Upcoming trip and updates

I am currently working on part VII of the running Panama series, which should be the last portion for this story. I will be doing a separate posting for our visit to the Bocas del Toro archipelago to highlight the various morphs of Oophaga pumilio found on different islands, etc.


I will be traveling to the coast of North Carolina in early January to do some wildlife photography for about 5 days, highlighting the visiting tundra swan, snow geese, and other winter migrants. I hope to catch some raptors in action and maybe some bobcats, bears, or if I'm lucky, a red wolf.

This will be my first extended hands on experience with one of Canon's most phenomenal lenses, the EF 500mm f/4L IS super telephoto. I will hopefully get 2,000+ shots with this incredible piece of glass.


So keep and eye out for the updates to come!

The above was taken with an EOS 40D, 400 DO + 1.4x extender for a focal length of 560mm @ an aperture of f/5.6

¡Bienvenidios Panama! – Part VI

We spend some time after our meeting with Lalo in town, buying goods for our upcoming trek and as a good gesture to the family that was permitting us to stay with them. The area around Changuinola was a large scale banana plantation – sometimes trees stretching for nearly a mile alongside the road. In the markets fresh fruits and vegetables were plentiful and very inexpensive. We gathered up numerous items per our guide’s suggestions – three bags full of groceries were presented at the makeshift counter – a whopping $10 for all the things we’d picked out. With all of our shopping completed in the busy streets of Changuinola, we returned back to our host family to share our surprise for them. After all of the many thanks and getting treated to another wonderful meal from our new friends, we started organizing the things we would need for the evening.

This hike would take us up the mountainsides into a somewhat remote portion of this area in the Bocas Del Toro province. We packed our lights and headlamps, spare batteries and plenty of water. I opted to bring the majority of my photo gear since we wouldn’t be returning to this location. I wish I’d realized what I was really in for prior to setting out on this little ‘expedition.’ We picked up Lalo a few hours before sunset and headed off for our night hike. We began traveling higher up a remote hillside – a small dirt road led us to our stopping point. We were at a small remote residence amongst the hillside, friends of Lalo lived here. We met with them briefly and our guide explained to them what we were doing. The people who lived here informed us they’d seen a bushmaster in the vicinity a few weeks back, an individual upwards of 6 feet or more from their account. We were all thrilled, hoping that we’d encounter something of the sort. From what our guide told us, the area should yield some nice finds during the course of our hike.

A short walk lead us to a gated pathway that looks to head into a grazing pasture. We begin walking up this narrow, winding pathway cut through the hillside, taking us across the ride side of a small valley dotted with a few large trees and remnant stumps. As we reach the top the trail cuts into the forest and a more familiar scene presents itself - lush green vegetation and the sounds of birds and frogs calling in the distance. The trail was very narrow, often the pathway was cleared as a result of torrential rainfall, leaving deep crevices and large rocks jutting out from time to time. In the edge of the vegetation along our path, male red pumilio were posted up on leaves asserting dominance over their territory with a familiar chattering call. To my astonishment, these little frogs were vocalizing from about a meter above the ground for up to an hour past sunset, something I didn’t expect from a species that is known to be exclusively diurnal. Along the way we began finding a few more frogs from the genera Smilisca, Scinax, and Eleutherodactylus, poised from 1-2 meters above the ground or hopping under our feet as we walk along the path and in the low lying vegetation. About half an hour later we are still trekking along but nothing more than the same species we’d been seeing since we had started. As I was searching along the edge of the trail and the beginning of the hillside, I caught a glimpse that made me do a double-take. Red, yellow, and black reflected in the LED beam of my Maglite and I yell out, ‘Coral!, Coral!’ Central America has the greatest diversity of coral snakes in the world and with that almost as many mimics to this highly venomous species. I knew in that moment what I was looking at was the real thing.

Three people in front of me had just walked over top of a nearly 1 meter long Central American coral snake, Micrurus nigrocinctus. One of our party quickly runs back to my location with the snake tongs and retrains the animal to prevent it from escaping. We took a few moments to grab some quick photos and rejoice in our awesome find. After we settled down from the adrenaline rush, we bagged the snake left it secured on the trail in a tree to photograph and release later. Now, we were all excited and eagerly searching for what might lie ahead of us. At this point the hike is starting to take a bit of strain on my body – between the 35-40lbs of gear on my back and the unpredictable terrain, I’m starting to pace myself and take occasional breaks along the way. The snake find was a chance to disrupt the pace of our ascent, and not too far up we paused at the start of a large waterfall to figure out how to navigate across also to look for any amphibians that may be out and about. Just minutes before our coral snake find and beyond that location we were able to start exploring these very large, rocky outcrops along the hillsides and areas were small streams or erosion channels had been cut. This is the perfect resting place for a large predatory pitviper such as the bushmaster, known to the locals as veragosa or matabuey, the ‘ox killer.’ We keep searching every large outcropping we came across, but nothing yet. We continued on up the trail, climbing in elevation. Our trek started out somewhere around 200m and we began to reach areas that were over 400m in elevation, areas that we felt were more suitable bushmaster habitat.

