occasions when the sun penetrates the valley cloud. Still in their winter flocks, they pause from feeding to perch and sing pretty trills.

As I pass the old horse ranch opposite the beginning of the BX Creek trail, I realize that given two or three weeks of warm weather, a Say's Phoebe will return to take up a territory around the ranch's paddocks and outbuildings. I look forward to its slightly mournful song. A pair usually raises a single brood in a nest on a ledge in one of the old out buildings. The juvenile phoebes, looking fresh feathered and not as shy as their parents, swoop and fly along the fence lines bordering the road in late June

Fig. 4 - By April American Goldfinch males are quickly assuming their bright yellow spring plumage.

Since I have been routinely huffed and puffed my way up Star Road the list of birds I have seen along the way has grown, but that's not the point of this essay. The exercise I get tones me up, settles my nerves, gives me a break from whatever I'm doing at home, but also allows me to know the neighbourhood birds better. Too often for me, birding involves driving to some place out of the neighbourhood. With Star Road I get to stay home, learn more about the area I live in and the birds I share the neighbourhood with. That's the real point.

Panama - birding with an expert guide - Part 3

I like to prepare for upcoming bird trips by studying the species I'm likely to find and by reading as much as possible about the natural and human history of the places I am going to visit. However, lately I have begun to suffer from procrastination and a kind of attention deficit where I start to study and research and then about 5 minutes later, go watch TV, or have a nap, or sweep the carport. The biochemical brain circuit that would allow me to concentrate upon my desired subject seems defective, unable to stand much strain, liable to give out after a short session of effort. I blame this on my former occupation, thirty years of teaching English in public schools.  All the after-school, before-school and during-school marking of students' written work took a toll, according to my theory. Some vital factor wore out in my brain.

This is self-justification for my failure to adequately prepare for Panama. I learned a handful of birds, some tanagers, a few raptors, particularly the hawk-eagles, a few of the more conspicuous looking hummingbirds like the White-necked Jacobin and the Black-throated Mango, the icterids, mostly the pretty birds, but there were whole families I failed to study even in the most superficial way. The result was ... well, that's the story I am about to tell you.
On our third day in Panama Carlos took us to the beginning of Pipeline Road. The Americans cut this road partway through the isthmus during World War Two to service a pipeline that was never used. The road has become "one of the best places to see tropical forest birds in the Americas, with a species list exceeding 400" (A Bird-Finding Guide to Panama by George R. Angehr, Dodge Engleman, and Lorna Engleman, 2008). Once paved, now it's a rough track through primary and secondary forest. It crosses several streams and one way birders have seen allusive species is to use these streams as access,  wading along them deep into the forest as my friend Mike Force did with shipmates back in the 1990s during a hurried in-port. He tells of encountering a hostile troop of Red-mantled Howlers that roared and threw sticks and other objects at the birders. For a naturalist, such an interspecies interaction would be a high point, something exciting to remember.

Carlos had just directed our attention to some Snail Kites circling with Black and Turkey vultures when his cell phone rang. Another Canopy tour guide and his clients had spotted an army ant swarm at km 2.5 and attending it were two very hard-to-see birds indeed.

"Quick, quick! Everyone into the truck. Army ants and ground-cuckoos at km 2.5!"

Ground what? Ground-cuckoos? OK, here's the first time my lack of preparation kicked in. Ground-cuckoo sounded like an interesting bird, and we all knew at least in theory that very large mixed flocks of birds often attend army ant swarms, but I didn't know that the sighting justified Carlos's obvious excitement. The man is wonderfully enthusiastic, but wasn't he overdoing it?

Fig. 1 Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo. Photo by C Siddle

Here's what I didn't know: the genus Neomorphus has four species: Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo, Banded G-C, Rufous-winged G-C, and Red-billed G-C, and you would be hard pressed to find a New World bird genus less known than this one. All of them are found in huge tracts of South America jungle. The Rufous-vented is the only species also found in Central America north to Nicaragua. All of them survive only in very large areas of forest, and all of them appear to be naturally scarce. When Lake Gatun was flooded for the operation of the Panama Canal, a very large forested hilltop became Barro Colorado Island, and a forest reserve and research station for scientists from around the world, the Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo was one of the earliest bird species to leave the island, that's how much the bird needs isolation from disturbance and development.

