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Just ask my husband. One of my favorite things to do on this planet is planning a trip. Secretly, I’d love to be a travel writer and maybe someday I might. But for now, I find great joy in making our travel arrangements. Whether it’s sleuthing airfares (you know the best day to book the lowest fares are on Tuesday, right?), checking out accommodations online to get the best bang for our buck without sacrificing too many stars, or scouring TripAdvisor, I must confess: making travel plans gives me a little bit of a buzz.
So, of course, planning birding adventures makes it even more of a challenge, thus increasing the buzz. We’re talking Red Bull-sized buzz here. Thank goodness for the Internet. I always start with BirdingPal.com. It’s the most reliable source of real information on birding guides and lodges. I then start Googling for bird tours. There didn’t seem to be one that coordinated with our schedule this year–either it was the wrong date or they were 14 days and since we generally tag on diving with our vacations we just couldn’t make it work, being as I only get 3 weeks paid vacation and we already have another trip planned this year. Birding tours are good resources because their itineraries give me a good idea of the lodges they visit–lodges that cater to birders.
So far, the most complicated part of going to Panama is narrowing down the possibilities for birding. I’m the one who is insistent on having a few days of beach time with diving and it doesn’t take much arm twisting to get my husband to agree. Marriage is all about compromises, no? Ergo, we won’t be going to the Darian region because it’s in the opposite direction, much to Steve’s chagrin. (Also, I’m not so much into camping right now.) And then there’s the coordination of accommodations. It seems as though some lodges post their availability dates but many don’t. That’s caused a bit of back and forth on email with the lodges on the top of my list, crossing my fingers in hopes that they have availability that matches our schedule. For those who know the area, we did consider the Canopy Tower and Canopy Lodge, but holy cow, they are extraordinarily expensive–and you have to add your bird guides/tours on top of their costs. We are, however, planning on staying at their new B&B (aptly named the Canopy B&B) in Gamboa where we can tagalong with the Canopy Tower tours. The B&B fits our tastes and pocketbooks nicely. The other complication was getting from Point A to Point B to Point C. Turns out, we’ll be flying around a lot. Long story, but taking a rental car one way costs so much it ended up being the same to just fly around. Crazy. In fact, there’s still one area–getting from Bocas del Toro (where we’ll be diving) and getting to the lodge in Guadalupe, which is just outside of David. Don’t know how we’re getting there yet, but I’ll be looking for advice from our hosts at accommodations at both places–I’m sure they’ll have some recommendations.
Anyhoo, we’re going to be hopping around a bit–primarily on the western part of the country. And this is where we’ll be going in Panama (click to enlarge picture):
If all goes as planned, this is where we'll be traveling in Panama
Look forward to my trip reports during and after our trip, but until then I’ll still be posting my other birding reports and musings.
Meanwhile, we’ve got that ol’ 1980′s David Lee Roth song, Panama going through our heads right now.
Usually when I tell people that my husband and I are birders I often get an exchange that goes something like this:
Other person: “Excuse me, did you say, birder? What’s that?”
Me: “Yeah, I said birder as in birding or what most people call bird watching.”
Other person: “What do you do exactly?”
Me: “Well, we like to find different species of birds and it takes us to interesting places like Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico and even Panama where we’re going this Spring.”
At this point some people generally drop off in their interest in hearing anything more about birding. Some will give me the raised eyebrow with a “Really?” response. Others will be eager to change the subject because they don’t’ have anything else to say because think they don’t know anyone else who is a birder. Overall, it seems as though most people think birding is just a boring hobby and so they want to get out of a boring conversation.
And then I pull out this photo…
Steve and I with the "men with guns" who protected us our morning at El Pilar
…and I explain about our birding adventure in Belize two years ago where we were birding El Pilar and needed to hire “men with guns” (as our guide, Eric Tut put it) to accompany our group. El Pilar is on the Guatemala / Belize border and is known for its bandits. The prior year Eric had taken a group to the same area (sans men with guns) and some bandits jumped his van, made Eric pull over, tied up the birders and Eric, took their money, jewelry including wedding rings, cameras, and binoculars.
All of a sudden the boring conversation above turns a bit exciting. I generally get a, “Whoa! That’s so cool!”
Back to to the Belize adventure at El Pilar:
I’ll have to tell you, after we picked up the men with guns and were traveling in the van to El Pilar on a very hot morning, not one of us said a peep. It was quite sobering thinking that we could actually be in danger as we walked around the beautiful jungle of Belize looking for birds. I remembered the story about the group of birders in Colombia who were kidnapped by rebels in 1998, four of whom were Americans. My favorite part of that story though (aside from the outcome that they were freed), was that Todd Mark, one of the captives, said that he spent most of his time talking about birds to the rebels who captured him. “I think I bored them to death,” he said.
