Bird (and ñeque) watching in Panama

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I got a bit closer to ñeques, people!  (In English, we'd say these are "agouti"s, but I only talk about them with locals, so ñeques it is.  

They are as common here as squirrels are back in Pennsylvania, 
but they're hard to photograph.

Also, down the street, we saw a Tiger Heron.  
This picture isn't great
(I'm learning why other people pay so much attention
to the quality camera on their phones, let me tell you).

I'm clipping in a screenshot of "Tiger Heron Images".  This bird was big -- these herons can grow to 30 inches tall, especially when they reach their heads up, which this one did a bunch of times for the women who showed up at this yard before I did.  
Tiger herons with necks tucked and raised.

How do I know about the height of Tiger Herons, you ask?  Last week, I went to a bird watching tour at the BioMuseo.  (I'd written about a previous BioMuseo trip here). It's a funky and fun building designed by Frank Gehry, built on the Amador Causeway.

You just know when you come here,
you're going to have fun.

The Amador Causeway used to be controlled by the U.S.; it was military-access-only until 1999.  Like many parts of Panama City, people here got to make big decisions about what to do with the space when the U.S. vacated the space, and in the case of the Causeway, they turned the space into a combination of scientific research (there's a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, or STRI, on the causeway) and tourism.  So the BioMuseo fits right in.

You can see there's an open atrium in the middle of this building,
sheltered by the crazy roof.

My new friend Kimberly and I met up for this tour, led by the guy in the blue shirt below.  There were about 20 or 30 of us, and he did a great job of directing us to what to look for.  He brought along a book, and at the end recapped the birds we'd seen by leafing through the book.

I loved watching the kids gather around him.

The BioMuseo maintains a small patch of area around the building dedicated to biodiversity.  Even when I wasn't looking at the birds, I loved looking at the ponds (full of frogs) and the trees.


The causeway was built out from Panama City using dirt excavated in the building of the Canal.  It connects the mainland to a collection of (former) islands, and it also serves as a way to calm the waves for ships entering the canal.  Here, toward one side of the Causeway but still right next to the BioMuseo, you can see the "Bridge of the Americas", crossing over the entrance of the canal, connecting  the two halves of Panama.  Only about 40 years ago, the only way across was a ferry, so it's a relatively new bridge.

I liked the bird watching tour, enough that afterward I bought ($30) the book our guide used and recommended, called "The Birds of Panama: a Field Guide". It was written by a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute biologist, who began the book by saying how excited he was to be helping develop a new space called the Biomuseo.  

I have learned the names of a couple of birds from this -- notably the Tiger Heron and the Red-breasted Blackbird.  Alas, the names in the book are all in English and Latin, not Spanish.  So I'll have to do extra work to get to "Garza de Tigre" or "Pechirojo".  

Kimberly and I are going back to the Causeway today; we're going to check out the STRI (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute) center.  Maybe I'll even get myself a pair of binoculars.

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