Aside from being long tailed, large billed ground birds about the size of Greater Roadrunners (which are also members of the cuckoo family), almost everything remains to be discovered about ground-cuckoos. Nests remain unknown for the Banded and the Rufous-winged ground-cuckoos, and all that's known about the breeding of the Red-billed Ground-Cuckoo is that the nestling had buffy hair-like down attached to tips of its growing contour feathers on its head and that its bill is black. Because it occurs in Central America as well as South America, the Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo is the best known of this mysterious bunch but that's not saying much. It was only within the past 40 years that this species was discovered to have a nest at all, as opposed to being a nest parasite as some expected it to be.

So there we were newly arrived in a cloud of dust at km 2.5 of the Pipeline Road watching an adult Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo trotting around the edges of the forest through which army ants were swarming, picking up large insects and feeding them to its one offspring, a slightly smaller, darker billed version of the adult. Since I hadn't prepared properly for this trip, I failed to appreciate just how special this sighting was, even with Carlos and Michael, the other guide, telling us how lucky we were. Imagine my excitement had I actually known at the time that I was looking at birds, rare to begin with, behaving - feeding a juvenile - as very few people had ever seen them behave before.

Ground-cuckoo behavior around an ant swarm is well described in Volume 5 of The Handbook of The Birds of the World:

In the interior of forests of tropical America, the ground-cuckoos follow swarms of army ants, using the ants as beaters to flush insects. The cuckoo appears to wait until an ant swarm enters its territory, whereupon it follows the swarm as it passes through. as the ants move along the forest floor and insects scatter in their advance, the cuckoo waits on the ground or perches on low horizontal branches near the ground. On the ground, it then runs at the edge of the swarm, snaps up an insect or other forest-floor arthropod, and runs away in active bonding movements, changing directions, or it spins away; only occasionally does it flap, to get over a vine or to gain an elevated perch, but extended flight is uncommon. These cuckoos feed separately, usually with only one at an ant swarm...They are the largest birds in the forest which attend these army-ant swarms, where they appear regularly along with numerous other kinds of birds" (pp 527-8).

Being unprepared didn't devalue the experience of seeing the ground-cuckoo for me; however, being unprepared did change the nature of the sighting. I didn't realize the special qualities of the experience until after it had happened, until after I had been told how lucky I was and until after I had done some research that revealed to me just how fortunate I had been.

The army ants scurried randomly over the forest floor and we had to watch closely where we stood for fear of being attacked. "If you do get them on you, take off your pants immediately!" advised Carlos, though he neglected to finish his instructions, his attention caught by birds moving through the understory around the ants.



"Plain-brown Woodcreeper!" he shouted, but the woodcreeper I focused on wore fine black bars on his underparts. When I mentioned this to Carlos he glanced at my bird and said, "Northern Barred Woodcreeper too!" Eventually we added a Cocoa Woodcreeper to our list of the mixed species attending the ants. I had especially wanted to see woodcreepers, and three species in one flock exceeded my expectations.

Bicolored Antbirds of both sexes were common. Right in front of me a Spotted Antbird grew agitated for some reasons, flared its tail, raised its crest and revealed a pale area on the centre of its back. What's that about, I wondered. Nearby were three larger, much calmer appearing birds standing still on the leaf litter. These were Ocellated Antbirds, much larger than the Bicolored Antbird, Spotted Antbird and Dot-winged Antwrens, with pretty blue elongated spectacles and handsome black back feathers scalloped with fine buff edgings.

While the ants swarm over the ground, the birder is busy, really busy. He might be watching a bird through his binculars, letting them hang to take notes, making sure he has written, say, Bicolored AntBIRD and not AntWREN nor AntTHRUSH, lifting his camera to take pictures of any bird tame enough to stand still for a moment, checking the resulting images in the viewer of his camera, making sure he's standing clear of the ants, lifting binoculars again to peer into the shadows and between the branches for more birds, trying to untangle the binocular strap which has twisted around the camera strap, all the while craning his neck and his back at torturous angles to try to see around leaves and other objects that obscure his view, and avoiding bumping into other birders who are also attempting to do two or three things at once.

