This morning we woke up and dressed, went to breakfast, checked out and headed to David by way of the scenic route down to Boquete, heading south (I think) from Finca Lerida and heading toward Sendero de los Quetzales, then following the road along the river. It’s quite beautiful and this time I managed to get the pictures taken in bright happy sunlight.
When we reached Boquete, it was 10:00 and that gave us just enough time to make it to the airport in David where we turned in the car and met our guide and driver from Ancon. On the way, we passed through the massive highway contruction project (turning a two-lane road into a four-lane divided highway). It wasn’t very scenic but then again I hadn’t seen it before. Bob wanted to talk so I didn’t work like I planned.
At David, we found McDonald’s for lunch and filled gas and turned in the car at Hertz. Our guide, Sergio, and driver, Orlando (they both thought his name being the same as the city we lived in funny) immediately helped with the luggage, offered up water, and allowed Bob to explain we wanted most of our birding experience on the Caribbean side of the mountains. This matched their plans well.
Our route followed our previous trip to Gualaca, then turned toward Bocas. I got one picture of the dry cattle range lands and the hilly land formations. Our first stop was at Fortuna Dam which we were told was over 100 meters deep and quite wide. We picked up our first birds (except for the Caracara in flight) at the dam, although we were a bit slow and missed two birds (one a siskin and the other a wren). We then reached our first birding stop in the Palo Seco Protected Forest. It was raining very hard and though we both wore our Harry Potter plastic ponchos and hat’s, our legs and feet got wet, our glasses and binoculars speckled with rain so we gave up since the birds hate rain for the most part. We did get excellent pictures of flowers, one a native orange orchid that grows all along the roads. Our second birding stop was at the Anam station for the Palo Seco Protected Forest. The station is hosted and has a nearby coffee shop and lots of flowering plants. There’s no hiking trail like the path up at the top of the pass, but we walked along the road, across the river and spotted a white hawk, then tons of toucans. We didn’t see any lifer toucans but we did get other birds and it was an excellent experience to see the toucans in flight, hopping up and down the bare trees, eating and of course pooping. The lighting was pretty difficult to make out colors.
Birds:
Turkey Vulture, Black Vulture, Cattle Egret, Great White Egret, Chestnut-collared Sparrow, Blue-and-White Swallow, Yellow-faced Grassquit, Spotted Sandpiper, Montezuma Oropendula, Scarlet Tanager, Panama Flycatcher, White Hawk, Keel-billed Toucan, Chestnut-mandibled Toucan, Collared Aricari, Red-crowned Woodpecker, Broadbilled Motmot, Great-tailed Grackle, Crested Caracara
Animals:
Hoffman’s Gray Sloth—three-toed (all curled up in his favorite tree)



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