Day Four of my incredible (superb, wonderful, fantastic - I can’t decide on the right word to use after four straight days of birding and blogging - which actually doesn’t sound that much when you write it down…I’m getting old…) - anyway, Day Four.

Day Four began even earlier than Days One, Two and Three as I was absolutely determined to get to the little bridge over the stream by the dining-area at Canopy Lodge to see the “walking duck” that I missed the previous dawn by lying in until 06:15 (by the way, if you have no idea what I’m talking about have a look at the last few paragraphs of the previous post in this series which is right here. (For those of you who correctly figured out that the “walking duck” (© T K Brimer, ace surfer, all round good guy) was in fact a Sunbittern - which has bred within 100metres of the Lodge itself - congratulations, because I was there and it took me a few minutes to realise what he was talking about…).

Dining area to the left, trail to the right, rocky stream where Sunbittern might be straight ahead…

So, to set the scene again, it’s 05:50, I’m on the bridge over the stream, cup of tea in hand, enough light to see a Northern Waterthrush but no sign of the Sunbittern. I wait. One by one the guides and the other guests turn up, the light pierces the low clouds rolling over the ridge, my first ever Long-billed Starthroat starts catching insects as it hovers over the water and then lands in the branch above me, Chestnut-headed Oropendolas fly past, a Great Antshrike calls from the Lodge’s main trail, the feeders begin to fill with Thick-billed Euphonias and Crimson-backed Tanagers, a stately Rufous Motmot flies in and looks around with a relaxed, regal air, there are Clay-coloured Robins everywhere…but still no sign of the Sunbittern…

I wait a little more, there are birds everywhere, the guides are calling out bird names, and one of them asks me what I’m looking for. The Sunbittern, I replied wondering why he’d asked when it must have been perfectly obvious. Didn’t you see it when you walked up here, he said? It flew right past you down the river and it probably won’t be back for hours now…

Oh, well, the Starthroat was very nice…

Long-billed Starthroat (female or immature male?) Heliomaster longirostris

With such limited time before I left, and with Raul - who owns the Canopy Lodge and Canopy Tower - wanting me to see as much as both sites have to offer in a very short time (I genuinely and unhesitatingly recommend the Tower and Lodge to you, but give yourself at least five days in each or your head will spin), it was decided that straight after breakfast we would head back up to the higher elevations and look for some of the ’specials’ that are found up there, leaving the area around the Lodge itself until after lunch.

This was undoubtedly a great plan - with just one slight drawback from a blogging perspective: it was cloudy and getting cloudier. The birds - being rainforest species - are as used to rain as your average soggy Londoner of course, but photography was going to be very difficult or even harder than that. Which sadly is how it proved…

I wish I could post a whole gallery of the superb birds we saw, but I can’t. Had I been walking around with a full lighting rig or a night-vision camera I could have done much better than the few photos I’ve posted below, but despite some pretty good (and some pretty brief) views, and despite racking the ISO on my Canon 40D to 1600 I was still only getting speeds of around 1/2 a second which is an awfully long time to leave the shutter open when it’s got a small, active bird in front of it.

Never mind, these things happen, and it does mean I can get this post written a bit quicker than the last ones as I don’t have to spend hours in Photoshop.

So what did I see that I didn’t photograph but wished I had? How about, off the top of my head, Black-faced Antthrush, Tawny-faced Gnatwren, Plain and Spot-crowned Antvireos, White-ruffed Manakin (a stunningly beautiful male), Olive-striped Flycatcher, White-breasted Wood Wren, Rufous-breasted Wren, Wedge-billed Woodcreeper, Tawny-capped Euphonia, Scarlet-thighed Dacnis, White-throated Thrush, White-lined Tanager, Yellow-bellied Elaenia, and Black-faced Grosbeak?

Want to know what we heard that we didn’t see? Me too. Actually, that’s not true: I have a feeling that the mighty Tino “The Human iPod” Sanchez who guided again today called - and attempted to call up - everything he heard but I know I missed Chestnut-backed Antbird and Thrush-like Schiffornis as he told me he could hear them but they weren’t responding and/or weren’t visible.

