Eastern Panamá with Advantage Tours (Day 1)

Once again, I received an invitation from Guido Berguido of Advantage Tours Panama (http://advantagepanama.com/) to accompany them in a couple of dates over the weekend. Please remember that Advantage Tours is an eco-tourism operator, which provide expertly crafted itineraries. They sponsored my food and lodging expenses so I could go with them and document photographically. Ovidio Jaramillo, an experienced birdwatcher, also came with us and he was of much help identifying birds and trying to get me birds closer.

Our destination for the weekend was Tortí in the eastern part of the Panamá Province, almost bordering with Darién Province.

Our day started early morning, before dawn, traveling from Panama City. Then a short stop at Ipetí for breakfast where a lot of common birds of human habitat were present like Gray-breasted Martins, House Sparrows and Tropical Kingbirds.

Grey-breasted Martin (Progne chalybea)

Then we headed to a private natural reserve near the town of Tortí, where we started the serious birding. Here some examples of our findings that day:

Barred Puffbird (Nystalus radiatus)

Great Jacamar (Jacamerops aureus)

We saw a lot of birds, easily we were in the 70 to 80 species count, but as you might understand getting "good" pictures of them all is impossible.

During lunch time we had fun with a lot of hummers, six especies total:

Male Black-throated Mango (Anthracothorax nigricollis)

Female Black-throated Mango (Anthracothorax nigricollis)

Long-billed Starthroat (Heliomaster longirostris)

Scaly-Breasted Hummingbird (Phaeochroa cuvierii)

Male Sapphire-throated Hummingbird (Lepidopyga coeruleogularis)

Female Sapphire-throated Hummingbird (Lepidopyga coeruleogularis)

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl)

Snowy-bellied Hummingbird (Amazilia edward)

The group of birdwatchers was returning to the city with birding stops along the road. Ovidio and I stayed at Tortí, and returned to the reserve to try to get more pictures, not so much activity was recorded that afternoon.