Fig. 2 A Spotted Antbird. Photo by C Siddle

On a sapling above me a Northern Barred Woodcreeper paused in its hitch upwards to flick its left wing partially open. This movement scared the ants scurrying down the stem over to the right side of the bark. Then it flipped open its right wing to send the ants back to the left side. It swiftly picked something - a little bug, an ant? - off the stem. Was it in effect herding the ants or had I just seen a couple of random wing twitches? Was this a hunting technique or was the bird just twitchy? Here was something else to make note of and search for in the reference books. (But that's for some other post.)

We ended our visit to Pipeline with sightings of White-shouldered Tanagers, a Scarlet-rumped Cacique, and a Slaty-tailed Trogon, among other birds.

In the mid afternoon we visited the former zoo at Summit Hill, now an animal rehab centre. Three caring volunteers brought out their young animal charges, a Tamandua looking very clean and smart in his brown and soft gray pelage, as if he were wearing brown bib overalls, a Geoffroy's Brown spider monkey wearing his Pampers, and a sleek dark brown Kinkajou, an arboreal relative of the Raccoon.
While we listened to the rehabilitators' stories of the difficulties of caring for wild animals in Panama which has no history of animal rehabilitation, and until recently, little history of conservation, we were cautioned not to reach out to the animals. With so much cuteness right in front of us, it was hard for some of us to resist, especially when the animals observed no such ban on touching and reached out various furry arms, legs, and noses to us.



After some of us cleaned out our wallets in donating to the animal's expenses, we moved next to a palm , the bottom edge of its canopy drooping a little. Here Carlos showed us four Common Tent-making Bats, small dark bats with thin pale stripes on their snouts. In order to make themselves a suitable roosting place the bats chew at specific points on the undersides of palm fronds. The fronds droop, the bat has a temporary home in the shade. Researchers theorize that tent-making allows small bats to save energy. Instead of flying long distances to the plants they are feeding on which are scattered through the forest, the tent-makers can spend the day hidden near their food source.

Summit Hill has a captive Harpy Eagle, possibly the most magnificent bird of prey in the world, certainly one of the world's rarest raptors. Like ground-cuckoos, the Harpy Eagle needs huge areas of undisturbed forest in which to hunt sloths and monkeys. With resource exploration and extraction, such isolation from human development grows ever more rare these days. One of the causes of Harpy Eagle decline is shooting. Such a huge bird offers a target that many people find hard to resist. Fortunately through the efforts of several organizations such as the Peregrine Fund, people throughout the Harpy's range are being educated about the value of this wonderful bird.

The Harpy Eagle at the Summit enclosure has a large flight cage but today the bird, a captive-bred female originally hatched in Florida, was perched next to the viewing platform. Unlike most hawks and eagles the Harpy has facial disks, rather like those of an owl, which aid in pinpointing sounds of potential prey. The Harpy Eagle hunts from within the canopy; it is not a bird that soars high over the forest like a Red-tailed Hawk would soar over forest edges back home.

Fig. 3- Captive Harpy Eagle at Summit Hill. Photo by C Siddle

We toured the grounds and added a pair of Masked Tityras, Lesser Kiskadee, and Yellow-headed Caracara to our lists before being driven back to the Tower for supper.

On 18 February a real treat was seeing a wild Tamandua climbing through the forest trees next to the Tower first thing in the morning.

We spent the morning walking the Plantation Trail which is accessed from the bottom of Semaphore Hill Road. Along the trail we saw White-tailed and Black-tailed trogons, a Broad-billed Motmot, a Crimson-crested Woodpecker, Chestnut-backed Antwrens, Western Slaty Antshrikes and an adult and a juvenile Sunbittern. On our return to the Tower we saw a Double-toothed Kite perched near the building.

In the afternoon, after a short visit to the Canopy Bed and Breakfast in Gamboa, we birded around the Gamboa Rainforest Retreat on the shores of Lake Gatun. Here we saw Variable Seedeaters, Greater Kiskadee, Gartered Trogon, and two Southern Lapwings along the lake shore.

