Falling Behind

Day 4 of Nine

Now I am discouraged.  About meeting my goal of seeing 100 new bird species this week, I mean.  We had a very fine morning of birding in a remarkably verdant forest in a private farm/reserve above Boquete town.  But most of the birds were not willing to be seen today.  We saw more bird-tails-behind-leaves and rear-ends-flying-away today than we saw birds in clear profile.  There were a lot of birds around.  Peggy and the guide, Terry, told me they could hear lots of them—but mostly I cannot hear the high-pitched birds any more.

Fortunately for me, I can still hear some of the lower-pitched songs, and because of that I got one of the lifers we “saw” today.  As soon as we got out of the car this morning we heard a bird calling frequently from deep within the forest—impossible to see or get to it.  But with Terry’s help we learned it was the Three-wattled Bellbird.  Which is an odd name, because it sounds nothing like a bell, but very much like a croaking frog.  So we memorized the “song” to compare it later to the wonderful collection of bird songs at www.xeno-canto.org.  It was easy to confirm that the croaking we heard was the same as the recordings of the Three-wattled Bellbird recorded nearby.  It’s a shame we didn’t see it, because the male is rather ugly in a beautiful kind of way with those 3 pendulous wattles hanging from its bill. Maybe someday soon.

And here is the very short new bird list of the day.

Scaly-throated Foliage-gleaner (aka Spectacled Foliage-gleaner)
Three-wattled Bellbird

So instead of the 6 or 8  or more new species I had hoped for, we got 2 new species for the day, totaling 22 species in 4 days.  That’s less than half of the daily average needed to make 100.  I’m way behind.  Now reaching my goal seems very doubtful.

There is still good birding ahead, however.  Tomorrow we plan to go down to lower elevations where we have spent very little time.  Elevation makes a tremendous difference to the birds here in the tropics, so as we go to low country I have high hopes for some new finds tomorrow.   Thursday will be an off-day as we prepare to move to the Caribbean beach-front town of Bocas del Toro, so I expect zero new birds that day.  Friday will be a big day as we cross the continental divide and for the very first time bird the Atlantic slope of Panama.  Just like the change in elevation, changing from one side of the mountains to the other has a great effect on the bird life.  That day will be the biggest birding day of the week.  But could we get 50 or more in one day?  Right now it doesn’t feel possible.  Then Saturday and Sunday, the 8^th and 9^th days of the week we will be settling into our new digs in Bocas del Toro and exploring the island.  We’ll see more new birds there.  Will it be enough for 100 in the  or week?

Today I doubt I’ll make it, so I am discouraged about the goal.  But I am not the least bit discouraged about the adventure of it.  We are having a grand time exploring this little part of God’s creation, seeing, and sometimes hearing, the colorful, loud and strange spectacle of bird life that God put here.  We experience it as though a gift God meant for us to enjoy.