Portraits in the savanna

In spite of not finding the Maguari Stork reported for Juan Hombron (Cocle province, central Panama) after several visits, the good thing is that I had the opportunity to take some close-ups of common inhabitants of these typical arid savannas.  Advantages like clear light and unobstructed views are the ingredients to great portraits... even for an amateur photographer like me.

Variable Seedeater

For example, the male Variable Seedeater pictured above was quite curious and came to inspect me for a while.  Several males were engaged in courtship displays and singing the heart out.  They were very common in those fields.  Another common species was the Straight-billed Woodcreeper.

Straight-billed Woodcreeper

Not only common, but beautiful as well too.  For a woodcreeper, it is quite distinctive, with that straight, pink bill and bold head marks.  It is restricted to mangroves and adjacent shrubs and secondary growths.  In the other hand, the Groove-billed Ani is simply an all-black bird.  In fact, it is easier to ID it by voice than by sight (due to confusion issues with the Smooth-billed Ani present in smaller number in this same area).

Groove-billed Ani

However, with looks like this you can actually see the grooves in the bill of this individual!  It easy to ID the birds if you actually see the field mark by which they were named; for example, can you name the next species?

Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture

Jejejeje, just kidding.  However, they would be more difficult to identify if flying away.  The Lesser Yellow-headed Vultures are commoner than Turkey Vultures in this habitat, specially this time of the year.   Also common, and a nice representative of this savanna, is the Savanna Hawk.

Savanna Hawk

This long-legged hawk is huge and colorful, making it recognizable from long distances.  Due to the lack of tall trees in the savanna, this raptor (like many other as well) take advantage of any high site (like this telephone pole) to observe its domains.  Well, that is all for now... but certainly is not my last time in Juan Hombron looking for my Maguari!

Code 5: Maguari Stork

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I received a message in my phone with a cropped picture attached.  My friend Venicio "Beny" Wilson send me a picture of a bird that he just saw some minutes before, along with Rosabel Miro and Celeste Paiva (the spotters).  The picture quickly filtered to social networks...  they just found a new species for Panama: Maguari Stork (first report in Xenornis here).  Knowing how huge this was, I planned a trip to Juan Hombron area, where the bird was found.  I knew time was against me... these vagrants don't stay long... but I had to go to work, and could only escape after noon with my friend Rafael Luck.  In the meanwhile, my friend Osvaldo Quintero, along with Rafael Lau and Beny, went to the area this morning... finding not one, but two Maguari Storks!  Osvaldo kindly let me use one of his photos.

Maguari Stork.  Copyright Osvaldo Quintero, used with permission.

This was great!  Two individuals still in the same place where Beny saw it the day before.  Beny waited for us close to the site and showed us the exact place where they saw the birds just some hours before.  Our expectations were high, and we checked every corner of the huge lagoon where they saw the birds.

As you can see, I left without even wasting time changing my outfit!  The excitement of twitching a rarity is enough to left everything behind, even your rubber boots and most of your birding gear!  I'll kill the suspense right now: we do not find the bird.  Big disappointment considering that it would be a lifer for both Rafael and me (as it was for Beny the day before).  Nonetheless, we saw some common inhabitants of these dry pastures, like Mouse-colored Tyrannulet and Straight-billed Woodcreeper (both noticed first by voice).

Mouse-colored Tyrannulet

Straight-billed Woodcreeper

I also managed my first Bare-throated Tiger-Heron for these pastures.  In fact, this bird was showing its bare, yellow throat.

Bare-throated Tiger-Heron

OK, we do not find the bird... but we tried hard... and that's the idea after all.  I hope that it still remains in the area although seems improbable, maybe we can have another chance.  In the meanwhile, I'll try to focus in another code 5 for our area (yes, two code 5 in one month for Panama)... so stay tuned!

Birding the dry lowlands

Last weekend, I went with Osvaldo Quintero in a quest along the dry lowlands of central Panama's Pacific slope searching for migrants and some resident specialties for the area.  We left Panama City at dark, very early in the morning, and drove directly to our first destination: El Chirú, some 1.25 hours away in Cocle province.

