Panama: Day Two, Morning
Day Two. 17 September 2007.
My alarm went off at 5:45, and I stumbled onto the sleeping porch to do some yoga, trying to unravel the kinks and stitches my body was harboring after a long day of travel. I got dressed, grabbed the borrowed pair of binoculars I’d packed in my carry-on bag, and headed downstairs to see what this birding business was all about. We were supposed to meet downstairs at the ungodly hour of 6:30am, so I hoped it would be worth not sleeping in for.
There was a bushy-eyebrowed guy in the lobby carrying a telescope and dressed in khaki safari-ready vest. I introduced myself. I’d guessed right—this was our bird guide, Hernan, who was supposedly the best birder in the country. We waited for the rest of the early arrivers to come downstairs and piled into Hernan’s silver Honda CR-V. I knew this was going to be good when Hernan pointed to the sky as we walked across the parking lot, noting the plentiful Red-lored Amazon parrots flying above. We drove to a place known as Pipeline Road. Pipeline Road, now a famed birdwatching location, was named for the now-decrepit pipeline that runs along it, that I believe was built during World War II.
We got to a clearing at Pipeline Road and got out of the car with our gear. Hernan immediately went into action, setting up his telescope and focusing it in one quick movement. I put my eye to the scope. Holy shit—toucans. Keel-billed toucans, actually, and several of them! Hernan told us that they are the national bird of Belize, and described the marks that distinguish keel-bills from other toucans (it has to do with the colors on their beaks). We spent a couple hours trekking down Pipeline Road with Hernan moving ahead of us, sensitive to every movement. With his guidance, I saw white-tailed trogons, black-throated trogons, slaty-tailed trogons, a lineated woodpecker, a crimson-crested woodpecker, checker-throated antwrens, white-flanked antwrens, dot-winged antwrens, blue-crowned manakins, a Philadelphia vireo, lesser greenlets, olive-sided flycatchers, and yellow-rumped caciques. All of this in about two hours. Hernan mimicked bird calls, seducing them toward us so we could see them. He had an eerie sense for when and where the bird would land, and set up his telescope almost instantly. The birds there are difficult to see because of the forest canopy, but when you do! They’re so brightly colored, so different from anything I’m used to. Es increible.
Hernan also pointed out other things happening around us. He saw a tiny frog, barely the size of my thumbnail, hopping along side of the road. He heard the howler monkeys in the distance (they elicited a WOW! from me every time they spoke. I mean… howler monkeys!!! My colleagues were most amused with me and my constant stream of excitement). He pointed out the enormous nest—easily twice the size of a standard office cubicle—of something called a leafcutter ant. I’m not much of a bug person, but it was pretty incredible—huge ants with crablike pinchers walking in neat lines over fallen tree limbs, creating a huge pile of dirt that was swarming and vibrating with life. Two of my colleagues held a warrior ant—who rather amusingly shook his pinchers at me—as well as a pile of the moving dirt. I did neither, although I did succeed in not screaming like a big girl, a success in and of itself. There are boundaries to my sense of wonderment, you know.
And this only brings me to about 8:30 in the morning. To be continued…
Posted 25 September 2007
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Sounds like you were set up with the right guy. I’m impressed that he knew where to put the telescope and with anyone who can make a convincing bird call.