Discovering Amazing Wildlife Along the Panama Canal

“Follow me,” Nando said. “I know where he lives.”

It was late in the morning, hot, humid and quiet. The axes of sunlight crosses the jungle as we followed a path through the commented shadow. A few hundred meters away, gigantic load ships full of containers in the Panama Canal. But that was another world.

Where we were walking there was a tropical jungle strip with love fabric that aligns the banks and services of the channel as the home of hundreds of bird species. We were looking for a specific one.

In a bigger place in the forest that seemed to me any other, Nando, our guide stopped.

“WHOIT” WHOIT” WHOIT“Hello, he whistled softly. He then mentioned.

“You can’t use your eyes,” he whispered. “You have to use your ears.”

The third time I called, I heard, returning weakly, “”WHOIT” WHOIT” WHOIT. “

It was remarkable. Nando was a bird that speaks.

A small rug chest antpitta overwhelmed on a stick, a few meters away. I stood up, with amazement, like man and the bird gently called from one place to another.

“This is the same bird that I have been calling for years,” Nando said, happiness by tying his voice.

“Do you mean the same kind of bird?” I asked.

“No, no,” he smiled. “The same individual. That bird has become quite special to me.”

It was a moment of connection between a person and a small animal, which lasted only a few minutes. But memorable trips are made at the moment like these and our recent trip to Panama was full of them.

Last December, my family and I saw each other to observe birds in Panama. It is a country that quickly builds its ecotourism industry. It is located in the same time zone as Chicago, therefore, no jet lies for most Americans, and has a rich and cosmopolitan history due to the channel. And Panama is home to a thousand species of birds, both migrants and native, from the magnificent bird of the frigate that rises in the air currents for thousands of miles, to a vertiginous variety of small and charismatic forest birds such as the antpitta with a streak that nando summoned so delicately.

The same reason why the Panama Canal was created at the beginning of the 20th century, revolutionizing world trade, explains why you can see so many birds here. This is a land between two continents, North America and the South; Among the world’s largest oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic; and between elevations and dramatically different climates, from flattened flat beaches to cold mountains covered from the tropical jungle that rise more than 10,000 feet.

We planned our one -week trip months before President Trump entered the position and committed that the United States recovered the channel. The theme did not appear much in the three birds of bird observation that we visited. The guest companions were too obsessed with their bird lists, and the Panamanians who tend to discard threats as bombs and did not seem too worried.

And, as Nando said, “everyone knows the country for one thing, but there are much more.”

Kidnapping that.

We started in Panama City, which was founded more than 500 years ago and we became one of the most vibrant shopping centers in the Americas. The old town is experiencing a rebirth, and hidden through its red brick streets there are some spectacular renewed hotels such as the company, which they use used to be a convent, and drink holes that pray a sweat, romantic and past fashionable. We taught in an excellent jazz in a clandestine bar villa, which reminded me of an old house with class in Savannah, Go.

Wildlife next to load ships

Our first morning we connect with Nando, whose full name is Ismael Hernando Quiroz Miranda. He began his own bird observation operation a few years ago and was recommended by someone who I know in the hotel business. While we had the time or drive from the city to the channel area, he shared a bit of his life history.

“I was part of the people who had no chance,” he said.

He explained how he grew up in a town collecting crops and sawing wood after some took their father out of the family farm. The outdoor world was its surroundings and, over the years, while working a series of hard works, hey was taught about birds, trees, habitats, climate change and the fruitful ecosystem of Panama.

A few minutes after reaching the Canal’s area, he and his son Ismael, who works with him, helped us detect red sides that extended through the sky; A tucán with a throat peak that Cro was like a frog; A female motmot with a long iridescent tail; And a social squeak, a virtue of a bird with a swollen chest and bright yellow feathers. Nando walked with his head slightly tilted to listen, he was always listening. When he found a bird, he used a laser pointer to guide our eyes on the trunks of the trees. We started around 6 in the morning, while a muddy sunrise spread on the channel. At 9, we had seen more than 55 children or birds.

But it wasn’t just birds. My family are birds of birds and I have learned to appreciate that bird observation is an entrance door to see a lot of other things. While stunning behind Nando, we saw spectacular blue morpho butterflies, lumpy rodents called waters and leaf cutter ants that moved through the jungle floor for thousands, a twisted red carpet. In the distance, we listen to Howler Monkeys, well, howling. They were before the loud ingredible, but we could see them, just a wall of trees: cedar trees, ficus trees, giant figs and high bamboo stems.

