"We have never been accorded such hospitalities and personal attention as Raúl has shown us..." 

May 26th - June 7th, 2005 Green Season Tour Package by Jerry and Linda Harrison

What we purchased & general impressions We purchased the green season tour package plus two additional days at the tower (all in blue cotinga suite), plus 3 nights in El Valle; Also, in addition to the package tours, we purchased tours to Achiote Rd., Metro. Park, Cerro Azul (and Jefe) & Tocumen Marsh. Our guides were Carlos (head guide), Tino, Jose, Alexis, and Danilo. All were excellent, very helpful, and super friendly and enthusiastic, especially Carlos. But sorry, Carlos, Tino is a better bird caller! He mimics them perfectly. The staff at the tower and El Valle are of the highest quality, serving excellent cuisine and are especially good at keeping lots of beer handy! All try very hard (and succeed) at making your stay wonderful. The water is pure and safe as we suffered no ill effects.

Birding on a Budget? Green Season Birding Package reduced prices for the budget minded birder

A Neotropical Sampler

Though this is a birding tour for hard-core birders, there is plenty to keep a casual birder or general nature enthusiast excited. For instance, in addition to seeing over 300 species of birds, we saw (and heard!) several monkeys, most notable, Western Night Monkeys, Geoffroy's Tamarins, and the vociferous Mantled Howlers. Also, we encountered other mammals: Two-toed & Three-toed Sloths, Red-tailed Squirrel, Tamandua, White-nosed Coati, and Central Am. Woolly Opossum. Also many herps (reptiles & amphibians), including a cute little fer-de-lance on Semaphore Hill Road one night; Also at night, hearing a cacophony of frogs, many all but impossible to track down, is most memorable. But we managed to photograph 2 Bufo species and some hylids, and others; several bizarre lizards, like the 4-foot Iguana that Linda spotted at the tower upon our arrival; basilisks, and the omnipresent Amieva; plus a plethora of iridescent butterflies and beetles to keep the budding (metamorphosing?) entomologist busy. Pipeline Road is Blue Morpho city; We saw at least 12 one morning! We photographed a bizarre grasshopper near Cerro Gaital (El Valle) having yellow-and-blue barred legs with a green body. Why this combo? Also, speaking of entomology, we're into, among other things, ant ecology, specifically the symbioses (plural) existing between various ant species and their host plants, such as Azteca ants and Cecropia trees; or Leaf-cutting Atta ants and their fungus gardens; Pseudomyrmex ant spp. and Acacia plants; The army ants (Eciton spp.) swarms and their unusual bivouacking behavior. Get a copy of A Neotropical Companion by John Kricher and read it ahead of time. It is an excellent primer on neotropical ecology and deals in detail about the common animals and plants one might encounter. {The library on the top floor of the Tower is loaded with plant, bird, reptile, and mammal books for you to peruse.} Finally, the botany here is incredible. Any tree listers out there? or orchid-ologists? or bromeliad brothers...? liana lovers?! Any of these topics can keep you busy for a lifetime here. The tower has an excellent guide to the trees that you see on Semaphore Hill Road (The trees are numbered). Copy it off their internet site or get one there.

Bird notes:

