SCOTT SHALAWAY Canopy Tower in Panama, part 1

When I travel, my experience as a Boy Scout shows -- I usually prepare and anticipate months in advance. Sometimes, though, a spur of the moment trip can pay big dividends. That's what happened last week when I took off for five days of birding in Panama.
Just two weeks earlier, Tom Pawlesh, a friend from Pittsburgh, called and told me that the Canopy Tower in Panama had some discounted vacancies. "Wanna go?" he asked.
My first response was, "What's the Canopy Tower?"
Tom explained that the Canopy Tower is an abandoned U.S. radar tower that has been converted into an eco-lodge. It sits atop a 1,000 ft. mountain surrounded by rain forest and within view of the Panama Canal, just 30 minutes from downtown Panama City. Tom, an accomplished nature photographer, has been wanting to visit the Tower since he first read about it several years ago.
"Check out the web site (www.canopytower.com), and let me know," he said.
Within minutes, I had visions of toucans and motmots dancing in my head. Turns out, the Canopy Tower is a favorite destination for birders and birding companies from all around the world. So, I told Tom to count me in.
180 species
The trip was all I hoped for and more. Over the course of two travel days and three full days afield, Tom, other tower visitors and I saw more than 180 species of birds. Of those, 102 were life birds for me -- birds I'd never seen before.
We arrived late on Monday afternoon, and clouds of hummingbirds swarmed the three nectar feeders at the entrance to the Tower. I quickly identified four lifers -- violet-bellied and snowy-bellied hummingbirds, white-vented plumeleteer and white-necked jacobin.
On Tuesday morning, we rose before dawn and climbed to the top of the Tower, an observation deck five stories above the forest floor. We literally stood above the forest canopy. As the sun rose, troops of howler monkeys roared their wake-up call. A green shrike-vireo's pure whistle (reminiscent of a titmouse song) was easy to hear, but it took about 20 minutes for one to climb through the canopy and show itself -- a stunning emerald beauty. Noisy mealy and red-lored parrots perched in distant treetops, but were easy to see in the spotting scope provided by our peerless guide, Carlos Bethancourt.
The highlight of the early morning was a keel-billed toucan, no doubt inspiration for the Fruit Loops bird, that broke from its flock and perched in the sunlight about 25 feet from the Tower railing. It's a large rainbow of a bird -- yellow chest, throat, and face; blue legs and feet; lime green skin around the eyes; a huge bill splashed with orange, maroon, turquoise, and yellow-green; black body; white rump; and crimson beneath the tail. It's a superlative species in a superlative land. Just before the call for breakfast, several even larger chestnut-mandibled toucans appeared in distant tree tops.
Stirring
By now the tropical morning sun had warmed the tree tops and smaller birds stirred. Band-rump swifts, barns swallows, and gray-breasted martins swept the sky for flying prey. A palm tanager perched leisurely on the tower railing. A blue cotinga sailed just above the canopy, two masked tityras foraged at eye level, and a pair of tropical gnatcatchers was as active as the blue-gray gnatcatchers that will soon return to the eastern deciduous forest. And two indescribably brilliant species, blue dacnis and green honeycreeper, posed in the canopy just 20 feet away.
A dozen life birds before breakfast -- while drinking coffee and wearing flip-flops -- but who's counting? And this was just a sample of things to come.
I'm running out of space, and I want to do more than just list the birds we saw. So in the weeks ahead, I'll continue the adventure, and I'll explain what I came to call "walk-away birds" and a "trogon slam."
sshalaway@aol.com