30 December 2013 - The forest was silent and full of snow. No movements, neither wind nor birds, disturbed the winter scene. I sighed and silently repeated the well known line from Richard III, "now is the winter of our discontent..." as so many other Canadians had done this season. Most people were unhappy with the unusually cold and severe weather that had plagued the nation, at least those parts east of the Rockies all the way to the last rock east of Newfoundland. To borrow from Shakespeare again, the winter winds had blown and cracked their cheeks, keeping at least nine of the ten provinces huddled beneath winter's frigid blasts, and even B.C. unseasonably cool for months.
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| Fig. 1 - The Red-mantled Howler Monkey, the species responsible for the impressive roaring that rose from the forest 30 mins. before dawn each morning. We spotted this male along Pipeline Road near the Rainforest Discovery Centre. Photo by Chris Siddle. |
As usual the Okanagan Valley had escaped real Canadian winter, whether its residents realized it or not. Oh, sure, there was the usual whining and whinging about how cold it was in Vernon, but, really, -20 or -25 C for a few days is nothing to complain about. But still I was unhappy, not because of any misconception that the winter was any harsher here than usual but because of one simple fact - the woods were almost empty of birds. Go for an hour's walk through the Douglas-firs and Ponderosa Pines and you would be hard pressed to find a flock of chickadees. Even Red-breasted Nuthatches which last winter were everywhere were hard to find. On a good day this winter one might turn up a couple of Golden-crowned Kinglets, maybe a Pacific Wren but there were few or no Pine Grosbeaks in the lowlands, no siskins, precious few goldfinches, only a scattering or individual Red Crossbills. The list of absent and missing went on and on.
And here I was deep in the woods along Highway 33 helping friends Mike Force, Tanya Seebacher, and Ann Gordon with the Big White Christmas Count. By the end of the day we could have written our complete day's list on a post-it note, and the day's best sighting was not of a bird, but of a Short-tailed Weasel which apparantly had taken up residence in a snow-covered pile of discarded Mule Deer bones. Happy is the weasel that can gnaw away all the winter long.
At the post-count gathering in a dingy pub in Rutland, the four parties compared their results. As usual Doug Brown had come through with the better birds, for he is willing to take on the longest and toughest routes, but even with Doug's list the count failed to stir any positive feelings within me. I was gloomily regarded the dregs in my cup of hot chocolate when Chris Charlesworth who runs AVOCET TOURS out of Kelowna said that he had to wait only six weeks before he was off to Panama.
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| Fig. 2 - Panama's Canopy Tower. Single rooms are on the second floor. Double-rooms are on the third. The fourth floor is the lounge, commons and dining area. Stairs led from the third floor to the tower's deck, around the big white soccer ball. Photo by Chris Siddle. |
"How many people have signed up?" I asked.
"Only four, but that's enough to cover my immediate costs. I'm really looking forward to those colourful Panamanian birds and some nice hot weather. I hate the cold."
Then I heard myself say, "Hey, would two more be a problem on the trip? I think I can talk Sonja into going."
This was a sudden high hope borne of desperation, but with only the minimum of whining, I was stunned when Sonja agreed that I should join the tour but that she wasn't interested in what she knew would be a hard core birding holiday. She checked Panama online but could find little that would offer her entertainment while I was stalking the rainforest paths. However, if I could find the money, I was free to go.
My copy of A Guide to the Birds of Panama by Robert Ridgely was a revised first edition from 1981. I could do better so I ordered Angehr and Dean's The Birds of Panama (2010) as well as Angehr, Engleman and Engleman's A Bird-Finding Guide to Panama (2008). I already had a subscription to the wonderful online resource, HBW Alive so I spent the next few weeks printing colour plates of Panamanian birds based upon the plates from The Handbook of Birds of the World (16 volumes). All one has to do with HBW Alive is look up a bird family, apply the geographical filter, in this case Panama, and at the press of a computer key a plate of species is produced, with or without common and scientific names. It's a convenient way to learn one's birds before the trip, though I think flash cards made by cutting up an extra copies of a foreign field guide ultimately work better for me. (I can hear the shocked intake of breath. Cut up a book? Cut up a field guide! Yes, darling, they do print more than one copy of the book. Ever visited a book warehouse? Ever shopped in a bookstore that sells remainders?)
On 14 February, 2014, Chris Charlesworth, Candice Eikermann, Rod Wark and I met at the Kelowna Airport for the first of the flight that would land us in Panama City the next morning at 8 AM. Shirley Coffin of Trail joined us in Seattle and we picked up the last three members of the tour at a hotel near Panama's Tocumen Airport, Margaret Bryan of Kelowna, and Karl Brunner and Jen Dusting of North Vancouver. Candice, Rod, Margaret and I were old hands with Chris's tours, while Shirley, Karl and Jen were new clients. Karl and Jen were new to the world of birds and birding. Boy, were they in for some surprises!