On 19 February we spent the day along Pipeline Road, eventually having a picnic lunch several kiometres in at Rio Mendoza. Special finds included a Speckled Mourner, a rusty colored forest species that vaguely resembles a cross between a small thrush and a flycatcher. The Birds of Panama, A Field Guide categorizes the mourner, along with becards, tityras, piprites and the schiffornis as "incertae sedis" or of uncertain relationships within the passerine (perching birds). One thing that a person quickly learns about Neotropical ornithology is how much remains to be worked out. Take the tribe of woodcreepers for instance. There are many widespread species, like the Olivaceous Woodcreeper, that have several subspecies. In the case of the Olivaceous Woodcreeper there five groups of subspecies. Many of these populations look alike but have distinctive vocalizations. It is likely that as research continues the Olivaceous Woodcreepers, and several other species including the widespread Buff-throated Woodcreeper,  will be "split" into multiple species.

Our best bird of the 19th was, in my opinion, not the Purple-throated Fruitcrows nor the Black-striped Woodcreeper which were both good, but the Great Tinamou which Karl spotted as we were getting out of the vehicles at one spot. The bird was a couple of metres inside the jungle edge, all but invisible in its gray-brown plumage. It was absolutely still. Most of us managed to get decent photographs of the bird by searching for "tunnels" in the vegetation down which we could focus our lenses. I was also happy that we didn't flush the bird. It was still in its original spot when we finally drove away.

Other new birds included a strange flycatcher called the Brownish Twistwing, which turned out to be singularly well-named for it was brownish and it occasionally flipped one wing at a time up above its back, perhaps to startle insects into revealing their locations. Apparently at least four other flycatchers share this wing-lifting behaviour including the Ochre-bellied, Olive-striped, Sepia-capped and Slaty-capped flycatchers. Lunch was enlivened by a tanager flock that included Tawny-crested, Bay-headed, and Carmiol's tanagers. My big miss was dozing in Charlie's Toyota pick-up while the some of the people in the open-canopy birdmobile ahead of us spotted a Great Currasow fly off the road during our return to civilization.

Fig. 4 - The young orphaned Tamandua at the Summit Hill rehabilitation facility. Photo by C Siddle. 

Send comments to my email ay chris.siddle@gmail.com

Panama - birding with an expert guide. Part 2

Panama - birding with an expert guide. Part 2.

16 February 2014 - the second day of Avocet Tour's Panama expedition, with Carlos Bethancourt as our guide. This morning was our first opportunity to watch the sun rise. I was so eager for the experience that I crept up the Tower's staircases just after 5 AM. The building was dark. I was too early even for the staff - the fourth floor was pitch dark and the kitchen was empty. No coffee. I like to start my day gently with silence (of which there was plenty), a good book or my journal (I had both clutched in my hands) and a cup of strong, sugary coffee. Clearly I would have to wait for the coffee.

Figure 1. This whiskery cutey is a White-whiskered Puffbird waiting for a lizard or large insect to make itself known so he can snap it up and beat the living bejesus out of it and then swallow it. Semaphore Road, 16 Feb. 2014 Photo by Chris Siddle

About 5:30 the first noise reached my ears. It was a roaring, a drawn out guttural, rageful bellowing. Howler Monkeys! These are fair-sized New World monkeys, the males equipped with enlarged throat sacs and cartilages in their tracheas that resonate and amplify their voices all in the service of marking the troop's territory. "We've got this patch. Stay away!" the males seem to be roaring from the tree tops at other distant noisy troops. One morning I could hear four troops roaring in the national park around the Tower, three to the north and one to the south. Back in the Okanagan I'm pretty sure two of my neighbours who succumbed to boomer-lunacy and bought Harley-Davidsons so big they can barely them hold upright are going for the same audio effect each morning and evening when they rev their engines.

I returned my books to my room on the still silent second floor and climbed all the way back up to the roof. Dawn was diluting the dark. Birds were beginning to stir. This was it!

I am afraid that I have fallen victim to the hype that generally surrounds canopy walkways and towers. I fell for the promos in tropical Queensland and I fell for them in Peru. Now, once again, in Panama I had set my sights too high. It's like I expect dozens of species of exotic jungle birds to flutter around me in blissful ignorance of my existence like several pages of the local field guide come to life. The reality, that of some birds flying by and a few birds feeding in the canopy depending upon which flower is in bloom or which seed or fruit is ready to eat at the moment, always disappoints me a little. However, with several opportunities to view sunrise or sunset, I felt the Canopy Tower over the course of a week came closest to satisfying my elevated dreams.

