Looking for lifers in Darien province. Part I

Inspired by the recent reports of rarities showing up in eastern Panama, I decided to drive more than 250 km last weekend through pot-holed roads into central Darien province with my family.  After literally "escaping" Panama City's traffic jam, we drove all the way non-stop except in the little town of Tortí to have dinner.  Our surprise was that the restaurant we chose had hummingbird feeders!

Scaly-breasted Hummingbird

It was late and the light was fading; however, we saw six different species of hummingbirds attending the feeders, including the Scaly-breasted Hummingbird pictured above.  It was my first for the year.  After our tasty dinner, we reached the town of Metetí at night.  After checking in at our modest hotel, we went to sleep without setbacks.  Early the next day, we ate our breakfast preparing for the long drive to the town of Yaviza.  I only recorded common species in Metetí, with this leucistic House Sparrow as the highlight.

leucistic House Sparrow

The deteriorated road made the drive to Yaviza a 1-hour trip.  At this town is where the PanAmerican Highway ends... literally (the only gap along this route from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego!), and is the entrance gate to emblematic towns in eastern Darien (like El Real, Pirre, Boca de Cupe, Paya, Pucuru, etc...) and to Darien National Park through pangas and little canoes, using the mighty Chucunaque and Tuira rivers.

Following some published reports, we walked directly to the cemetery at the entrance of the town.  It was quite hot and sunny and I wondered if I had enough information to find my goal.  However, it only took a moment before we noticed a movement halfway up a Corotú tree (Enterolobium cyclocarpum) near the entrance of the place... somehow, Gloriela managed to took a photo of that moment:

Wait!... is that a....

Yes!  I was seeing a Bicolored Wren working the medium level of that tree!  Why so excited?  The Bicolored Wren is a recent colonizer of eastern Panama from Colombia... and Yaviza is, so far, the extreme western part of its expanded range... and a lifer for me and Gloriela!  I got some photos too!

Bicolored Wren

The bird searched carefully every loose piece of bark and each epiphyte quietly, resting just for a couple of seconds before resuming its task.  We only saw this individual... previously,  a pair with a begging young was recorded in that same site.

Bicolored Wren

Bicolored Wren

With our main target in the bag, we drove back to Metetí in order to prepare for our next adventure.  However, we stopped at a forest patch near Yaviza for a while.  Almost immediately we noticed some kettles of Broad-winged and Swainson's Hawks plus many Mississippi Kites migrating.  Then, I heard a familiar call... a little bit of search produced this magnificent Rufous-tailed Jacamar by the road.

Rufous-tailed Jacamar, female

Not only that... some other eastern Panama specialties showed up as well, like Black Antshrike, Double-banded Graytail and Yellow-breasted Flycatchers.  What a great day... but was not over.  After collecting our stuff in the room, we left Metetí and headed to the renowned Canopy Camp, where we booked one night with the intention of observing another rarity... so stay tuned!

My balcony list

Not always you can get out to a pristine habitat to chase rare birds. That is why quite often I go to my balcony just to see what can I find to deal with my birding abstinence syndrome (I live in a fourth floor in the center of Panama City). Usually I get the same common species, but sometimes I get surprises. I keep a balcony list where I include all the birds heard or watched while I am standing at my balcony. It is different to a backyard list because it is not restricted to a backyard (in anycase I don't have one)... I count all the birds that I can identify in my field of view, which includes part of the Metropolitan Natural and Camino de Cruces National Parks and the Ancon Hill as well (all are distant forested areas). I also have some photos showing the birds on or over man-made structures like telephone posts, wires, antennas, communication towers, etc... (that is the idea, to show them in an urban environment). So here is, my balcony list:

Magnificent Frigatebird

Great Egret
Wood Stork
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Osprey

White-tailed Kite
Broad-winged Hawk
Short-tailed Hawk
Swainson's Hawk
Zone-tailed Hawk

Yellow-headed Caracara
Anhinga
Southern Lapwing
Laughing Gull
Rock Pigeon
Pale-vented Pigeon

Ruddy Ground-Dove
Orange-chinned Parakeet
Blue-headed Parrot
Red-lored AmazonYellow-crowned Amazon
Common Nighthawk
Chimney Swift
Short-tailed Swift
Rufous-tailed HummingbirdRinged Kingfisher
Red-crowned Woodpecker
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Acadian Flycatcher
Great Kiskadee
Social Flycatcher
Streaked Flycatcher
Tropical Kingbird
Gray Kingbird
Fork-tailed FlycatcherGray-breasted Martin
Southern Rough-winged Swallow
Bank Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Barn Swallow
House Wren
Clay-colored Thrush
Tropical Mockingbird
Yellow Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Yellow-crowned Euphonia
Blue-gray Tanager
Palm Tanager
Crimson-backed Tanager
Great-tailed Grackle
House Sparrow

Fifty-three species in total by now, but expect additions to this list in the years to come. In the other hand, if I do not find birds from the balcony, it is always nice to enjoy the sunset every afternoon.

