Escape to Bocas. Part II

As I mentioned in the first part (you can read it here), I spend an extraordinaire weekend with my family in Bastimentos Island in the Bocas Archipelago (western Caribbean lowlands).  Our friends at Tranquilo Bay Eco Adventure Lodge still had some surprises for us.  After the great success in our first walk through the property's trails, Ramón and I decided to show them to the rest of the family... so Gabrielle, Gloriela and Jean-Michael took their hiking shoes and joined us.  However, our main objective were not the birds... this time we were looking a colorful forest jewel.  After some search, we finally found a pair of Strawberry Poison-dart Frogs (or, as they are known in Bocas, simply Red Frogs).

Strawberry Poison-dart Frog

This very same species (Oophaga pumilio) is present in eastern-central Nicaragua and Caribbean Costa Rica (where it look more or less uniform in appearance), but it is in northwestern Panama where several color morphs arose due to isolation and sexual selection.  Notice how this form, which is orange-red with little white in the underparts and few black spots in the upperparts, differs from the individuals found in the same island farther west (check this post about Bocas' Herps and scroll down until you find the frogs).  The forms in the other islands are strikingly different... Ramón and Natalia have a nice photo gallery of these forms found in different parts of the archipelago (and the mainland) posted in the TB Blog... check it out!

Jean-Michael showing what NOT to do if you find a pixbae palm in the forest

The trail crossed several habitats, like forest, pasture, secondary growths, gardens and old plantations of cacao, pineapple, banana and pixbae (among others), reminiscent of the past history of the property before becoming a private reserve.  The activity inside the forest was great, with several mixed flocks of migrants taking advantage of the Miconia berries and resident hummingbirds taking a bath at a known site at a tiny creek.  The walk ended at one of Tranquilo's main attraction: the 100-feet high canopy tower.

From the tower, the views of the surroundings areas are spectacular and you can have close encounters with wildlife.  In fact, we saw dozens of Red-lored Parrots up-close flying to their roosting sites, pewees, dacnis and tanagers feeding at the canopy, and migrant swallows passing by.

Red-lored Parrot

While checking them, I noticed a pair of large swifts circling above us... evidently larger than the Barn Swallows and the Lesser Swallow-tailed Swifts flying nearby, with long tail and long wings.  They were Cypseloides swifts, a difficult genus to ID to species in the field, and at least two species were probable with that size.  I managed to take a marginal photo of one of the birds that, after editing it, showed dark throats and frosty white above and in front of the eyes: a Black Swift!  I included the photo in the eBird checklist of the day.  That was the last LIFER for me for the day... and what a lifer.  After a delicious dinner in the common area, we retired to our cabin to have some sleep and to prepare for the next day.

PAS fieldtrip to Campo Chagres

Last sunday, february 13th, I guided the Panama Audubon Society (PAS) fieldtrip to Campo Chagres, in Chagres National Park. The group of PAS members included Itzel Fong, Javier Tejeira, Celeste Paiva, Michael Froude, Antonio Domínguez, Dona and Rick Pfarschner, and Jennifer Wolcott. After an early encounter at the meeting point, we departed to the site where Rolando, the park ranger, waited for us to open the gate. In the first part of the entrance road, the dry forest allowed views of interesting birds, including Gray-headed Kite, Collared Aracari, Yellow-backed and Baltimore Orioles, Scrub Greenlet, Cocoa Woodcreeper, Snowy-bellied Hummingbird, among others. Some others birds were only heard, including both Lance-tailed and Golden-collared Manakins and Rosy Thrush-Tanagers. We left the cars at the rangers' station and walked the trail to the lake, which was not as hot as I was expecting, surely because of the partially clouded day. We heard several species, but actually saw only a few of them, including a cooperative Blue-crowned Motmot for some of us, the noisy Red-throated Ant-Tanagers and a pair of Red-lored Amazons (file photo) perched in a Ficus tree. By the end, Jennifer wrote down the group list with her I-Pad, showing how the technology can help the birder in the field. We had a great time in this corner of Panama, and I had so much fun guiding this group of nature lovers.