2019/04 Panama trip - Gamboa Wildlife Center trails |
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At lunch, Ed and Margaret from San Francisco joined us. We were going out on the birdmobile again that afternoon with the morning group plus Jessie and the newcomers. They opted to sit inside the cab, a smart move as a rainstorm hit us as we made our way down the hill. By the time we turned onto the road for the marina, those of us on the bench seats were soaked. We’d all saved our cameras and binoculars of course.
This time we were walking the trails around the outside of the Wildlife Center, where we’d been the previous afternoon.
We saw kiskadees, herons, motmots, and others we weren’t able to identify.
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Gamboa refuge trails (5.20) |
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Igua showed us a leaf-cutter ants’ nest, terminus for the incoming lines of ants carrying those gigantic leaf fragments. The ants climb up a shrub until they are overhanging the nest and then drop their loads, which form a pyramid of plant matter. This feeds a fungus which the ants use to feed their young, so the ants are a kind of farmer.
These “growths” on the sides of tree trunks are nests for termites and other kinds of ants.
Even if there are no ants, the trees themselves may be hazardous, like this black palm, sporting spines that break off in your flesh.
We met Chris from North Carolina on this trip. She had arrived exhausted that morning and had missed the birdmobile and the rainstorm. One of the other guides brought her down to the trails.
That evening we had a barbecue outside on a deck, about 15 guests in all. Nobody seemed to be fighting off any bugs. I had been stung on the face a couple of times that week, by flying ants I think, but neither of us ever saw a mosquito.