Our lifer goal was rather arbitrarily set at 60, as there were a possibility of about 90 new species for us. (We usually get about 2/3 of the possibles, including the nearly "impossibles"). We surpassed that with 64! (World total at 2428). That was a good number for us as we have previously been to the Neotropics: Costa Rica (2), Belize (2), Peru (2), Ecuador (2), Brasil (Pantanal), Trinidad & Tobago (2) & Mexico. If you are a first-timer and purchase all the tours, expect about 300 lifers! We ticked from the super total of 302, in phylogenetic order: 2 Tinamous, (including a momma Great Tinamou and her two cute babies in tow (tinamoulets?!) at Pipeline Road (Oleoducto, in Spanish); Least Grebe; Brown Pelican; Magnificent Frigatebird (common around the canal locks); Neotropic Cormorant and Anhinga; 15 Herons (including Capped Heron at close range at their night roost!); Woodstork; White Ibis; Black-bellied Whistling and Muscovy Ducks (ammo dump ponds); 3 vultures, including 2 perched King Vultures nicely scoped from the tower!; Osprey; 16 hawks, eagles and kites, including my favorite, though not new, a handsome, perched Barred Hawk at Cerro Gaital (El Valle ); 4 falcons and caracaras, the best being a perched Bat Falcon on a roof in Cada Iguana (El Valle); Gray-headed Chachalaca (easy at bottom of Semaphore Hill Road); Black Guan at Cerro Gaital (El Valle); 3 rails & allies, with a pair of White-throated Crakes sneaking around with their two black crakelets at the ammo dump. You'll probably hear them first, but don't give up as they eventually venture to the edges of the cover to feed. We watched in awe for 15 minutes or more!; Wattled Jacana; Black-necked Stilt (Tocumen Marsh); Southern Lapwing; 3 sandpipers; 9 pigeons & doves with only the Gray-chested Dove new for us; 5 parrots; 3 cuckoos, not including the Pheasant Cuckoo that had the temerity to wake us up every morning at the tower but never showed his sorry self. Our last morning we were planning to go outside the fence and down the hill after him, but he(?) was somehow tipped off and mocked our pitiful efforts by calling much farther down the steep hill, making any pursuit impossible! Clever. Maybe you will have better luck; Saw 3 & heard 2 owl species. Both the Vermiculated (now, "Choco") Screech-Owl and Mottled Owl seen one night near the tower five minutes apart, thanks to Linda's clever spot-lighting; 2 potoos; 3 swifts; 21 hummers, with 11 lifers, including a White-tipped Sicklebill sitting quietly for ten minutes near his Heliconia patch at El Valle; 5 trogons; 4 Kingfishers; all 4 motmots, including easily seeing the Tody Motmot on Aqueduct trail at Raúl's (El Valle). You'll see him as he promptly comes when called; 4 puffbirds, the Pied & Black-breasted were new; 5 toucans, getting a lone, beautiful male Yellow-eared Toucanet at El Valle, the lifer; 6 woodpeckers, with the magnificent endemic Stripe-cheeked Woodpecker (2) at Cerro Azul and Cinnamon Woodpecker (Tower) new; 2 ovenbirds; 6 woodcreepers; 15 typical antbirds, with my 3 favorite, the Spotted, Bicolored, and Ocellated Antbirds seen together at army ant swarms. They are travel partners; 1 antthrush; 1 antpitta, the Streak-chested on pipeline road; 2 cotingas, including a male Blue Cotinga spotted (once again) by Linda for everyone's enjoyment the last morning at the tower; Don't forget a Purple-throated Fruitcrow is a cotinga, too; 5 manakins, with Golden-collared, White-ruffed, and Lance-tailed new for us; 40 tyrant flycatchers, including the nifty (for a flycatcher) "Twistwing," officially called the Brownish Flycatcher; 4 swallows; 9 wrens; Tropical Mockingbird; 3 thrushes, including an Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush behind the almost-completed Canopy Lodge in El Valle; Tropical Gnatcatcher; a party of Black-chested Jays, bottom of Semaphore Hill Rd. and easier at El Valle; 4 vireo types, with Green Shrike-Vireo seen several mornings, close, from the tower!!; 2 warblers, including the lifer, Buff-rumped Warbler (El Valle)-- Thanks, Michael Harvey!! Bananaquit; 31 tanagers & allies. We cleaned up in Cerro Azul and El Valle on this group: 11 lifers, with Rosy Thrush-Tanager not my favorite! I enjoyed the Emerald, Black-and-yellow, Silver-throated, Rufous-winged, and Crimson-backed Tanagers better! ; 7 seedeaters, grassquits, etc.; 2 sparrows; 3 saltators and 2 grosbeaks; 10 blackbirds, orioles, grackles, caciques, oropendulas, etc. Whew!!! Not bad as we missed some birding time due to rain on parts of four days. It was the rainy season--no rain, no rainforest.

What we missed

Our biggest disappointment was somehow missing the Spot-crowned Barbet on Achiote Road that apparently everyone who has ever been there has seen. You will get him, don't worry; surprisingly, no jacamar; no Blue Ground-Dove, again; You know about the Pheasant Cuckoo; No Jet Antbird; No Rufous-crested Coquette in El Valle that is always on Raúl's vervain, except for the three days we were there! You'll see him, too!; no Slate-colored Grosbeak; no Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo. We didn't really expect to find one in El Valle, but Danilo, the resident guide there claims (and I believe him) that there are 4 of these Holy-Grail-of-Neotropical-Birding birds cruising El Valle, and he had seen one within the previous 90 days. We listened for the characteristic rapid-clacking beak, like the sound an excited male manakin makes, cracking his wings at a lek. But no cuckoo. Danilo tormented us further by imitating the cuckoo's feeding by opening and closing his leatherman knife in rapid fashion repeatedly. We're getting him next time, Danilo and Raúl!

Acknowledgments

Thanks go out to Yaritza for organizing our complicated tour scheme via repeated emails. Ana, the canopy tower manager (whose energy seems boundless), deserves our highest praise for not only making sure we had all our questions answered but also that we were always taken care of. Thanks also, Ana, for personally creating at the tower a cute little store that Linda went crazy in buying all sorts of indigenous goodies!! P.S.: We enjoyed that cold glass of oatmeal drink on the way to El Valle. It was yummy. Thanks for those Harpyja brochures, too!.

A great deal of our pleasure was due to a young man from Cornell University's Lab. of Ornithology, Michael Harvey. Mike is very bright and a quick study, as he has learned most of the birds in the area in just two extended visits, not only by sight, but by sound!! He acted as an extra guide on many of our excursions, and Linda and I thoroughly enjoyed his company. I have him ice cream-trained now (ask him). We shared his 1,000th lifer with him. (Striped Cuckoo?)

Finally, a word about our new friend, Raúl Arias de Para, the owner and mastermind behind all of this cool stuff: We have been to the neotropics (see bird notes above), Caribbean, Africa, Australia, New Guinea, Canada and many U.S. lodges, yet we have never been accorded such hospitalities and personal attention as Raúl has shown us. We had the pleasure of staying at his guesthouse in El Valle, right next to his exciting, new (but not quite completed) Canopy Lodge, for 3 nights. He gave us a personal tour of this soon-to-be-open gorgeous facility, having 8 gargantuan guest rooms. Both the current guesthouse and new lodge are nestled between the base of a forest-shrouded mountain and a pristine babbling stream. The scene is nothing short of idyllic. One complaint: It is very difficult to eat your meals uninterrupted while 7 tanager species, Red-legged Honeycreepers, 5 hummers, a motmot, 2 saltators, and other birds feverishly scramble about on the bird feeders and flowering shrubs!! Always carry your binoculars to meals! Thanks, Raúl, for all you did to make our experience unforgettable. We are indeed looking forward to visiting you again, especially because we didn't see the Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo (This time!)

Sincerely presented with great admiration and affection,