brief glimpses of Panama

I (this is Jeff for once) have been in Panama since June 12, attending the annual Scientific Committee meeting for the Int'l Whaling Commission.  Following the meeting, I've managed to get away for just a couple days to stay at the "Canopy Tower", situated in the Soberania National Forest, just north of Panama City.  Here's a picture of the place, lifted from the place's website (rooms are just below the visible observation deck):

Each of the last two mornings, I've taken a birding tour with our adept tour guide, Domi.  In two mornings, I've probably seen about 70 or 80 new bird species.  Colorful highlights include toucans, aracaris, caciques (related to oropendola) parrots, mot mots, cuckoos, trogons, honey creepers, hummingbirds, tanagers, and less colorful but still often striking wood creepers, wood wrens, woodpeckers, doves, and all the ant-eating types: ant-creepers, ant-wrens, antbirds, ant-vireo, ant-shrike, etc.  Plus much more.  Oh yeah, don't forget the plain chachalaca.

But I have to say some of the highlights have been the handful of mammals I've seen on the trip, including 3 species of monkey (howlers, tamarins, and...best of all... night monkeys!), 2 species of sloth (2-toed and 3-toed), and agouti.

I don't have a camera, except for the one on my smart phone.  Our guide carries a spotting scope.  You may be familiar with digi-scoping, i.e., putting your little camera up to the eyepiece of the spotting scope and taking a picture.  It's hard to do with a smart phone, but as the following photos attests, it can be done.

Here's an aracari:

 

Can you find the night monkey?  They come out at ... night.  But our guide knows a popular day roost (in a tree cavity).

I have seen about 5 slots on this trip.  Usually they sit in a ball in a tree and you are lucky to even see their face.  This one (three-toed, as you can see) was busy grooming and eating...

And here's my attempt at videoing through the telescope (it's roughest at first but gets more watchable after 10 sec):

Here is a nice view from the observation deck of the Tower (maybe you can see the Panama City skyline far in the distance).  As you might expect, there is a lot to see without having to try very hard.  Birds and monkeys come right to you.  

A lovely view outside my window just after the rain...

Finally... at sunset (not too bad for a smartphone camera):

My Glamorous Job

It's the story of the Least Bell's Vireo.  At USGS we have several sites where we monitor the reproductive success of these cute little birds.  The first step is to identify the singing males:

Once the males establish a territory we wait for the arrival of the female.  That's when things get busy and we start searching for nests.  Below is a photo of a typical nest, suspended on a forked branch.  

If we are lucky, a full clutch looks like this, with four white vireo eggs:

Unfortunately, at my sites there is heavy Brown-headed Cowbird parasitism.  Cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds.  The eggs hatch more quickly than the vireo eggs and the young cowbirds will outcompete and even sometimes push the vireo eggs and young out of the nest.  That's why we remove any cowbird eggs that we find.

Usually once the vireos are beyond the egg-laying stage and into incubation the threat from the cowbirds diminishes.  Below is a male vireo sitting on his nest.  I was trying to get him to flush so I could count his eggs and remove any cowbird eggs, but he would not budge.  Not surprisingly, I've never found a cowbird egg in any of his nests.  Good job, buddy, for sitting so tight!

After about 14 days of incubation the eggs begin to hatch and little pink naked nestlings emerge.

They grow quickly and after just a few days gray pin feathers start to emerge.  They eat a LOT.

 At some sites we band every nestling with a colored aluminum band on one leg.  These bands identify the drainage of origin for the bird.  We do this when the nestlings are between 5 and 8 days old.

 The nestlings remain in the nest for about 12 days.  Below is a  bird who is ready to fledge.  His nest-mate was already out of the nest, calling nearby, but this guy really liked his cozy nest.

The first few days out of the nest the fledglings stay close to the nest and are not very mobile.  The adults will continue feeding the fledglings for 2 weeks or more.

Another part of our job is banding the adult vireos.  At some sites we attempt to color band every territorial male.  However anytime a natal bird (adult with a single aluminum band, which identifies it as a bird who was banded as a nestling) is found we attempt to capture the bird and give the bird a complete color band combination, which allows us to identify the bird as a individual from a distance.

That's the bulk of what I do, but we also do surveys for Southwestern Willow Flycatchers, a species which continues to decline precipitously.  Additionally we are conducting a genetics study of coastal Cactus Wrens and California Gnatcatchers, which requires capturing adult birds and collecting blood and/or feather samples from them for analysis.  Finally we operate a few MAPS (Mapping Avian Productivity and Survivorship) stations, where we use mist nets to passively catch and band passerines.  I'll close with a couple of the more striking species we've caught at MAPS this year, a Lazuli Bunting and a Costa's Hummingbird.