Quite recently, El Chirú figured in the map as the most reliable site in Panama to find the scarce Grassland Yellow-Finch, represented by an endemic subspecies.  In fact, the only time I've seen this species in Panama was in this place some years ago.  Since then, the habitat has deteriorated, but still is a good place to find common residents, like Crested Bobwhites right in the middle of the dirt road, or flocks of Brown-throated Parakeets atop the introduced Eucalyptus trees (file photo).

This is an isolated population of Brown-throated Parakeets, and well could be considered a full species in the future (Veraguan Parakeet).  After a while, we moved to Juan Hombron, birding along the road that crosses rice fields, dry forest patches, and riverine habitat.  These patches of forest are very good for migrants in the appropriate season, and so we found Yellow, Prothonotary and Tennessee Warblers, Northern Watertthrushes, tons of Eastern Wood-Pewees and two pairs of Gray Kingbirds.

We found these kingbirds exactly in the same spot where we saw them last year, they are always welcomed.  We had the opportunity to compare this species directly with the ubiquitious Tropical Kingbird... and the longer flights made by the Gray Kingbirds after flying insects became evident.  It was getting hot quickly, so we left Juan Hombron and started the return way, stopping for beverages on route, and shortly in the town of Gorgona to check an artificial pond where we saw many Least Grebes (some of them hiding in the grass like the one in the photo - looking for nesting sites?) and heard a Gray-breasted Crake, which was a surprise for us.

Our last stop was Punta Chame.  This 10 km-long sand bar extends into the Pacific Ocean away of the mainland, and its varied habitats are very good for migrants and resident birds.  However, it was late when we reached the place and the activity was low.  We had lunch in town and moved to the beach.

As you can see in the photo, it was about to rain.  We enjoyed the view of the islands of the Gulf of Panama (Otoque, Boná and Estivá... the same I visited with Gloriela and Gabrielle one year ago).  From Punta Chame, these islands look very close to shore.  In the way out, we found this American Kestrel on a wire.

Sincerely, I can't tell if this individual is a northern migrant or a resident bird, since south american races of this species are colonizing Panama and are quite common now in some sites.  Migrant or not, this was a nice bird to end the day!

Long weekend. Part I

My family and I decided to spent this long weekend at our house in Penonomé (Coclé province, central Panamá), in order to enjoy some fresh air and to share with our relatives.  Of course, I also took advantage of these free days to do some birding... and accompanied by Osvaldo Quintero and Rafael Luck, we visited some localities along the Panamerican highway, starting at El Chirú.  Most of the former savanna habitat was turned into a corn field, but still we managed to find some common birds, like Brown-throated Parakeets and even a White-winged Dove, but perhaps the change was too much for the Grassland Yellow-Finches that we used to find there regularly.

We moved closer to the coast, to Juan Hombrón, passing first by the extensive rice fields where we saw last year a Long-winged Harrier... this time we saw plenty of egrets and herons, and a flock of more than fifty Glossy Ibises, that weren't completely unexpected... but a good sight away of Las Macanas marshes, specially in such numbers.

The secondary growths along the road produced many species typical of these dry areas, like Lance-tailed Manakins, Blue-black Grassquits, Streaked Flycatcher (the only one allowing photos), Yellow-crowned Euphonias and many more.

At the beach, we saw the usual suspects: Brown Pelican, Neotropic Cormorant and Laughing Gulls... but it was an Osprey that allowed the best views and photographic opportunities.  This is an impressive eagle and, thanks God, a common one!

We left Juan Hombrón with a huge day-list of birds... but we wanted more, so we visited Punta Chame (to the east, coming closer to Panamá City), a well-known site for waders, and many more aquatic and marine birds.  Also, we enjoyed a nice fried fish as lunch after checking the beach.  It was only after reviewing my photos of a flock of gulls and terns resting in the sand that I realized that we didn't see the two Common Terns among the numerous Sandwich and Royal Terns and the Laughing Gulls!  Can you identify them in the next pic?

