Panama: El Valle's Canopy Lodge Extension Feb 06—11, 2010
Posted by Kevin Zimmer
Kevin Zimmer
Kevin Zimmer has authored three books and numerous papers dealing with field identification and bird-finding in North America. His book, Birding in the American West: A Han...Related Trips
As always, the El Valle area treated us to some great birds, beautiful accommodations, and some unexpected surprises. If there were a theme to this year's trip, it would have to be—nightbirds. Yep, that's right, nightbirds. As voted by the group, the three favorite birds of the tour were all nightbirds. It started the first afternoon, when we visited the property adjacent to the Canopy Lodge in search of a day-roosting Mottled Owl. The bird wasn't in its usual spot, so the lodge guide, Eliecer, left us to check some other places. In minutes he returned, and said he had found the owl. It was perched low and in plain sight, but facing straight away from us. One glance told me that something wasn't right—the bird was the wrong color brown. "Eliecer, this isn't right for Mottled Owl," I said. "It's more the color of a Crested Owl." Almost on cue, the bird swung its head towards us, revealing a white forehead and a couple of huge ear tufts. Crested Owl it was, and apparently the first local record in eight years, according to the senior lodge guides! The bird just sat there while "oohs" and "aahs" alternated with the steady clicking of camera shutters, and while the scope provided a reasonable chance of identifying any feather lice that might be lurking in those giant ear tufts. I believe it was a lifer for all of the participants, as well as for Eliecer, who was still grinning an hour later.
After the surprise Crested Owl in broad daylight, we ran the risk of everything else being anticlimactic. But, then there's the lodge feeder show. At peak times, it can be nearly impossible to tear a group away from the lodge feeders to go anywhere else! Not only is activity at the feeders frenetic, but the diversity of birds attracted is truly remarkable. To see such normally skulking birds as Rufous-capped Warbler, Dusky-faced Tanager, and Red-crowned Ant-Tanager attending feeders is a rare treat, and the spectacular Rufous Motmots are grand icing on the cake. Even a pair of Tawny-capped Euphonias (seldom seen on the lodge grounds) got in on the act this year.
One of the things that set the El Valle area apart is the interesting mix of habitats, and we explored as many of these as possible. Visits to La Mesa got us into higher elevation, wetter forest, where we scored fabulous studies of such gems as Emerald ("Blue-throated") Toucanet, Orange-bellied Trogon, Dull-mantled Antbird, Slaty Antwren, and the spectacular Black-crowned Antpitta. This year I opted to substitute a somewhat exploratory trip down to the mid-elevations of the Caribbean Slope for our usual visit to Los Altos del Maria area, and the move paid big dividends in the form of Barred Hawk, White Hawk, Black Hawk-Eagle, a spectacular male Rufous-crested Coquette, multiple Spot-crowned Barbets, a pair of Barred Puffbirds, and bunches of tanagers, including Sulphur-rumped, Emerald, Bay-headed, and Silver-throated, as well as Scarlet-thighed Dacnis. It's safe to say that we'll be going back to this spot on future trips.
The dry Pacific lowlands around El Chirú stood in stark contrast to the lushness of the Caribbean Slope and El Valle itself, and provided us with a completely different mix of birds, highlighted by great views of the near-endemic Veraguan Mango, numerous Sapphire-throated Hummingbirds, perched Brown-throated Parakeets, an Aplomado Falcon picking apart a Clay-colored Thrush, Panama Flycatcher, Pale-eyed Pygmy-Tyrant, Lance-tailed Manakin, and a covey of colorful Crested Bobwhite.
So, perhaps you are wondering about those other nightbirds? Well, for starters, we returned to the Canopy Adventure on the second day and found the Mottled Owl very close to where the Crested Owl had been the day before. Then, on our last evening at the lodge, we made what I hoped would be a surgical strike on the resident pair of Tropical Screech-Owls. Surgical it was, because the owl flew in and landed right above us the second time that I played the tape. It was almost too easy. We were just finishing with the owl when I heard a distant Common Potoo. I really thought that the bird was too far to even hear my tape, let alone come in, but I wanted the group to at least hear that haunting voice, so I gave it a try. No sooner had the first melancholy call issued from my speaker than by the light of the nearly full moon I could see a large dark form high above the clearing headed straight for us like a heat-seeking missile. I hit the potoo with the light, and it circled above us like a huge moth before alighting on a bare snag not 20 feet overhead, with its huge eyes reflecting my beam like some avian Jack-o-lantern! The potoo then proceeded to serenade us as we stood transfixed by the bird that Brazilians romantically (and appropriately) call "mãe da lua," or "mother of the moon." It was a truly magical experience.
Even our last morning near the lodge was eventful. There was the agony of a "close, but no cigar" Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo, coupled with the ecstasy of an unusually well-behaved Barred Forest-Falcon and an equally friendly Tody Motmot. All in all, El Valle and the Canopy Lodge provided us with a perfect complement to our Canopy Tower tour of the Canal Zone, and a fascinating glimpse into the diverse foothill avifauna of both the Pacific and Caribbean slopes.