Each morning and evening a pair of bright green Mealy Parrots would fly by closely together, one individual slightly ahead of the other, obviously more deeply attached to each other than your average pair of birds. I am not a romantic. I don't care a fig whether a pair of birds mates for a lifetime or for three seconds. In fact, one of the most irritating questions non-birders ask me is "X species (swans, eagles, small-vented scaley plodders, etc.) mate for life, don't they?" as if expecting birds to be more capable of long term monogamy than we are. My answer, "Hey, if most humans can't manage to stand each other for a lifetime, why do you think birds can?" never seems to satisfy the person who asked the question in the first place. That said, I have to admit I do have an soft spot for parrots. Long-lived, individualistic, and cranky, when one parrot pairs with another often their mutual bond touches my heart. They stick so closely together. This pair of Mealy Parrots, flying in such proximity that it seemed as if their wings must touch, skimmed over the canopy following the same route as they had yesterday morning and will follow tomorrow morning crying loudly their croaky, squeaky ode to joy.

Figure 2. Fasciated Antshrike, a slow and deliberate forager of the understory. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

By 6:30 other guests were joining me on the roof. The Green Shrike Vireo began his three note chant. A Blue Cotinga was a beautiful surprise. A female Summer Tanager, uniformly yellow-green, appeared briefly but a Golden-headed Tanager, much more elaborate in various colors, stuck around for a while. Other birds included Red-lored Parrots, slightly smaller than Mealys, a Squirrel Cuckoo, a Violet-bellied Hummingbird, White-necked Jacobins from the feeders four floors below, and a Dusky-capped Flycatcher.

We spent the morning walking down Semaphore Hill Road. We progressed until the something interesting - a stream of leaf-cutter ants, the large earthen-looking arboreal nests of the Aztec Ant, the national tree of Panama, a Morpho butterfly-  caught our interest. Life forms were so diverse and so amazingly abundant than we walked only 400 m in four hours!

The forest was is a mix of huge veterans standing among much younger jungle. One could almost hear the plants competing for light. Vines climbed and draped and hung, some so large they matched the thickness of small trees back home. Airplants grew luxuriantly from every possible coign. Some leaves were huge, bigger than umbrellas.

Snuffling in the leaf litter was my first Nine-banded Armadillo. A few metres farther down the shaded green road a mother White-nosed Coati and her baby crossed the narrow pavement. The kitten or cub or whatever a young coati is called was missing half its tail. On the downslope a small troop of White-faced Capuchins moved through the mid-canopy, avoiding our party.

Birds included an Olivaceous Woodcreeper, a Southern Bentbill, two male Slate-colored Grosbeaks, a Black-crowned Antshrike, a Ruddy-tailed Flycatcher, a Blue-crowned Manakin, Dusky Antbirds, a Spotted Antbird, a pair of Dot-winged Antbirds, a Broad-billed Motmot, White-flanked Antbirds, a squat and stolid little White-whiskered Puffbird, a loudly singing Black-bellied Wren, and a Gartered Trogon. It was Tropical Birding 101, the introductory course, with a wide and diverse selection of birds that previously we have seen only in field guides or possibly not at all.

Our afternoon was equally amazing but with an emphasis on wetlands. Carlos took us to the famous (in Panama birding circles) Ammo Ponds, which is to say that we stood on a paved road crossed by a closed sliding chain-link gate controlled by a man in a uniform inhabiting a guardhouse. He ignored us and we were too busy looking at the birds to pay much attention to him. Occasionally an official looking pickup truck pulled up, he opened the gate to let it in, but always the gate closed soon after.

There was one pond to our left with a 20 metre buffer of thickets and trees between us and the water. To our right was a fringe of jungle and ahead to our right was a second pond, but overgrowing with thicket grasses and brush. We could see only one end of it by peering around the corner of the gate. This small, fenced in spot may seem like a poor excuse for a birding spot, but it wasn't. As in the morning, we were once again busy keeping track of the birds we saw: Red-crowned Woodpecker, like a small Red-bellied Woodpecker, obvious a member of the large Melanerpes genus. Panama doesn't have many woodpeckers. As far as I could see in our limited travels, the Red-crown was the most frequently encountered.

