Chucunaque River

Each morning began with a departure, often still in darkness, where we turned right from the Canopy Camp entrance road on to Carretera Panamericana - in Darién, una carretera bajo construcción mayor.

On Tuesday morning, February 7th, we drove to a small Embera village where we two boarded canoes (I guess properly classified as dugout canoes) with uniquely crafted seats.

Village dog.

Village home.

A swim before doing the laundry.

In the middle, our fantastic and fearless leader Domi Alveo.

Perhaps my favorite (tied with flycatchers) class of birds - this was our kingfisher morning.  Only six species of kingfishers are found in the Americas, all of which occur in Panama (p. 168, The Birds of Panama), and four of which we saw on this day.  Above:  Green Kingfisher (Chloroceryl americana) with fish - can't tell if male or female.  

Cattle in the Chucunaque River.

Male Green Kingfisher (C. americana).

This poorly photographed Whooping Motmot (Momotus subrufescens) is a testament to how few motmots we saw on this trip when compared with our canal zone trip last year.  It's also a reminder that all of these photos were taken from a motorized canoe...

... including this Crimson-crested Woodpecker (Campephilus melanoleucos).  I honestly don't know how I got this photo!

Above:  female Ringed Kingfisher (Megaceryle torquata).

Above:  can't tell if male or female Ringed Kingfisher.

Above:  Pied Water-Tyrant (Fluvicola pica), the only one we saw on the trip.

Above female and below male Amazon Kingfishers (C. amazona).  

  

While motoring on the river, I wasn't completely sensitive to the field marks of Amazon and Green kingfishers.  Size is the easy field mark that separates Amazon from Green kingfishers with Amazon being the much larger bird.  Unfortunately, size is not a good field mark for these photos.  Green kingfishers have wing speckles that do not show up in the two photos I have identified as green kingfisher.  I have a better photo of that here from our Tarcoles River trip in Costa Rica. Hopefully I guessed it correctly and identified both of my birds accurately.