Sloth Sanctuary & Water's Edge Birds

After the tram and tower, we went onto the sloth sanctuary.

One of the gentleman I met in the lobby here told us that the sanctuary had only a few sloths on display so I was not expecting much, but felt inclined to go anyway.

The sanctuary is privately run on donations only (not supported by the gov’t.) and from the tickets that this hotel sells. They get only a few dollars for the sanctuary itself.

They had five sloths that we could look at.  And as is their slothian way, they were asleep, hanging upside down, each in its own little “tree”.  These sloths cannot be put out into the wild again because they have had way too much contact with humans, some probably rescued from people keeping them as pets or what-have-you. The woman we spoke with is lovely with them (they all have names) and was in the process of giving Fula the vegetables she hadn’t finished at the 10 a.m. feeding.  At 4 o’clock, they woke and reached out their arms for her to hug them and carry them to their nicer digs for the night.

Being fed 🥕

There are many other animals at the sanctuary which we could not visit.  These are being rehabilitated to go back in the wild, so contact with humans is limited.

There was a box for donations and we were happy to oblige, but I noticed that no others on our tour went near it.  Sigh!

Luckily, we have had some great up-close sloth moments in Costa Rica, so I wasn’t too disappointed.  But I would have liked to cuddle one.

Editor's note: Go to this site to read about sloths.

This morning, we grabbed our binoculars and walked down past the American heritage houses and down the road to the canal.

In the greenery at the water's edge, we saw male and female jacanas,  (the one below is the female). They have VERY LONG TOES for walking on floating greenery. We also saw both male and female purple gallinules with a tiny little dark-haired chick, and several Ani. Anis are very large with a bump on their nose and long tails.

Jacana

Purple Gallinule

Smooth-billed Ani

Note from the editor: I am in love with anis. They are interesting social birds and belong to the cuckoo family. They are essentially tropical New World birds, but two species (the groove-billed and smooth-billed) just reach the southern U.S. The following from Cornell Lab of Ornithology: "These ungainly birds seem only loosely stitched together as they move. Anis are glossy black cuckoos with an oversized bill. Almost always seen in groups, these birds traipse through tangled, shrubby habitats in the tropics of Central and South America and the Caribbean; there's also a small and declining population in Florida and southern Texas. They eat insects and lizards as well as fruit, especially during the dry season. Groups do almost everything together, with all females laying all their eggs in a single communal nest, the eggs separated by grass layers and tended by all group members."

Another shot-

This dredger (below) was gobbling up the greens along the shore to keep the waterway open.

Always something new to see.

Adios, Hansi  Fri, Mar 31 at 4:30 PM

Panama Canal Tour

Hello again,

We got up at around four on Saturday to be ready to meet our tour guide by 6:15 a.m. because “traffic would be bad” he said.

We knew we were going on a boat to the canal and supposed we would see the visitor centre and observation tower. We really didn’t have a definite idea what this tour entailed even after trying to worm it out of the tour organizer two different times.  We were leaving very early, but we were assured that breakfast and lunch would be included.

Our driver was a young guy who played 80s music through his speakers by choosing various tunes on his cell phone while driving. He also used that phone to check our route from time to time – deviating to another road when there was a blockage.

At one point he was even videoing the road ahead as we drove, and from my vantage point on the backseat, I even saw him take a selfie. His looking down at his phone and up at the road, down at his phone, and up again as he did, in heavy traffic, made me extraordinarily edgy, as you can imagine. Add to that the fact that there were no seatbelts in the backseat.

After a good 45 minutes of driving on four-lane highways that kept merging into other four-lane highways, we circumvented Panama City proper, and wound up at a marina on the Pacific Ocean.  It was then that we realized we were going to be getting onto a large boat with others from other tour companies for an excursion through the Canal itself and the 3 locks! 

The fellow on the dock, who ticked our names off his manifest, handed us little chits for our lunch. “ Will there be breakfast? “ we asked hopefully.  No, just lunch, water and pop.  Drat!

Once all of our fellow cruisers had arrived, we were able to get aboard OUR vessel (open-air on top and an air-conditioned, enclosed  lower deck) and head to the western-most end of the Panama Canal past Panama City.

Panama City skyline in background

Overhead was a swirl of Brown Pelicans, Frigate Birds, Terns and Black Vultures.

By the way, hardly had we got underway before coffee and little sandwiches appeared - so there actually WAS a breakfast after all.

There was a group of 18 students along - (ranging in age from 14 to 17) the best Young Writers pulled from private and publics schools throughout Central America as ambassadors of their countries and Central America as a whole. Called Semana Cronica #500 Historias -- if you want more info.