Introduced species

They DO count... only if they are well-established. OK, it may sound simple, but it can get complicated. Who determines when an introduced species is well-established depends on the local or regional birding or ornithologists associations based on sightings, historical records, population studies and so on... but sometimes, it can be obvious. Think about the Rock Pigeons. Most of the cities that I have visited until now holds a well-established population of this species. You may say that they are all around because of us and our food sources... but if suddenly all the people that deliberately feed them disappear, they will survive anyway. It was not included in the first edition of the Panama Birds fieldguide (back in the 70's) but now it is part of our official bird list. The populations of these birds are dynamic. There are many factors influencing the establishment of an introduced species to a region: number of individuals, habitat, adaptability, nest sites availability, competence with native or other introduced species. For instance, when I started birding (more than 15 years ago), the Saffron Finch was known only from an introduced population in the charming town of Gatun, in the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. Back then, it was one of the main targets during the Atlantic CBC, because it was valid for the count, despite its tiny population. Since then, this species have spread along the isthmus and now is a very common resident in Panama City as well (also in some other localities, for example in Vacamonte, at the west side of the Canal). And what about the Tropical Mockingbird? First recorded in Panama City during the 30's, probably brought from Colombia as a popular cage bird due to its song, now is very hard to imagine a park or a neighborhood within Panama's main cities without them. Not only that, they have spread themselves all the way to Central America, being now not uncommon in some sites in Costa Rica. Sometimes, it is about chances of adaptability. In Panama, the urban niche was, more or less, available in order to be occupied by the House Sparrows when they arrived following its incredible expansion from North America. A pair or flocks of these birds is now a common sight at our streets, where they do not compete with any other sparrow species (contrary to what happened in other countries in South America where it competes with the Rufous-collared Sparrow). Many times, those introduced species are seen as invasor alliens that destroy the natural avifauna... but take into consideration that they simply are trying to survive and that usually we are responsible of their first occurrence after all. The ethical dilemmas abound in the literature about erradication methods, with tons of examples along the decades. Well, I think is better to let them alone with their lives... trying not to make worse the situation by introducing MORE species. What do you think?

Jan Axel's Blog becomes international

For the first time since I started this blog, I have the opportunity to travel out of Panama. My destination was Toronto, Canada; along with two other Internnal Medicine residents (Erika Barrera and Carlos Tuñón) to attend the American College of Physicians' Annual Scientific Meeting. We left Panama very early the morning of april 21th heading to Miami, United States of America; for our connecting flight. After almost a 3-hours flight, we arrived to the sunny Miami, when we had to wait 4 hours for our next flight. After a quick meal at the food court, we decided to walk around the airport in order to take some pictures. Of course, I did some birding during the time we stayed at Miami, despite we never left the airport. No matter that, the first birds I saw when we exited the airport were the House Sparrows. They were so tame, allowing great photos while approaching very close looking for food. Then, a big dove perched on a pole. A quick glimpse with my bins prove it to be a Eurasian Collared-Dove, a well-stablished allien in this part of the world. I'm not worried about including this introduced species in my Life List because I already saw tons of them in their native range (many years ago in Taiwan). Then, my first life bird for the journey appeared: a female Boat-tailed Grackle was working some palm trees by the entrance of the terminal. In comparison with the Great-tailed Grackles (with which I'm familiar), she was warmer brown with a big-headed shape due to her less flattened crown. Soon after that, I found several adult males with their dull yellow eyes confirming the i.d. (by the way, the Great-taileds' are not supposed to occur in Florida). Not bad at all for just a couple of hours at an airport. Soon we boarded our connecting flight to Toronto, arriving three hours later. By then, it was getting dark so I didn't saw any bird (except for an European Starling by the airport), but we were impressed by Toronto's downtown skyline, dominated by the CN Tower. A 45-minutes ride from the airport in the airport express (free WiFi in the bus!) and we were at the Delta Chelsea Hotel, getting to our rooms. Others members of the panamanian delegation were staying in the same hotel so we had dinner together and, after a long traveling day we took a deserved rest waiting for the next day.

