Tweets:

Clarice and I just returned from a classic trip with Victor Emanuel to Panama,
including usual places such as Canopy Tower and Pipeline road. I want to especially
mention an experience at a small birder's lodge on Cerro Azul, north of the city.
Cerro Azul is a mountain about 900 meters high, largely taken up with an ageing real
estate development that is a little grim. The area was clear cut in the 1950's, turned
to pasture, then "reforested" with Caribean pines, and carved into 5 hectare lots. The
lot at the very end of the road, however, is still largely in native forest and lovely.

There is a small birder's lodge there run by a couple active in the Panama Audubon
Society. It sits on a ridge with a gentle slope up to the "front" of the house, then a
steep dropoff into the Rio Chagres Valley on the "back" side. The dropoff is not a
cliff, but a slope well forested with native trees. For pictures of the place and the
Valley, take a look at their website at www.birdersview.com. The opening page
shows a photo of the valley below the house. The trees on this ridgetop are small,
about 15 meters high.

About noon the entire sky was covered with clouds, about 100 meters above the
ridge top. We spotted a migrating line of Swainsons hawks, about a kilometer out,
flowing down the valley just below the clouds. They formed up in two big kettles,
raising up above the base of the clouds. Based on two trips to Vera Cruz during
counting season, I suspect the larger kettle was 3000 birds.

Then, a rain squall came across the valley, forcing the line of Swainsons toward our
ridge. The clouds dropped to just above the trees, and a gentle updraft began
forming from wind blowing up the side of the valley, right at the point of the ridge
where we were standing. Kettle after kettle began forming at eye level, so close that
the near birds were no more than 20 meters out. Often a binocular field would only
encompass one or two hawks. As the wind slowly shifted, the birds began dropping
out of the base of the clouds to treetop level or below, always swirling all around us
while using the ridge to gain some lift back up to the cloud layer. Soon it was like we
were standing at the bottom of a gentle, silent whirlpool of Swainsons of all color
morphs and ages. I kept expecting them to begin landing, they were so close, but
they always found an updraft to bring them back to the clouds, where they formed a
line drifting across the valley.

This went on non stop for 25 minutes. A conservative estimate would be 20,000
hawks. We have seen a few bigger flights (including one the day before, from afar)
but never have we made the acquaintance of so many individual hawks. . So, last
week I would say a fair portion of the Swainsons population was passing Panama on
their way to beyond, and I thought this could be a post card from them to you.

We also saw some good tropicals on the grounds of this lodge, including two
crimson bellied woodpeckers, several white tipped sicklebills, and one eyelash viper.
Good spot.

Jerry Broadus, PLS
Geometrix Surveying, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Puyallup, WA. 98371