However, quite by chance, I did manage to get reasonable photos of two humingbirds (Rufous-tailed Plumeleteer and Violet-crowned Woodnymph) and - remarkably - the one time the clouds lifted for a few minutes we found ourselves being stared down at by the endemic Orange-bellied Trogon, meaning I’d seen (and photographed) all six of Panama’s trogon species in just three and a half days!

Male Violet-crowned Woodnymph Thalurania colombica

Female Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer Chalyburia urochrysa

Male Orange-bellied Trogon Trogon aurantiirostris

By the time we emerged out of the forest (which runs next to a chicken farm by the way, and the clear-cut trail you walk on is the boundary between the land owned by the farm and the protected area of forest) we’d seen some great birds and were all revved-up for more, but it was pretty horrible weather and we beat a hasty retreat back to the Lodge for hot showers/tea or coffee/a change of socks etc etc instead.

By a stroke of luck Dr George Angher, an American academic and birder who is just finishing a new field-guide to the birds of Panama, was at the Lodge to see Raul who kindly asked me to join them for a chat. George is a remarkable man who came to do his doctorate in Panama back in the eighties, returned in 1992, and has been here ever since. What he doesn’t know about Panama isn’t worth knowing and just to give a flavour of the things we talked about here a few points I specifically remember twelve hours later: virtually every Turkey Vulture, Swainson’s Hawk, and Broad-tailed Hawk on the planet pass over Panama on migration; an estimated four and a half million raptors migrate over Panama every season; the ‘Big Year’ record in Panama is over 700 and there’s going to be an attempt to break the world one-day record (not using planes) currently held by Manu, Peru during which over 330 species should be logged; the official Panama list is almost 1000, and the latest addition was a Black-legged Kittiwake. Etc etc. Why aren’t more birders coming here? I’m wondering I can tell you…

Okay, in true “Dear Dairy” form I’ll mention now that after lunch the sun came out briefly and I grabbed a chance to photograph a species that had been coming into the feeders regularly but that I hadn’t been able to get onto before, the Lemon-rumped Tanager. It almost doesn’t matter what it looks like with a name like that, but it actually looks pretty good, so here’s a pair plus a rather gorgeous male Golden-hooded Tanager that unusually flew close to the spot I was standing in…

Male (top) and Female Lemon (Flame)-rumped Tanager Ramphocelus flammigerus

Male Golden-hooded Tanager Tangara larvata

And as the rain began to pour down that could well have been it, but Tino and Raul weren’t finished yet. There was still one bird they wanted me to see (no, not the Sunbittern) which was usually found in the forest above the Lodge off, and no low cloud/heavy rain was going to stop me seeing it. It took the best part of three hours to find it, with Tino heroically whistling his lungs out and walking us up a steep, sodden path through almost dark forest (past a huge Leaf-cutter Ant colony which is well worth seeing), but find it he did. It’s generally an elusive, difficult species to find wherever it occurs but the Canopy Lodge may be one of the easiest places in the world to see it (even in the rain, and especially if you have Tino looking for it with you), so what better place to end this post with what is quite possibly the worst photo ever taken of the captivating, scarce, and very small Tody Motmot…

Tody Motmot Hylomanes momatula

Right, I’m now back at the Canopy Tower (so that I can possibly get a few hours birding in before my flight home tomorrow) and am now hitting a wrong key in every word I type, so I’m off to bed. I’m going to do a summarising post when I get home, but before I finish for the night can I just say thanks to TK, Linda, Phil, and Bonnie, two couples on holiday here who have allowed me to tag along with them almost the whole time I’ve been in Panama, to both Carlos and Tino for being incredibly patient and highly skilled guides who worked so hard to get me so many birds, and - of course - thank Raul Arias de Para once again for not only having the vision to create these two amazing sites in the first place but for inviting me out to stay in them. It’s been an unforgettable few days…

The Canopy Tower’s Stimulus Plan for The International Birder is valid from June 01 to Sept 15, 2009. Details can be found on the Canopy Tower website

*Update: I’ve now posted a full Trip List (listing 214 species) at Panama Trip April 17-21.

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores