On a birding trip to Panama:

This morning nine friends and I are on our way to a week-long birding trip at the Canopy Tower in Panama.  I’m sure to see many Life Birds including this colorful resident with blue feet, the keel-billed toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus).

Panama is best known for the Canal that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans but there’s a lot more to it than that.  Directly south of Pennsylvania, it’s the narrow land bridge that links North and South America though the country itself runs east-to-west.

Smaller than South Carolina, Panama hosts a population of 4 million people and 987 species of birds.  Its biodiversity comes from its location as the crossover zone where north meets south, and its elevation change of 11,400 feet from the mountains to the sea.

The Canopy Tower is well situated to see a rich variety of birds, butterflies, mammals and plants.  Located on the Pacific (southern) side of the country near Panama City the tower was built in 1965 for communications, air traffic control, and defense of the Panama Canal (the Panama Canal Zone was a U.S. territory until 1979).  The FAA and the Panama Canal Commission abandoned it 30 years later but Raúl Arias de Para had a better idea.  The tower is so tall that you can see above the canopy of trees.  And that’s where the birds are.  In January 1999 he made it a birding destination.

The checklist for our short trip contains more than 470 species of birds. I can hardly wait! Here’s a preview.

Video of Canopy Tower 2017 courtesy of Victor Castroverde.

I’ll be too busy to blog at the Canopy Tower so I’ve left my laptop at home and written all 7 days of articles in advance.  I’ll check my blog once a day but I won’t login to Facebook.  (Note!  As always, if you want to reach me the best way to do it is to leave a comment on my blog.)

This week I’m mostly off the grid while my husband holds down the fort at home.  I’ll see you when I return to my computer on Monday morning, March 26.

(photo and maps from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals.)

Day 1: Fly to Panama City. Birding at the Canopy Tower and Gamboa.