“Whoa, looks that thing,” said my wife, Courtenay, ducting a dragon fly that passed, turning his wings like a helicopter.

“Fly of Baile by helicopter,” Nando proclaimed. “Probable woman.”

His knowledge surprised me.

The Magic Valley

After our fruitful day with Nando, we drove two hours from the channel area to a town called El Valle de Antón. When we arrived on the outskirts, I noticed that the houses became larger and the gardens became more beautiful. I saw travelers with good backpacks walking along the main road; Some red bicycles.

The valley looks like something out of a fairy tale, a small perfect city with red ceiling locked by deep green mountains. With 2,000 feet higher than the city of Panama, it is colder and less humid substantial, which makes it a magnet for travelers and rich Panamanians. New coffees with painted tables brilliantly align the sidewalks; We tried the empanadas in several and just thinking about these perfect scabs and the interior of a good interior is giving me hungry. The valley had the sensation of Ubud, Bali, 25 years ago: at the edge of going big.

We spend two days in Canopy Lodge, a cozy retirement created by a bird observer for bird observers. The first morning I woke up early, I grabbed my laptop and dragged into the dining room.

“Hey!” A high guy told me, coming out of nowhere. “Did you see the Motmot Rufous?”

It was 6:30 am and I was just trying to check my email.

“It’s a beautiful bird,” he said.

He had a three -foot camera outfit with a camouflage hood and a lens as large as a Howerzer.

The email, when reflecting, seemed stupid. So I followed his instructions towards a bush behind the kitchen where the Motmot Rufo sat in all its splendor: wonderful deep colors: green, yellow and blue feathers, and a long delicate racket tail that swings like a metronome.

Canopy Lodge is part of a network or lodges of nature founded by Raúl Arias de Para, an economist of one of the best known families in Panama. “Panama,” he told me, “is a beautiful country, very different from the unfortunate image that has been created from a fiscal paradise, the money that Launing and the Republic of Corrupt Banana.”

Raúl has associated with the Cornell ornithology laboratory and established a 24-7 bird chamber behind the dining room. We spent our meals talking about birds and seeing Tanagers, Aracharis, carpenters and barbets. Then, we look for more birds in the nearby jungles.

A climax was to visit a banana farmer who has turned his small and lush backyard into a giant bird feeder. The guy did not speak much English, and my Spanish is quite weak. So we sat in silence in plastic chairs on their porch and saw colorful winged creatures reach their feeders and eat banana pieces. My favorite was a red -legged honey receptor, the size of a pacifier glass with an incredible blue body paint work, bright red legs.

Coconut ice cream, caimanes and owls

Our last stop was Isla Palenque, a luxury complex in western Panama, in the Pacific. For this, we return to the city of Panama and we played a brief flight to a city of called David. We came with my extended family and there was a lot of chill next to the post, throwing football on the beach and jumping to dinner (resident meat loin soaked in a delicious coffee sauce, pasta loaded with fresh seafood, well, cocont cakes, coconut, coconut, coconut).

Beyond our town, wildlife stalked in the forest, and several resort staff members were, like Nando, natural naturalists. Then we continue exploring.

One night, a young man named Francis Tok Us on a walk and found rainbow beetles, scorpions, a tsorigüeya and a three -foot caiman long. At dawn, he took us to a palm tree where a flock of oropendolas with crest floated through the air transported long vines on their peaks, building its nests. The nests hung from the trees as socks. I spent 15 minutes happy looking at them.

Francis made the mistake of telling my 15 -year -old son, Apollo, the best aviator in our family (he is the one who put us in this), about a elusive show of show that lives in the jungle. Apollo was constantly asking resort staff if they had it and where they had it. On our last day, with only a few hours to the end, we made a last stab to find it.

A few minutes walk from our town, he felt as if we had entered a remote jungle. We could listen to birds but not see them. We were covered with insects and drip with sweat.

While we moved along a road, Francis Hero uploaded a tight fist. I had seen the Marines do this on the battlefield. It means stopping, immediately.

We stopped, immediately. Hello, he made a gesture. I listed.

In a branch under a sun patch, the owl landed and looked at us with large, bright and curious yellow eyes.

We had met one of the most magnificent creatures in the forest and it was listening that had guided us, just like Nando had taught us that first day.

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