Below, we are approaching The Bridge of the Americas that spans the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal and connects the North and South American land masses.

I have watched many a ship go through the locks on the Welland Canal.  It’s amazing.  But I had never actually been on a ship while it happened.

We steered into the lock (with another tour boat about our size), the doors closed behind us and we began to lift to a height of 27 feet.

Now we’re in the lock and the gates are closing.

This happened at each of the two Miraflores locks up to Miraflores Lake and the last, Pedro Miguel Lock up to the Culebra Cut which took us back to Gamboa. In all, we rose 81 feet.

We passed many a container ship being loaded or unloaded.  These giant ships can hold 12,000 to 15,000 containers.

After the last Lock, a delicious hot lunch of chicken, salad and rice was served.
What a Great Day.

Hansi  April 2, 8:14 pm

 

Pipeline Road

Hola,

Yesterday, we hired Hector to be our bird guide along the Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto)--purported to be one of the world’s best birding areas.

Internet photo

This pipeline was built in the 40’s - from the Pacific to the Atlantic - to transport oil in case the Panama Canal was damaged by war. Never had to be used!

We left the Resort at 7 a.m. and walked slowly up and back for perhaps 4 kms.  When birding, you don’t always see a lot of new birds - or birds at all, for that matter.  It’s the way things go. 

Hector promised us a list of the birds we saw, which we don’t have yet, and most of those birds were way up in the trees too far for any photos - esp. with Rob’s sick camera,  But, when it mattered most, that camera did the right thing, and voilà! - Collared Trogon. 

Collared Trogon

Editor's note: Rob corrected this sighting to actually be a Slaty-tailed Trogon. See note in April 4th and 5th blog.

Or the other side -

Another interesting find was a Vine Snake that Rob spotted shooting across the road and it was into the bush before we could react and snap a photo. So, here’s a challenge.  Where’s Waldo???

I will help you.  Below is one Rob took. This guy was over a metre long but pencil thin.

Vine Snake with its mouth agape

And next, there was the Crested Oropendola, who looks like a grackle until you see all the yellow, and these birds have an amazing call . . . like blowing into a water whistle. 

They build hanging nests into which they fly as soon as they land - making picture-taking a challenge.

Oropendola Nests

I will leave you with this great Fig tree, which puts out sturdy extending buttress roots, to stabilize it and to gather as many nutrients as possible from the poor soil. (According to Hector).

Or this -

Or this -

Adios,

Hansi Mon, Apr 3 at 10:12 AM

Birds & Sightings on the Nearby Forest Trail

Just down the road from us, past the Leaf-cutter Ant tree, is the beginning of a trail called Sendero La Laguna. We decided to walk in and spy stuff with our little eye.

It is dense forest with a well-defined trail, but mostly you see things because you hear them rustling in the undergrowth first.

First off, a lizard. This was a Giant Dusky Ameiva Lizard

I previously sent a picture of the fig tree with massive above-ground roots, but below is another photo, but because it is unusual it must be some other kind of tree. I hope to get an answer from the nature gurus at the tour desk. I did - it is known as The Suicide Tree or Tachigali Versacolor.

Editor's note: This tree is called the Suicide Tree because it is monocarpic, which means that it reproduces only once in its lifetime and reproduces only at maturity. Within one year of flowering, the tree rapidly dies and falls over. Wikipedia tells us that Indigenous people in the Amazon basin use an extract of the tree to treat fungal skin infections and it is also used as timber.

Shortly, we almost stumbled upon a very large bird ahead on the path. This is the Great Tinamou.

Editor's Note: I remember this bird from my trips to S.A. Mostly I remember its incessant call. I think I laid eyes on only one and at a distance. These poor birds have been hunted to extinction in some areas of South America, so Hansi and Rob were very lucky to see one.  Here's a Cornell Lab of Ornithology photo of one that shows it from the side and shows its size better.

The forest floor is a virtual hive of activity. Mostly ants at work. You can’t walk three feet before you have to step over another leaf-cutter highway. Today we actually came across the hole wherein lies the fungus garden I presume. They trooped along and went straight in. See video below.

Editor's note: For some reason, I can watch Hansi and Rob's videos of the leaf cutter ants but cannot embed them in the blog. Go here to see a video of these ants if you cannot open the video above. 

     Also, know that in 2022 researchers made the most thorough assessment to date of the global population of ants--insects that have colonized almost everywhere on the planet--and the estimated total is a mind-blowing 20 quadrillion of them, or approximately 2.5 million for every human. (Internet)

Rob saw a bird up ahead on the path giving itself a dust bath and snapped a photo.  Not a great shot, but enough to identify the bird as a Whooping Motmot.