But the real surprise came in the way out.  We did a routine stop to check a section of beach by the road, noticing a group of ducks in the far shore... it took me a while, but eventually I recognized the huge beaks and the unmistakable plumage of an adult male Northern Shoveler with four female-plumaged birds!  These ducks are rare in Panama... and we were seeing five of them!  They were quite distant... but you can notice the beak shape in my cropped photo (OK, I recognized it, this is an awful photo).

That was a nice way to call it a day.  Rafael and Osvaldo left me at the Panamerican highway... they were going to Panama City and I was going back to Penonomé... the weekend was just starting!

Rice fields and savannas!

Birding in the tropics is not only about rain and cloud forests... any type of habitat is good if you are looking for birds!  The group of intrepid birders, composed by Osvaldo Quintero, Rafael Luck, Venicio "Beny" Wilson and myself, headed last saturday to the -mostly- agricultural lands of Juan Hombrón, in Coclé province (central Panamá).  We were looking for migrants buntings; however, we found many other goodies (but no buntings).  Our first stop were the rice fields on route to Juan Hombrón.  Most of the fields were essentially pool of mud waiting to be sowed... but it turned out that was the perfect habitat for a bunch of migrant waders!

As you can see, we saw many shorebirds, especially Southern Lapwings and Least Sandpipers, but also small numbers of Pectoral Sandpipers, Willets, both Wilson's and Semipalmated Plovers, Greater Yellowlegs, Black-necked Stilts and Solitary Sandpipers.  We were inspecting carefully every shorebird looking for rare vagrants when Beny called us to see through his scope: an American Golden-Plover still with part of its breeding plumage.  Not exactly a vagrant, but a rare migrant through Panamá.

Not the best photo, it was too far away.  We continued our way, finding many typical inhabitants of these fields, like Lesser Yellow-headed Vultures, Savanna Hawks and the omnipresent Cattle Egrets.

One mile before reaching the coast, we stopped at a tiny gallery dry "forest", finding Veraguan Mango, Sapphire-throated Hummingbird, Snowy-bellied Hummingbird, both Common and Slate-headed Tody-Flycatchers and many more... but only this Acadian Flycatcher allowed photos.

By the time we reached the coastal marsh, it was raining so hard that we decided to go back, stopping again at the rice fields were we saw the bird of the trip.  After a while, we went to Penonome, where we had lunch at a new hotel in the outskirts of the town.  Then, we headed south of town, taking the road to El Gago, finding more raptors typical of the coclesian savannas, like White-tailed Kite, Roadside Hawk and both Yellow-headed and Crested Caracaras.

For the first time, we actually reached El Gago, a tiny river pier at the end of the 16 km-long road!  That was a life site for me!

At El Gago, we saw both immature and adult Common Black-Hawk, this form used to be known as the Mangrove Hawk some years ago.  I think that the adult looks boring if you compare it with the colorful immature bird.

In the way out we took a couple of minutes to photograph some migrant Barn Swallows by the road.  Not only that, I also got my first Bank Swallow photo!  Can you find it?

I stayed in Penonome with my family after saying good-bye to my friends.  What a great day at the savannas, watching resident and, specially, migrant birds.  To end the day, I was able to capture the silhouette of a migrant Chimney Swift over the shrubs of the savanna... simply a nice way to call it a day!

Harrier's festival in Coclé!

Of the three harriers species (Circus sp.) found in the Americas, two had been recorded so far in Panama.  The Northern Harrier, which is an uncommon migrant from North America, and the Long-winged Harrier, considered as a vagrant from South America and recorded, as expected, in the eastern part of the country... until now!  Along with Rafael Luck, Osvaldo Quintero and Venicio "Beny" Wilson, I went last saturday, october 13th, to Juan Hombrón, in the Coclé province of central Panamá.  We passed the rice fields, birded for a while (the story in another post) and continue our route... but it was at the rice fields in the way back when Beny saw it!

Juan Hombrón rice fields

He separated of the group for unknown reasons and while we all were seeing in the opposite direction, he saw a big black bird flying low passing in front of him... he immediately started to call us because he soon realized that was seeing something rare and new for him!  The bird crossed the road from one rice field to another, allowing some photos (watch Rafael's photos of this and other birds in Xenornis).

