Banded Orange Heliconian— Photo: Michael O'Brien

Exciting rainforest birding and butterflying around the one-of-a-kind Canopy Tower ecolodge with visits to famous Pipeline Road, the Panama Canal, and Cerro Azul highlands.

As one of the premier natural history destinations in the Neotropics, Central Panama offers a superior combination of tropical forest habitats, fine accommodations and cuisine, the historic Panama Canal, and superb birding. Whether you are an experienced traveler or visiting the Tropics for the first time, you will find this tour an absolute delight. Unlike our other Canopy Tower tours, the scope of this trip extends beyond birding to emphasize observation and identification of the region's diversity of butterflies.

Our base for exploration is the exciting Canopy Tower, one of the most unique and enjoyable ecotourism lodges anywhere. Perched above Soberania National Park, the tower offers great birding literally right out your window, with chances for viewing such eye-catchers as Chestnut-Mandibled Toucan, Blue Cotinga, and Green Shrike-Vireo, as well as many other colorful tropical birds.

A number of other nearby birding areas range from wetlands with Rufescent Tiger-Heron, White-throated Crake, and a profusion of orioles, tanagers, and hummingbirds, to famous Pipeline Road with its suite of deeper forest species including trogons, motmots, parrots, flycatchers, and antbirds. 

Mornings and afternoons center on birding while the midday hours are best for butterflying. Central Panama is home to hundreds of tropical butterflies and we will have no problem entertaining ourselves as we observe a rich collection of morphos, owl-eyes, glassywings, longwings, sulphurs, oranges, swallowtails, mimics, anglewings, hairstreaks, stripestreaks, skippers, and longtails. The publication of new field guides has made the once impossible task of tropical butterfly identification eminently possible.   

Our time in the field may also produce an excellent list of tropical mammals with sloths, howler and capuchin monkeys, Geoffroy's tamarin, capybara, kinkajou, and lesser anteater among the possibilities.

Good accommodations and cuisine; all nights at one location; train ride along canal; easy walking; warm and humid climate with thunderstorms possible.

View our Panama's Canopy Tower photo galleries:

Panama's Canopy Tower

Panama's Canopy Tower

Panama's Canopy Tower