At this point I’m really beginning to dislike the fact I packed the majority of my gear. On top of that, I’m in a pair of field boots that have been worn a few times but definitely aren’t broken in yet. Maneuvering back and forth across rocky sections in the road and climbing up hillsides to search rocky outcroppings began to take it out of me. My counterparts are holding up fine, lacking the off balancing weight of my camera pack on their backs. Finally, after a lull in activity, we spot a very cool creature along the trailside. A fine specimen of the blunt headed tree snake, Imatodes cenchoa, is hanging from some low brush.. Surprisingly, this squirmy species cooperated to our moving it about and posing for a few photographs. The animal is adorned with a remarkable light tan background with a dark chocolate pattern, almost like chevrons along the dorsal ridge. We joke that this is our ‘mini bushmaster’ since the pattern closely resembles that of the magnificent animal we are so hoping to find this night. After turning our subject loose into the night, we headed on a bit further until our guide decides that an alternative path may lead us to what we seek. I soon find out that the rugged path we’ve been on has been a luxury, and the hard part is yet to come.

¡Bienvenidios Panama! – Part V

I sat down to a cup of coffee this morning, and for some reason it really took me back to thoughts of sitting on the patio in Farrion after a successful night in the jungle, watching flocks of parrots and ever so often a frigate bird in the distance….I had to start writing these again.

The next day, I awake in a fury of heat….the sun had risen high enough that it was radiating directly into our tent. I roll out to find breakfast being prepared for us, a traditional Panamainan breakfast composed of patacones (plantains pounded into pancake like discs and fried), home made bread, and meat fried with onions and peppers. To top it all off, some amazing, fresh Panamanian coffee. I’ve always been a cream and sugar type of guy – that will change when you have truly fresh coffee.

After taking some time to wake up and digest our wonderful meal we start to discuss our options for the rest of the day. The area we spent exploring the night before would be promising, but our guide advised us that he had a contact that might be able to direct us to a bushmaster. We decided to go and setup our trek for that evening and see what we could find along the way. Piling in the car we head back southeast from Changuinola a few miles, through the ragged highway system that links these Caribbean towns to the rest of Panama. After some time of waiting on the road construction, traffic holdups and trying to locate the proper road, we finally turn down a small unmarked two lane road that begins winding sharply around a hillside. From the car on this overcast day we spot a three-toed sloth in the treetops (what will be one of ten (yes ten!) individuals), slowly making its way from one limb to the next. The road is terribly washed out from a few of the initial rains signaling the end of the dry season. We navigate around large rocks lying in the road, severe cracks in the pavement until we come to a more lowland area. At one point, we’re trying to traverse a washout in our Nissan XTrail that would likely need more ground clearance, a suspension lift, and maybe some all terrain tires. Finally we get onto what looks like a normal looking dirt road with far less issues. As we drive past the lowland fields and scattered forests, there is an ever present chattering coming from the trees. I know I’ve heard this sound before and it takes me a few moments to realize the sound broadcasting from the forest edge is that of the strawberry or flaming poison dart frog, Oophaga pumilio .

We eventually arrive at a small, elevated house in the middle of the jungle. I’m introduced to a man named Lalo, who was an acquaintance of our guide, familiar with the area and the animals we were interested in seeing. His wife and two children also come to greet us, and we sit down to discuss the plan for our evening hike. His wife offers us coffee, a strong aroma and as fresh as you could ever imagine coffee being in a place like this. His son is playing with a box of young parrots, rescued from an area that was being cleared for agricultural purposes. Our guide begins to explain why we are visiting the country, what we’ve encountered so far, and what we would like to attempt to find on our night hike. In the background we hear the same chattering of pumilio, some of which appear to be very close. We tell him that we also are interested in the small frogs from the area. He steps away for a moment and returns with something that astounds me. He presents us with a few laminated sheets, with various forms of dendrobatid frogs and venomous snakes, with short descriptions of each species.

Visitors apparently years prior to our visit had left these guides with him, explaining that they would offer him money for these species of interest. His impression was that we were there to collect or buy various herps to take back with us! We explained to him that we only wanted to photograph such animals. He recognized that our attention repeatedly shifted back across the road to the sounds of the frogs. He got up and told us to ‘follow me.’

Within 20 feet of the road, opposite to his house, Lalo began pointing out frogs…..there were Dendrobates auratus amongst the leaf litter unlike any I had ever seen. Flaunting the well known green and black coloration, these frogs were enormous, bigger than any dendrobatid frog I’d seen in captivity. Side by side with the auratus were little red and orange Oophaga pumilio that we encountered – hopping about. These frogs are known as the ‘Alimarante’ morph, named for a town just southeast of Changuinola. I was amazed at the amount of variation found within the dozen or so frogs in such a small area - red with grey

legs, orange with black legs, solid orange with black flecks, all the same morph. After running around and photographing our first pumilio, we went back over to Lalo’s house to avoid the sudden downpour of rain and discuss our evening plans. Lalo knew of some local areas that would be probable bushmaster habitat, and that there had been sightings in the recent weeks prior to our arrival.

With our plan set and some cool finds already that day, we headed back to Changuinola to prepare for what would be one of the most memorable experiences of my life – for many reasons…