More Panama animals

A wildlife photographer I'm not, but I do try to capture a bit of what I see.  I try, and usually I fail.  But there's so, so much new-to-me wildlife to see here that I do have a couple of cool photos to share.

Bugs

One adorable little creature is this bug, called a "cempies" (centipede), that we sometimes see crossing the road.

It's, I dunno, about 2 or 3 inches long, and it moves like a creature in a video game maze. I love watching its tiny little legs move it forward.  They don't look like they're touching the ground -- they look like they're toy legs and that the little cempies is rolling forward on wheels while the legs waggle back and forth.

Speaking of video games, it makes total sense that I don't have pictures of frogs, because I haven't seen them, but we hear them all the time.  They make a sound a lot like a video game ray gun (Piu! Piu! Piu!) and some of them sound like a friendly home alarm (whoop! whoop! whoop!).  They're so regular, that at first we weren't sure what they were.  Was it a bird?  A home alarm?  A frog?  But since I'm guessing there are no birds or homes down in the street drains, nor in the patch of river running through the corner lot, I'm going to go with "frogs".

I've tried getting closer to see if I can get actual eyeballs on them, but they go silent when I try.  So instead, we just enjoy the video game sound effects as we take our walks in the neighborhood.

Birds

Recently a flock of buzzard-like creatures joined the neighborhood.  Who knows, they might actually be buzzards?  I started taking pictures of one of them perched on a lamppost while still far away, cutting my losses in case the bird took fright as I got closer.  No fright was ever taken, though.

Photos in reverse chronological order.
If you start at the bottom left and read backward,
that's me getting closer and closer to the buzzard.

Update: they actually are buzzards.  The local name is "gallinazos", which is funny to me for a whole other reason.  The ending "azo" can mean a sudden rough physical contact: a "codo" is an elbow, and "codazo" is banging your elbow.  "Cabeza" is head, and "cabezazo" is a head butt.  "Puña" is a fist, and "puñetazo" is a punch.  And similarly, "gallina" is a hen, and so buzzards are . . .  "hen whacks", or something like that.

I mentioned there's a whole flock of them -- here they are in a neighbor's back yard.

In the plaza where I eat lunch, there are some determined ravens ("cuervos", like Jose Cuervo) that obviously care enough about the environment that they pick up discarded food.  If I put out a small piece of chicken bone or gristle from my soup, they arrive en masse to share the work and to encourage further contributions. 

Just three birds here, but I can share the space with a half dozen or more. 
They mostly wait politely on the fence,
inspecting me as I eat.  

Coatimundi (Gato Solo)

I know I showed some photos of these before, but the coatis continue to fascinate me.  From a distance, they seem like monkeys to me with their tails high in the air.  Their faces look much more like raccoons, but unlike raccoons they're not nocturnal; we see them in the daytime a bunch -- these photos were from around 11:30 a.m., on my way home from church.

I called them coatis in an earlier post; the full name seems to be coatimundi, but the locals call the animal a "gato solo" (not sure if the plural is "gatos solos").  The literal translation of "gato solo" is "lone cat", and you can see why I was confused the first time I heard that name. 

Not a cat, and almost never alone.

Animals I have seen but failed at photographing: Agoutis, Capybaras, and a sloth

Apparently, there are BOTH agoutis and capybaras here, and I have seen them.  I have the dangdest time getting photos though, and I'm still not speedy at telling them apart.  Agoutis have thinner, slightly longer legs.  The local name for capybaras is "ñeques", which Google Translate tells me is "strength".   

I saw a sloth sleeping in, and then climbing, a tree across the road from where we ate lunch.  As far as my photos go, though, this sloth might as well have been Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster.

It was a sloth, I swear!

Animals I have not seen: crocodiles and poisonous deer

When I was asking another pedestrian about the coatis (who confused me by telling me they were lonely cats), he mentioned that this area used to have "venados", but no more.  My response was GREAT!! Because who needs venomous animals wandering around?  

I was thinking "veneno" (poison).  But the "venados" (deer) had been perfectly safe, really.  Sheesh.

Later I told this story to another person, who mentioned that there is actually a crocodile in a river near the Ciudad del Saber.  (Maybe it's caged?  He did say something about how it couldn't get out).  Other people have confirmed the existence of the creature, but I haven't seen it, though.