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Birding in Altos del Maria
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Day 3 of our Panama birding excursion will be spent touring the highlands of Altos del Maria, a 7000 acre private (yet still mostly undeveloped) community near the town of Sora. A gated community, the locale is closed to the public, but the folks staying at Canopy Lodge and under the supervision of the local guides are permitted to use the land. It's a real pleasure to bird these beautiful environs while staying on smooth paved roads! This may not seem like a big deal, but wait til you see where we go on day 5 - the Rio Indio Road. Later for that.....
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| Masked tityra |
We birded out way up to the gates of Altos del Maria and Valle Bonito. After a morning of birding in the expected misty conditions, we stop for lunch which had been prepared by the folks back at the lodge and hauled up the mountain by our guides. The setting was beautiful and productive as we could bird from the gazebo overlooking the lake situated on the grounds. Even before we began to dine, we had great looks at Spotted sandpiper and Green kingfisher. After feasting, several decided to have a "big sit" and bird from the gazebo while the rest of us joined Danilo and Moyo for a hike around the lake and through the surrounding forest. We quickly found a beautiful Masked Tityra and Black-cheeked woodpecker working the trees at the waters edge.
Continuing into the lakeside forest, we crossed a small bridge where Danilo heard an uncommon find, the Dull-mantled antbird. Hearing is one thing, but seeing is another and we spent a fair amount of time seeing brief movement in the dense foliage. Finally, however with the help of sharp eyes we found our quarry and I was able to capture a shot in the shaded setting. Fortunately, post processing of a badly underexposed image was able to save a decent shot of this elusive bird.
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| Dull-mantled antbird |
A side note here....it is easy to get so distracted when working so hard to spot a bird and inattention can be disastrous. Fortunately, this little mishap turned out OK, but one of our number was backing up while peering through her binoculars and ending up falling off the trail and down an 8 foot steep embankment. After a brief scare, we were able to help her back up the slope and found her to be in fine shape.
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| Green thorntail |
After returning to the vehicles and continuing on our journey through the preserve, our guide Moyo slammed on the brakes and yelled out "Green thorntail!" How he saw and identified this unique hummer while driving his 4WD vehicle down the narrow roadway is beyond me, but he is a guide extraordinaire. Sure enough, we were all able to get good looks at this beauty and while difficult to capture as it flitted from branch to branch, I was able to capture a less than gallery quality image but one which will remind me of the capacity of our guides to find and id birds so quickly and with such proficiency.
The day was truly a fantastic day of finding new life birds for all of our group. Among our sightings of the day was this Barred hawk flying over head as we began our descent back down to the Canopy Lodge. Just one more special bird added to our growing list of Panama lifers. All this and we are only half way through our 6 days at Canopy Lodge. Remarkable!
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| Barred hawk |
Tech tip - Don't be too quick to throw out those under-developed shots! Overexposure is one thing and is virtually impossible to salvage a "blown out" shot. Underexposed is a different case, however. Make sure you are shooting in RAW and you will capture a huge amount of data in a shot which comes out looking black. The shot of the Dull-mantled antbird above looked totally black when I downloaded it from the camera. By sliding the "Exposure" slider in LightRoom, the image popped right up and was more than usable. If I had shot the picture using the JPEG format, less than optimal amount of data would be captured and saving the image may not have been possible.
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