Some photos of Panama in December

Forecast: 85°/74° with thundershowers possible after 2 p.m.. 

Humidity:  79%

Sunrise 6:17 am., Sunset 5:57 p.m.

I saw a parrot.  If you believe in angels, then seeing parrots here in Panama is hard in kind of the same way that seeing angels is -- that is, they're around, but somehow you can look straight at them without seeing them anyway.

Case in point: the parrot in this tree.  Do you see it?  (I did).

It helped that (a) Maria pointed out the parrot, and that (b) the parrot moved.  Since you don't have either Maria or a video, I'll zoom in and circle the parrot to help you out.

There are, apparently, lots of parrots in the trees in Panama that we can hear all the time, and still not quite get eyes on them.  Speaking of hearing parrots, though, the other day I was walking along a path behind some houses and thought I heard someone talking to me, but there were no people around.  After turning my head in a bunch of directions, I realized the voice was coming from a tall cage nearby.

Two parrots in a cage, one of which was chatting me up.

Hello, parrot!

We'll cleanse the parrot palate with a bush I see around that delights me: the flowers on this bush vary in color, from pure white to bright purple. All on the same bush!

Back to birds.  It's a lot easier to see buzzards (gallinazos), because unlike parrots they're not shy and they don't try to blend in.

This buzzard spent a half-hour with its wings spread like this
after a rainstorm.  I watched it while I was waiting a long time
for a post-rain bus.

My arms would get tired if I held them out straight for a half hour like that.  I was quite impressed with this buzzard!

Here's a buzzard walking down the street.
Don't let the buzzard drive the car.

Also, speaking of meat eaters, I did NOT get a picture of the crocodiles that were coming straight at us.

Here's the "us" the crocodiles were coming for:
two other Fulbrighters,
me, and a three-year old.

We stopped by a pond where I've seen crocodiles basking, and sure enough, there was a crocodile on the bank (below us), basking.  Not moving, the way crocodiles have always been not moving when I've seen them. And then, to my surprise, another crocodile in the water started swimming toward us.  And then a third crocodile in the water started swimming toward us.  

This crocodile is reenacting swimming at us 
(but it's actually stationary).

And then crocodile #2 left the water and started coming up the 6-foot-high bank, and then we crossed to the other side of the street thank-you-very-much.

(Sunning itself, not moving. 
But you could imagine if it moved, you'd move too!)

The three-year old really wanted to stay and see the crocodile from up close, which I guess is fair because the crocodile probably wanted to see the three-year-old from up close.  Nonetheless, we kept our distance.

Since then, my husband and I have returned and seen more crocodiles, up on the high bank (not down low), but also not moving toward us as though we'd brought dinner.  

The sign says "Danger: presence of crocodiles.
Don't feed them. Don't get in the water".
At the base of the sign is a styrofoam chicken package.

And as if the birds and crocodiles here weren't magical enough, here's a cloud shaped like the head of a fire-breathing dragon.  

And, just because I actually spend more time indoors on my computer than outdoors looking at nature, here's a picture I drew for my book that took hours and hours and hours to do.  I like how it came out!

And here's another picture I drew.  It reminds me of the famous math question: when did Train A meet Train B?  This particular version has a twist, however.  

And that's a bit of what my time in Panama looks like in December!