Mokka mit Schlag

On Satrurday, after a couple of hours of driving (half of which I slept through), we arrived at the Canopy Lodge in time for lunch. And I got upgraded to a large room. Yay! My room at the Tower was the size of a large closet. And I have a balcony that has a good view of a tree popular with birds waiting for the feeder. Good for photography. On the downside the Wifi is much less reliable at the Lodge than the Tower. I don’t know why.

The lodge has feeding platforms that attract a different group of birds since we’re further west and higher up. However there were, a bit surprisingly, no lifers at lunch. After lunch though, we walked up the road and explored a bit in the Canopy Adventure, and this added four new species:

1. Rufous-capped Warbler (one of my target birds)
2. Common Tody-Flycatcher
3. Streaked Saltator
4. Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush (good find; these are secretive and usually hard to see

Today we leave for the Canopy Lodge, but there are still birds to be seen here. I added three more species from the top of the tower this morning:

728. Mealy Parrot
729. Semiplumbeous Hawk
730. Blue-headed Parrot

We whiffed on King Vulture though. Maybe we’ll get lucky on the road.

Before heading back to the Tower for lunch, we made a brief stop at Costa del Este to once again scope for shorebirds on the Pacific Ocean. Again it was mostly common North American species wintering down south. However we did pick up a couple of really good birds including a rare (for Panama) Long-billed Curlew that I spotted. Possibly this one bird has been returning to this site for the last ten years or so. And then the leader found a more Southerly bird too far north, #727, Collard Plover! It’s a lot like a a Semipalmated Plover or Snowy Plover.
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Friday was our last full day in the vicinity of the Tower. We drove down into Panama City to visit Metropolitan Park, their “Central Park” though it’s much more wild than either Manhattan’s or Huntington Beach’s. We got some good birds here, and lucked into a really big mixed flock toward the end.

716. Gray-chested Dove
717. Yellow-crowned Parrot
718. Forest Elaenia
719. Lance-tailed Manakin (a Panama endemic!)
720. Rufous-and-white Wren
721. Red-crowned Ant-Tanager
722. Rufous-breasted Wren
723. White-tipped Dove
724. Yellow-green Tyrannulet
725. Bright-rumped Attila
726. Orange-billed Sparrow

We also got the best looks I’ve ever had of Mourning Warbler and Kentucky Warbler, which for some reason seemed a lot less shy here than in New York. I was hoping for Little Tinamou here, but we whiffed on that. :-(
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Thursday was a relatively relaxed day. We didn’t get up till around 6:00 and didn’t drive more than a few miles away all day. We didn’t leave the tower until almost 8:00 AM, and we added one more life bird on the road out, #705, Cinnamon Woodpecker.

We spent most of the morning at the Police Academy Ponds and on Old Gamboa Road. I missed Jet Antbird, but I did add eight more life birds:

706. Gray-headed Chachalaca
707. Lesser Kiskadee (one I both spotted and ID’d on my own!)
708. Yellow Tyrannulet
709. Southern Beardless-Tyrannulet
710. Crimson-crested Woodpecker
711. Black-striped Sparrow
712. Red-throated Ant-Tanager
713. Yellow-billed Cacique

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Wednesday we had another 4:00 AM wakeup call, 5:00 AM departure; this time heading north to Colon and then across the Canal at Gatun Lock; but we saw #681, a Savannah Hawk in a church field, before we even got to the Lock. Then we got stuck waiting for the drawbridge across the canal for about 45 minutes. Fortunately the area by the bridge is not yet completely built up so we tallied about 18 species awhile parked waiting for the boats to go through including 3 more lifers:

682. Pale-vented Pigeon
683. Ruddy Ground-Dove (probably seen on Monday as well from the truck, but this was a much better more certain look. Iooked for this bird in California once near the Salton Sea, but it’s rare there. Here it’s relatively easy to find in disturbed habitat.)
684. Scrub Greenlet

Then it was across the bridge and onto the road to Achiote Road in the San Lorenzo National Park. Within a couple of minutes of exiting the van, we spotted #685 White-headed Wren , and the birds kept coming:

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