The heronry close to Chepo

Chepo is an agricultural town located 30 miles to the east of Panamá City, and is the capital of the district bearing the same name.  It is surrounded by pastures, rice fields and marshes, making this site attractive to a great variety birds.  For many years now, an heronry exists just outside of town, mostly with nesting pairs of Cattle Egrets, but also some other species.  We usually don't stop at this spot; however, today was different.  Accompanied by Rafael Luck, Venicio "Beny" Wilson and Itzel Fong, and at the end of our birding day (more on it in another post), we notice the intense activity at the heronry when leaving Chepo.

It doesn't matter how many Cattle Egrets you have seen... you MUST stop if you see something like this!  Those bright colors of the bare parts were simply beautiful!

Well, only a minority exhibited those bright bare parts, but all the birds had the orangish tones typical of breeding birds (completely white outside breeding season).  At least one hundred nests were visible, many with chicks begging for food.  Look at those chicks... any doubt these beast were once dinosaurs?

The second most common species was the Anhinga.  We saw at least ten nest, each with a male or female on it, some with chicks.

The males also exhibited bright bare parts around the eyes... simply beautiful!

We also saw three nests of Great Egrets, but there were probably more species nesting in the site, since the heronry extend beyond our field of view, but we stayed only for a while.  We did another stop at a nearby pond after noticing an Amazon Kingfisher by the road.

The kingfisher was only the appetizer... the pond was full of life, with Green Herons, Snowy and Great Egrets, many Black-billed Whistling-Ducks and Southern Lapwings, Wattled Jacana, Black-necked Stilt and a flock of resting Wood Storks.

Common species?  Right... but interesting anyway! 

Birding the Caño Negro and Laguna Negra

After our morning walk around Playa Guio and the Guaviare river (Colombia), Rafael Cortes, Mauricio Rueda and your blogger host were ready to do some canoeing-&-birding.  Aboard a "piragua", and guided by Derly, our route started at the dinning hall through the winding Caño Negro... as its name suggest, a black water creek that drains into the Laguna Negra (black lagoon).

It was a delightful travel, watching many birds at the banks and at the floating vegetation while comfortable seated in the boat.  The water was so calm that it was easy to take photograph... however I still don't know why my only pics of these attractive Red-capped Cardinals turned out so unfocused!

I'm pretty sure that will not see again so many Hoatzins in the same place... they were abundant!  They not only looked like relics of the past... they sound like that too.

Each stretch of the creek had a pair of White-eared Jacamars watching the surroundings waiting for an unfortunate insect to pass.  They have heavy-looking bills so different to the others jacamars of the region.  In the other hand, the Brown Jacamars were always in groups of three to four individuals, and they do have more typical bills (for a jacamar that is).

The real masters of the water were the kingfishers... we saw four species in total.  We only saw once the Pygmy Kingfisher and a Green-and-Rufous Kingfisher (excavating a nest), but both the Ringed and Amazon Kingfishers were very common.  This male Amazon Kingfisher stayed enough for photos.

Once in the lagoon, the more open waters and the floating vegetation supported a different set of birds.  By far the most impressive was the Horned Screamer.  A pair of these prehistoric-looking birds were vocalizing atop some trees at the edge of the lagoon.  They look quite heavy and have a strong flight.  I don't know if the latin name Anhima have something to do with their vocalizations (in spanish, an ánima is a kind of wandering, crying spirit)... its common name, aruco, certainly does!  

Some other birds around the lagoon were the Black-capped Donacobius, making the car alarm-like duet, a pair of Bare-necked Fruitcrow, an Osprey and a Neotropical Cormorant.  The boat then entered a zone with reeds, flushing first a Least Bittern.  Then, we spotted a heron hiding in the reeds.  It looked like a juvenile tiger-heron at first, but then we noticed the finely barred hindneck, the streaked back and wings (instead of barred) and the heavy bill pointing upward toward the sky... a Pinnated Bittern!  That is a bird that curiously skips Panama in its distribution, so I was glad of watching it. 

We were very happy with our first day around Playa Guio, lots of birds and spectacular scenes...  but the birding didn't ended with the sunset... the night came accompanied with all sort of songs and calls by several night birds that, curiously, we saw in the day... but that is another post!

Laguna Negra

More than shorebirds in Costa del Este

When I mention Costa del Este (Panama City), I'm pretty sure that, at this point, most of you think on shorebirds. Yes, Costa del Este is an excellent site for shorebirds, but you can find other interesting species as well. Yesterday, I found two hard-to-find species within the city limits, considering that both are pretty common just to the east and to the west. The first one was a young (but beautiful) Savanna Hawk in the middle of a grassland. It stayed for a while and then flew to a streetlight post, where an American Kestrel started to attack him (I included it in my "raptors on streetlights" collection).The other species was a Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture. It was eating something in the ground, but I did not figure out what it was.Later, I moved to the Matías Hernández river, which was full of Neotropic Cormorants. I found several Yellow-crowned Night-Herons (I included a photo at my "waders and more waders" post), but also Mangrove (Yellow) Warblers, Eastern Wood-Pewees, an Amazon Kingfisher and a subadult Black-crowned Night-Heron perched in a mangrove tree.It is always nice to find all these birds in the city!