Figure 3. Rufescent Tiger-Heron. A juvenile at Ammo Ponds 16 Feb. 2014. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

As with any damp and semi-open spot flycatchers crowded in: Boat-billed, Social, Piratic, Streaked, and Dusky-capped flycatchers, as well as flycatchers called by other names such as the ubiquitous Tropical Kingbird and Great Kiskadee. The tyrant flycatchers are the largest family of birds in the New World and the largest family in Panama with at least 93 species present. Many are named for the colors: white, gold, sulphur, yellow, yellow-green, greenish, ochre, ochraceous, sepia, rufous, vermilion, olive, olivaceous, yellow-olive, bronze-olive, tawny, ruddy, rufous, rusty, brown, brownish, gray, slaty, sooty, dusky, black, and my favourite, the ever-so-specific 'bran-colored".  Many have 'flycatcher' as a common sort of surname, but others are named for their vocalizations like pewees, phoebes, and kiskadees. Several are named for the family's tendency to be bossy: tyrants, kingbirds, attila, and piratic flycatcher, while some are bossy but small: tyrannulets, and another favourite, pygmy-tyrants. Pygmy-tyrant! In a mere two words a character has been created. Some seem to have been named for accidental injuries: flatbill, bentbill and twistwing, but, of course, there are morphological and behavioral reasons for these names. Sometimes, and I love this, the species' name seems to reflect the taxonomist's exhaustion at dealing with so many drab little flycatchers. Take the Mouse-colored Tyrannulet. What colour is mouse-color, pray tell? Or how about the peevishness reflected in naming a bird the Paltry Tyrannulet?

Figure 4 - Green Honeycreepers, commonly seen from the top of the Canopy Tower. Photo by Chris Siddle. 

Variable and Yellow-bellied seedeaters flew to the marshy edge, while an adult Green Heron perched quite still above the water. Orange-chinned Parakeets rocketed overhead. We were to get good looks at the parakeets a few days later. A pair of Mangrove Swallows were investigating and open pipe on the gate as a possible nest site and a newly fledged Black-throated Mango juvenile was visited by a female. I overheard a couple of British birders discussing a "ruddy huge bittern" so I wasn't completely surprised when I spotted a pale juvenile Rufescent Tiger-Heron not long out of the nest. It still had a few downy feathers clinging to it. In the marsh edges were a Greater Ani and several Smooth-billed Anis, as well as Great-tailed Grackles and a Northern Waterthrush.

Rod Wark spotted a large mammal walking into openest part of the overgrown pond. This turned out to be a Lesser Capybara, likely the second largest rodent in the world (the Greater Capybara beating it by some pounds). It looked like a square-headed light brown beaver atop four long legs. It had a short mud bath then disappeared into the brush.

On the roadway and its edges were a few Buff-throated Saltators, Clay-colored Thrushes, Ruddy Ground-Doves and a White-tipped Dove, the same sad-voiced little pigeon common along the Lower Rio Grande in Texas.

Overhead were the ever Black and Turkey Vultures, and Gray-breasted Martins as well as a few Short-tailed Swifts and two Ospreys. Jen spotted a very large multi-colored squirrel - a Variegated Squirrel.

Before we left we added Crimson-backed Tanagers, Blue-gray Tanagers, Yellow-rumped Caciques, Rufous-tailed Hummingbirds, Baltimore Oriole, Tennessee Warblers, Red-legged Honeycreepers, a Common Tody-Flycatcher, two Golden-fronted Greenlets, two Blue Dacnis, a Mourning Warbler, and a Yellow-crowned Euphonia to the list.

Two of the final birds of our second day in Panama were a Ringed Kingfisher, the first of several we were to see, rattling over us at the foot of Semaphore Road and a Great Tinamou crying its weird, slightly Common Loon like quavering whistle from the forest surrounding the Canopy Tower at dusk.

Note - in my discussion of flycatcher names I omitted "elaenia" as one of the common "surnames'. The elaenias are common and widespread in the Neotropics and deserve mention but for the life of me I was unable to find out the derivation of the word "elaenia". Can anyone help me?

If you wish to comment on this post please do so via my email: chris.siddle@gmail.com