Editor: Rob is an excellent photographer, particularly of birds, but this is definitely not Rob's best shot. Below is a photo from the internet of the Whooping Motmot, and in this photo you can see its racket tailfeathers and its beautiful colors.

This little toad was the size of my baby fingernail.  I thought it was a spider at first.  I know the photo is crap, but my iPhone was just not up to the task.

There is something to ogle everywhere you look on that trail.

Like these “threads” growing down from above and sporting growth at intervals - or are those Bromeliads?

Editor's note: Would love to know what these threads are. They are too fine to be strangler fig roots. Since they have a growth at intervals as Hansi describes, they are probably vegetable and not made by an insect. I have searched around on the Internet but find nothing comparable.

This is the Gray-headed Chachalaca.  He’s a fairly large bird - like a pheasant perhaps - whose tail fans out.

Editor's Note: Again,  Rob is having trouble in the dense, dark foliage and dappled sunlight with a camera that is acting up, so I give you Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Grey-headed Chachalaca below.

It is HOT here, but very steamy along that trail.  We emerge “poached” but happy.

Check out this squirrel.  He is called the Panama Squirrel and his tail color can vary.

That’s it for now.

Hansi Tue, Apr 4 at 5:07 PM

Tuesday and Wednesday, April 4th and 5th

I’m back,

First, Rob wants to correct his Trogan photo in the Pipeline Road blog. This was the Slaty-tailed and not the Collared Trogan. Oops! It was Héctor, our bird guide who corrected us. He reckons the dusting of white feathers under the sides of the black throat are just variations. He sees the female many times and she matches the slaty description.

Tuesday we walked the forest trail again, to the end this time, which comes out on the road past the US houses. We were HOT. Didn’t really see anything new, but a Toucan close up that flew off before Rob could point his camera. 

. . . And this impossibly large gourd on a small tree. They are also called calabash - used for bowls and utensils and not edible.

This is another gourd tree.  Can you spot them?

Editor's note: I saw these trees in Nicaragua and loved them. They are calabash trees and are pollinated by small bats. Not much is written about the Calabash tree (Crescentia cujete), commonly called Totumo in Panama. These trees are amazing because the gourds, the flowers that become the gourds, and the leaves grow out of the trunk and branches, as shown in the photo of Hansi with the gourd above, though unfortunately a background stick makes it look as though the gourd has a long stem. Below is a photo I took in Nicaragua of the fruits on the tree.

We booked the Gatún Lake boat ride again for 4 p.m. and again saw the Capuchin and Tamarind monkeys board our boat. We did spot a Howler and got a slightly better photo than before. Juan says they are too shy to come down for the boats.

Where's Waldo?

As Juan was pointing out the lichen on the trees, he casually mentioned that the bats are more active at night, and then we realized that the spots on the tree in front of us were not actually spots but bats. I don’t remember seeing them roost in that way anywhere else. These were quite small and I have since learned that they are the Greater Sac-winged Bat.  Despite the name, they a very small. 

And closer up--

Juan, Our guide for the 2nd time (my newly adopted Grandson, Natalie says) wanted a Selfie with us.

April 5, today, we signed up for a tour we had been avoiding - to an Indigenous Village, fearing that it would be pretty Touristy”.  Well it was, but we were able to learn about the kinds of goods and cloth made from the palm fibres and bark of trees. The dyes made from unripe fruit of the Jagua tree are used to decorate the skin in ceremonies (temporary) -- or permanent under the skin tattoos. Also as an insect repellent on babies. The ripe fruit is a diuretic, antibiotic, and can kill parasites. Sorry, no picture of the Jagua.

Editor's note: Oh yes there are pix of the Jagua, bless the Internet. The tree is called Jagua Genipa Americana, and Hansi and Rob can plant a live 2- to 6-inch one one in their yard for a mere $48.17 USD, shipped FREE to the U.S. mainland!  . . . though I doubt the tiny thing would get past Canadian customs or survive a Canadian winter. Note that these fruits have blossom ends and stems and grow in clusters, unlike the gourds above.

Other dyes are made from several other plants and bark.  All the goods sold are natural fibres and dyes.

The men and women danced for us, their  beautiful handmade wares were for sale and a lunch of fish and plantain was served.

I love the biodegradable “dishes”!

We were back-and-forth to the Village across the Chagres River by boat.  What a life.

Bye for now. Off for a swim.

Hansi  Wed. Apr 5 at 2:16 PM