Fieldtrip to El Real, Darien. Part II

Saturday morning caught us early having our breakfast at Doña Lola's. The weather forecast was not good, the sky was completely gray, with an imminent threat of rain. It prevented me to carry my camera, but not to keep ongoing our adventure. Actually, the only shot I got of a bird is that of a rooster in the middle of one street in El Real before it starts to rain (just a drizzle, but I didn't wanted to take any risk). We took an arranged pick-up (courtesy of Guido Berguido from Advantage Tours) and headed to Pirre 1 through pastures and nice forest patches. We saw (and heard) the first Yellow-breasted Flycatcher of the trip, a Laughing Falcon and a Crane Hawk. At the end of the road, in the little town of Pirre 1, we got a Capped Heron, a pair of Spot-breasted and Red-rumped Woodpeckers, and a pair of Pied Puffbirds excavating a nest very close to the road, for the delight of those with cameras (that means, not me).

The trail to Rancho Frío, a ranger station in the Darien National Park, was wide and muddy... and I mean very muddy. The first part is through secondary forest patches and open areas before it enters the primary forest. Soon we found a mixed flock that kept us animated. Yellow-breasted and Yellow-margined Flycatchers, Bananaquit and White-shouldered Tanagers delighted us while feeding high in the canopy. Then, I spotted a little yellowish tanager with a gray belly. It wasn't until we saw a male Yellow-backed Tanager when I confirmed my initial I.D. Later in the day we got closer looks of this Darien specialty in association with orioles, tityras, becards, other tanagers and flycatchers. My life Pale-bellied Hermit was chasing a Rufous-breasted and then perched at a ridiculous shooting range for a minute or so (only happens when I'm not carrying my camera). Inside the forest the activity was low, but still we managed to found Black-breasted and White-whiskered Puffbirds, Blue Cotinga, Purple-throated Fruitcrow, Bright-rumped Attilas, Crested Oropendola and even a perched male Green-crowned Woodnymph that allowed us to study it in detail. After many hours of slow motion walk on the muddy trail, we decided to return (not before a rapid dive in the Peresenico river) to have our packed lunch. We had an uneventfull drive back to El Real, where we met Guido and his group. In the stretch of road between the pumphouse and the water tank we found 4 different woodpeckers (Red-crowned, Red-rumped, Spot-breasted and Crimson-crested), tons of seedeaters (Variable and Ruddy-breasted), more anis, and many more. We walked to the airstrip finding the bird of the trip (at least for me, thanks Guido): a pair of singing Black-capped Donacobius. I don't know what impressed me more: the beautiful contrast of the black, brown and buffy tones, the expressive yellow iris, the loud voice or the choreography that they monted whenever they were singing antiphonally. What a spectacular pair of birds... and everything within ten or 15 feet (and my camera?). The day ended with four lifers, plus a Panama life bird.

Next (last) day we tried the Pinogana road. This one is a more open road than the Pirre one, also in good conditions. The more open areas produced such birds like the White-necked Puffbird and the Roadside Hawk pictured above (I brought my camera), plus lots of commoner birds. New birds for the trip were the female Black Antshrike working in the tangles at the first part of the road and a group of Gray-headed Chachalacas. We got better looks of the Laughing Falcon, Crane Hawk, Yellow-breasted Flycatcher and the Black Oropendolas (not the best picture, but the only one I managed and I think it is recognizable). Then we moved to the airstrip trying again for the Donacobius, but only heard it far away (I brought my camera). We saw again the Large-billed Seed-Finches, but no Yellow-hooded Blackbirds this time. We had our mid-morning breakfast (after seeing a Black-headed Tody-Flycatcher in a tree over the restaurant in the middle of the town and an inmature male Lesser Goldfinch over the hospital) and then, back to our hotel to pack our things. We had a dry ride to Yaviza where we finished the fieldtrip with a big smile in our faces, after seeing lots of birds and always remembering those Donacobius dancing for us. I didn't had a chance for a picture. Good excuse to return.

Only one last thing. On route we stopped in Metetí (central Darien) in a gas station to fill the tank. We saw several individuals of House Sparrow there. For sure I'm not the first one that have seen this bird in Darien, but it is seldom reported (if reported at all). So I got some pictures!