Going Deep Into The Jungle... For Birdwatching???

 

I know you think I'm joking, but we did go birdwatching in the jungle in Panama.  It's the only time in our life we've ever done that and except for some really rookie mistakes (like not bringing binoculars) we had a good time.

Canopy Tower and Hummingbirds

We were taken pretty far into the jungle in this jeep/truck pictured above.  Until the driver reached a point where the vehicle would not go any further.  

Sonja and I are looking around and thinking to ourselves, "we have to walk from here???"  And yes, we did.  To a building in the middle of the jungle which used to be used by the Panamanian army as an outpost to watch for drug smugglers hiding out in the jungle.  

It has since been converted to a place where you could spend the night if you wanted.  We were just using this as a jumping off point for the, you guessed it, more walking.

It was very cool looking inside. 

There were small bungalow rooms and some neat hammocks.

Along the outside of the tower, were hummingbird feeders set up all over the place and more hummingbirds in one place than I had ever seen before.

We had lunch in the tower and we met our birdwatching cohorts.  You know, working in technology, I've been called a geek, a nerd or a dweeb.  But nothing you can do in technology can rival the "dweebiness" of serious birdwatchers.  These are people who have never seen an "R" rated movie in their life.

Bird Watching

So, we start walking through the jungle.  We're a group of 7-8 serious bird watchers and then there's us. 

As we walked someone in the group would say, "oh, there's a yellow breasted whatever."  And someone else would say "I'm seeing a red crowned, blue tailed so and so."  We would crane our necks skyward and strain our eyes and we would see....

Nothing but trees and leaves.

The others started feeling sorry for us and let us look through their binoculars, but it didn't help much.

What we saw:

And then, it started to happen.  Our eyes began to adjust and filter out the foliage.  Lo' and behold, we saw birds!!!  (Well, honestly, Sonja saw birds.  All I could see was green).

After an hour or two of walking through the hot, muggy jungle we headed back to the jeep and the ride back to Gamboa.  Little did we know that on that ride, "Backwards Billy" would get the ultimate sighting.

Yes, I was the one that spotted the toucan on the ride back.  Take that you dweeb birders!

Although we will most likely never go birdwatching again.  To do it this one time and in a Panamanian jungle was a pretty cool notch in our belt.