After litte discussion, we all agreed that the bird was a Long-winged Harrier due to its very dark (almost black) general color, pale primaries panels (both from above and below), and large size.  The pale streaks of the underparts make this bird a dark phase immature.

After seeing Rafael photos in Xenornis, I realized that this bird also showed the rufous vent characteristic of this species... only my next photo shows that feature (OK, with a little bit of imagination... you may need to enlarge the image to see it).

The bird also showed little white in the rump... essentially a white rump band... very different to the conspicuous white rump patch of the Northern Harrier.

After a while, we relocated the bird, allowing more photos... but the bird was chased away by a group of Southern Lapwings that were not as excited as we were with this raptor.  Notice the long-winged profile of the bird while soaring high in a thermal current.

Compare the last photo with my own Long-winged Harrier photo from eastern Panama province, taken last june... same profile.

Long-winged Harrier.  Eastern Panama province, june 30th, 2012.

For some reason we were quite lucky to have the rare opportunity to watch the other species of harrier, the Northern Harrier, also flying over a rice field farther west, in the road to El Gago, south of Penonome (Coclé province too).  In comparison, they (two birds) were smaller, browner, with a different wing pattern and conspicuous white rumps.

I know the last photo is simply not good... but this is the third year in a row that I see this species in the same area, and I have other photos published here (also, you can see Rafael's photos in Xenornis).

This, if accepted, is the ninth or tenth report for this species in Panamá; and certainly, the western/northernmost of them... what a crazy find!!!

One mile from the coast

The news of a male Painted Bunting close to the beach of Juan Hombron in the coast of Cocle province (central Panama, Pacific side) took of us for surprise... it is a very rare migrant in Panama, with just a handful of reports in the last years. It was a potential lifer for Rafael Luck, Osvaldo Quintero and for me, so we left very early Panama City this morning, reaching the entrance to Juan Hombron around 8:00 AM. Close to the entrance, we found one of the discoverer, Danilo Rodriguez, guiding a birding group. He gave us some hope, we knew that it was going to be a hard task. The road to the beach runs through rice fields, pasture land, residential areas and few patches of dry forests... each with a different set of birds. The rice fields and adjacent areas were flooded... both with water and birds! The sight of hundreds of herons of several species and, more important, a big flock of 30 or more Glossy Ibis, among lapwings and jacanas was pretty amazing. A Great Egret stayed very close to the road... probably it was wounded, but we didn't see any sign of lesions. We also saw several Solitary Sandpipers... not so solitary. At least three of them were sharing the same spot in a patch of rice. Most of the birds we saw were common species, but anyway, it was very entertaining. As usual, the birds of open habitats are easier to photograph, and sometimes you have very close encounters, like the one we had with this Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture inspecting us curiously from his fence post. We passed the sleepy town of Juan Hombron and, eventually, reached the beach. Only a distant fishing boat was passing by, followed by many Magnificent Frigatebirds and some Brown Pelicans. We checked very well every small flying dot because you never know what to expect there (a Peruvian Booby was seen last year in that place). We did not stay so long at the beach, we drove the road back to the entrance, but not for long. Just as we were told, at one mile from the coast, we found the patch of dry forest where the Painted Bunting was first seen. We did not find the bunting... but the place was full of migrants! Sometimes, it was hard to point out a single bird among the hordes passing by. The warblers were well represented, with Tennessee and Yellow Warblers as the more common, but also finding at least two male Prothonotary Warblers (not together) and two Blackburnian Warblers to add some color to the scene. By far, the most weird of the migrants we found was a Gray Catbird. The catbird is not uncommon in general, but in this part of the country is almost unknown! It stayed just enough for a couple of photos... not the best photos ever, I have to recognize, but at least the characterstic slim silhouette and the general gray color is quite evident. Perhaps, if you enlarge the photo, even the chestnut crissum is aparent. Well, we failed in finding the bunting... but it was an excellent day of birding anyway!