Chris Charlesworth had put two years of planning into this trip and it showed. He had booked our accomodations with the famous Canopy Tower company, who picked us up at the airport and looked after us for our entire stay. No details were too small for the staff. We had excellent food, good rooms, good transportation and a world-class bird guide as well as several other bird and nature guides at our disposal every day.
The Canopy Tower has been covered so frequently in the media that I won't go into detail about it here. If you're interested, check out the company's website which includes a profile of the company's president, Raul Arias de Para, a gracious man who ate several meals with us at the Lodge. After his purchase and conversion of the United States radio/radar tower in Soberania National Park into a hotel in 1995, he built the Canopy Lodge near El Valle in the highlands west of the canal. We stayed in the Canopy Tower for 7 nights and the Canopy Lodge for 4 nights. The only disadvantage to such first-class treatment where a highly efficient staff looked after us is having to return to everyday life at the end of the vacation. (And, of course, having to navigate the petty officious complexities of grubby airports makes one's return to everyday life just that extra bit nasty.)
When we arrived at the Tower we met out bird guide Carlos Bethancourt. Carlos is Panamanian and proud of his country. He's also very personable. Over the next 12 days he was to prove to be the consummate professional. I have never seen anyone as able to spot birds, often very small green or brown birds, in the dense understory or high in the canopy of the forest and get a scope trained on them as quickly as Carlos does. And I swear he is a bit of a magician for once a bird was visible in the scope, it usually stayed still long enough for 7 other people to see it. I have done my share of guiding and I have carried a scope since 1976 but in the three days that I attempted to find tropical species alongside Carlos I was an absolute failure. I was still adjusting tripod legs and hadn't even tried to find the bird in the scope yet by the time Carlos was set up and showing people the Purple-legged Scalp-tingler or whatever. From Day 4 onwards, unless we were scheduled to go near a pond or to the coast, I left my scope in my room and trusted Carlos would find the birds far faster than I could. However, I did notice that Chris Charlesworth was rapidly learning Carlos's techniques and by the middle of the tour we could count on at least two scopes on the bird. In addition, other guides from the Canopy company, like the excellent Moyo or Cesar, the raptorphile, were often along to provide an additional scope and excellent identification advice.
The great thing about the tower, aside from the good food and excellent service, is its flat roof-deck poking up in the middle of an otherwise unbroken forest canopy atop Semaphore Hill in Soberania National Park. At the very least one one can witness the fast dawn of the tropics, see the distant city of Panama and the Canal and hear the deep roaring of Red-mantled Howler Monkeys, the frog-like croaks of Keel-billed Toucans, the screechings of Mealy and Red-naped parrots, the vireo-like song of the Lesser Greenlet, and the three clear whistles of the devilishly hard to spot Green Shrike-Vireo. Some of the easier to spot birds might include the Plain-colored Tanager, Green Honeycreeper, and a wintering Bay-breasted Warbler or two. A pretty and loud song might be coming from a Palm Tanager, three of which liked to forage around the railings of the deck. As the day warms Black and Turkey vultures pass overhead, a local Short-tailed Hawk often hidden among them. It always pays to check vulture kettles: on our first day I spotted an adult King Vulture among them and the next day at noon figured out that the very large raptor high above, showing only traces of light color in its wingpits, was an immature King.
For the next two hours every dry morning it's one surprise after another, depending, I suppose, upon the season and which trees are flowering or bearing ripe fruit near the Tower. Mammals that we spotted in the canopy during our seven day stay included a Northern Tamandua, a Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth, a Variegated Squirrel, and Geoffrey's Tamarins, bare-faced little primates with naked dark faces and extravagant chestnut mullets.
The staff at the Tower feed hummingbirds with a series a feeders near the main entrance on the first floor. While we were there the most common hummingbird was the large White-necked Jacobin. We got used to seeing the purple-headed males flashing the large white tail patches at each other while they competed for places at the feeder. Since most Panamanian hummers are predominately green, I greedily tried to turn the green female jacobin into a new species for my checklist, but more knowledgeable birders prevailed and corrected my misidentification.
A single Long-tailed Hermit appeared at the feeders once every 30 minutes or so. This hermit is the Long-billed Curlew of its tribe with a long thin impressively curved bill as well as long white central tail feathers. What a beauty.
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| Fig. 3 - Most tanagers are colourful but not the well named Plain-colored Tanager, common around the Tower. Photo by Chris Siddle |
I was lucky enough to be one of few guests to glimpse a White-vented Plumeleteer, a medium-green hummer with a black tail and white undertail coverts.
After a day to recuperate from our all night flight from Las Vegas to Panama, we were ready for Carlos Bethancourt to lead us on our first full day of birding in the field.
To be continued.
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Great reading your bllog post
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