So I guess birding might be boring to some and in the dangerous pockets of the jungle that kind of boredom can come in handy. One just might be able to bore their captors enough to be freed.
Here are more pictures from that trip:
We got a late start that morning and it was so hot so we didn't see many birds, but I got a great shot of this Scrub Euphonia
Pale-billed Woodpecker
The "men with guns" nearby as we birded.
Our guide Eric Tut giving us an overview at El Pilar
Eric Tut at El Pilar where we stopped for awhile. I shot this with my iPhone using a special camera app. One of my favorite photos of that day.
I’ve been in San Diego on business since last Saturday and my husb, Steve decided to tag along so he could do some birding. Before our trip Steve ordered Brad Schram’s A Birder’s Guide to Southern California, which he poured over for a whole week. So while I was in meetings at the Rancho Bernardo Inn, working on PowerPoints and making sure our meeting went without a hitch, Steve was traveling all over Southern California chasing his list of birds. It’s just as well that I didn’t see much of him, since I was working from 6:30 a.m. until past midnight every night. But his trips all over Southern Cali proved fruitful for him, though I was sorry that I couldn’t let him have the Nikon for all his birding–I needed it for my meetings. His lifers he found included the following:
- Nuttail’s Woodpecker (which he found just outside our suite at the Rancho Bernardo Inn)
- Wrentit (saw a group of them also outside our suite)
- Lawrence’s Goldfinch (about 20 of them at San Pasqual Nat’l Historic Park)
- Mountain Plovers (flock seen in the fields near Salton Sea)
- LeConte’s Thrasher (near San Anza-Borrego Desert State Park)
- Tri-colored Blackbird (seen at Kern National Wildlife Refuge)
- Oak Titmouse (East of San Luis Obispo)
- Yellow-billed Magpie (Los Alamos State Park)
- Black-shouldered Kite (Flying over the San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Yesterday (Friday) my work was done at Rancho Bernardo and so I was able to relax for the weekend in the San Diego area before we were to head back to Utah on Sunday. So during the weekend Steve and I visited the San Diego Safari Park and spent today at Torrey Pines State Park and hung out in LaJolla where I was able to add a few lifers myself. Here’s my list:
- Black-shouldered Kite (Flying over the San Diego Zoo Safari Park)
- Brandt’s Cormorant (La Jolla)
- Western Gull (La Jolla)
- Heermann’s Gull (La Jolla)
I also got a good shot of a Great Blue Heron, some Turkey Vultures and some Brown Pelicans. Here are the highlights:
Western Gull
Brown Pelicans and a Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Turkey Vulture
Cormorants with prime LaJolla real estate
Heermann's Gulls
Coming in for a landing (I'm always trying to perfect these shots.)
Heermann's Gull
Brandt's Cormorant
Brandt's Cormorant
My husband and I just completed a 7-day Western Caribbean cruise we enjoyed over the holidays. (In fact, I’m sitting in the New Orleans International Airport as I write this, waiting for our flight home.) We booked the trip not as a birding trip, but as a scuba diving trip. You just can’t get off the ship early enough to get in any decent birding–completely out of our control. And with one day in each port we opted to spend our days diving rather than birding.
Our ports of call were Costa Maya, Mexico; Roatan, Honduras; Belize City, Belize; and Cozumel, Mexico. We’d already done a Yucatan Peninsula birding trip (See: Celestun and the “bottomless passion of mosquitos,” and Birding on our honeymoon) and we spent a couple of weeks in Belize just two years ago, so we weren’t totally conflicted about scuba diving over birding. (Typically we do both–it’s wonderful that great birding places are also great diving spots but as I just wrote above, it just doesn’t work when the trip is a cruise.
But I did hold out hopes that I would see a couple of pelagic birds on the trip. Well, that kind of didn’t happen. However, I did end up recognizing the frigate birds–I first saw those on our honeymoon in the Yucatan. And of course the usual suspects where gulls are concerned. But then one morning I saw some white birds along the water near the cruise ship.
Well, not really.
Turns out they weren’t birds at all but flying fish. And hey, it has wings so I’m going to call it a pelagic lifer for me because I’d never seen one before. So no birds to report from this trip (since most of our time was spent under water). Instead, I found flying fish.
Flying fish
