Muchos Aves, muy bien

My grandmother’s name was Avis, Latin for bird. My sister and I have often speculated if her name, passed on to my niece, and our grandmother’s own fascination with birds, spurred ours. We both find immense joy from birdwatching ventures. This week, I had another enchanting, heart-filling experience at Parque Metropolitano Natural in Panama City during a 6-hour hike that covered well over 5 kilometers (when one is following bird calls, distances don’t seem to matter).

Since this blog is about world wide writing, water, wine, and watching birds, here are some birds for you to enjoy:

This pair were the super special birds of the day, blue-crowned (or blue-capped) motmots, a rare find for which the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/, congratulated me. The motmots posed and posed for photos, showing multiples sides, that gorgeous face, and that terrific tail.

• 

This fellow is a yellow-backed oriole, one of the most spectacular, and easy to spot birds, in the forest, even amongst the summer foliage (trees in Panama usually lose their leaves in the dry season, December through May).

This little guy was also a special surprise. He was far away from me and moved frequently, so the photos are a bit blurry. He is a lance-tailed manakin with a blue back, black wings, and a red cap.

This beauty is a bucket-list bird, a summer tanager. Tanagers are some of my favorite birds. Panama alone has 12 varieties, and I’ve only seen four, so I must get to work!

Speaking of tanagers, one of the most common birds in el parque is the ground-dwelling, red-throated ant tanager. Below is a photo of a normal ant tanager, just doing his thing. Then there are two of a guy who’s a little upset with me because I was invading his space with my camera. Finally, we have a beautiful yellow bird, who is a female red-throated ant tanager. She’s just the yellow variation on that red. God is creative.

• 

• 

• 

• 

A pair of squirrel cuckoos met me on top of Cerro Cedro, the high point in the park, but only one of them would let me take photos, and that was only from behind without good lighting. You get some idea of this pretty bird with its magnificent tail, though.

• 

• 

Cocoa wood creepers are kind of like woodpeckers, strolling along tree trunks, creating holes and looking for bugs. They were all over the park this day. I appreciate birds that eat bugs, especially here in Panama.

• 

• 

This little gal doesn’t look like anything special, but she is a blue-crowned manakin. As a female, she lacks the blue crown, but it takes three or four guys working together for her to choose a mate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zxJPQlFFTI. She is, indeed, a special lady.

This is also a little gal, a lesser goldfinch. She may be common, but she posed, so she gets her spot in the blog.

• 

Parakeets, the clowns the forest, always make for noisy fun. These orange-chinned guys are two of about a dozen that were in this tree.

Speaking of funny guys, this black vulture was doing a dance in the tree–probably drying his wings and not trying to be funny, but he was funny, nonetheless.

As you know if you follow my blog or are a friend on Facebook, the park as more than birds. Here are some monkeys, Geoffrey’s tamarins. I saw three troops, and they are a joy to watch as they cavort through the trees.

• 

• 

And here’s an agouti running across the path.

Finally, no visit to Parque Metropolitano Natural–or anywhere in Panama, for that matter–is complete without mariposas. These are ones that stayed still long enough for a photo. Hundreds of others flitted about this enchanted forest without stopping.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The cacophony of bird songs, the bright tropical colors of birds, butterflies, and flowers, the sun-dappled forest, the monkeys and sloths, and the ability to see but put aside the noise and bustle of the city, do, indeed, make Parque Metropolitono Natural a magical, enchanting place. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to see it, and to share this small sampling of it.