Why Panama is a wildlife paradise
Panama ranks as one of the best birdwatching spots in the world, but you’d be surprised how many rare mammals also thrive in this tropical isthmus. I travelled to this narrow strip of land that links South and Central America last autumn and my trip took me through a wide range of habitats.
From cloud forest to tropical jungle, lush lagoons and muddy swamps, each supported a wealth of wildlife whose exotic names I had to learn.
Wildlife tourism
Tourism is vital to the economy here and I stayed at eco lodges where the owners had a keen understanding of the need to preserve this region’s incredible wildlife.
Among them was a hotel named Canopy Tower. Converted from a former military radar tower overlooking the Panama Canal, the owners had made the most of its unusual location to offer their guests a bird’s eye view of the forest canopy and the myriad of birds that inhabit it.
Animals at eye-level
There’s nothing quite like seeing everything at eye-level. You don’t even need to leave the hotel to soak in all the species that inhabit this incredible rainforest.
From the viewing tower I watched sloths dangling, soft-eyed mantled howler monkeys balancing on impossibly thin branches, brown-hooded parrots preening one another, and even a colour-clashing squirrel cuckoo –the names of the animals and birds were fantastic.
Rare Sylvia leaf frogs
And if watching the wildlife in the tree canopy wasn’t enough, a 10-minute walk downhill from the hotel and I was treated to a very rare sight: Sylvia’s leaf frogs. Even my guide Eliecer had only seen these jewel-coloured frogs in one other place in Panama.
Unusually pale tamandua
Later, on a drive through the forest, my guide and I spotted something even more remarkable. A tree climbing anteater, known as a northern tamandua with a very unusual coat. Normally tamanduas are greyish in colour, but a congenital condition known as erythrism, meant this one’s fur was a beautiful strawberry blonde colour.
Like much of the wildlife in Panama, the tamandua was unimpressed by our presence and barely gave us a second look as it snoozed in the afternoon sun. It also ignored a trail of ants, escapees from its latest meal, as they scurried over its head and along the branch to freedom.
Exotic wildlife
But you don’t need to spot rare creatures to feel like you’ve entered a new world in Panama. Here everything is exotic. The monkeys, known as Geoffroy’s tamarin, look like punk rockers with their Mohicans haircuts and share the treetops with porcupines – Rothschilds porcupine – that can climb.
The birds here, however, are the most magnificent. From double-toothed kites, to masked tityras, broad-billed motmots, yellow fulvous-vented euphonias, golden-hooded tanagers, blue crowned manakins, and black breasted puff birds (did I mention the names are a joy!), it’s no surprise that Panama has a reputation as one of the best bird-watching destinations in the world.
On the forest floor there was more to spot. White-nosed coatis – which look a little like racoons – trundle along the grass like cartoon characters and by the rivers green iguana’s glisten. Watch the film I made following my stay:
Panama’s tropical coast
On Panama’s tropical coastline, there was even more exotic species to enjoy, including more sloths hanging from the tree canopy whilst in the blue waters of the bay, dolphins splash and deep in the mangrove swamps black hawks hunt for fiddler crabs.
I stayed at Tranquilo Bay on the island of Bastimentos which forms part of the Bocas del Toro archipelago, located along the Caribbean Coast of Panama, and again the owners of the hotel had designed the lodge to make the most of the amazing bird life to be found here.
A scaffold tower above the tree canopy gave me a bird’s eye view of rainforest and its remarkable birdlife. But even more captivating at these dizzying heights were the brown throated three-toed sloths.
I watched one mother sloth, a baby clinging to her chest, swing from one leg, and my heart leaped as she let go of her youngster to satisfy a scratch on her head. Luckily baby sloths are born with sharp claws and cling on to their mothers from the moment they are born.
Beneath the sloths, white faced capuchin monkeys crowded the branches and rufous tailed hummingbirds sat snugly in tiny cup-shaped nests.
Watch the film I made about this region here:
Bird island
From Tranquilo Bay I took a boat trip to Bird Island, where ground nesting birds like magnificent frigate birds and brown boobies nested in rookeries far from predators. On the way my host pointed out a migratory roost of turkey vultures, paused enroute to their American breeding grounds.
Red-billed tropicbirds soared as we approached the island, their long white tail feathers drifting below them like kite ribbons.
In the blue waters of the bay, common bottlenose dolphins leaped alongside the boat and in the mangrove swamps that lined a deep canal leading out to sea I spotted cuckoos, fiddler crabs and common black hawks hunting for mangrove crabs. This was a true tropical paradise.
Cloud forest
But whilst the coast offers tropical rainforest, Panama’s mist-shrouded mountains provide an entirely different habitat for an even more breath-taking array of wildlife.
The air here was cooler, the rivers raging, and the forest a riot of noise and colour. From noisy parakeets and colourful toucans in the treetops, to leafcutter ants marching along the forest floor, this rainforest teemed with life.
I stayed at Canopy Lodge, where I learned to spot red-crowned woodpeckers, keel-billed toucan, crimson-backed tanager, orange-chinned parakeet, tawny-capped euphonia and gray-headed chachalaca.
Meanwhile further afield my guide showed me a spectacled owl chick, a gray-headed kite and a super-sleepy three toed sloth swinging in the tree canopy.
Below them a common basilisk scudded over a stream and a characterful Central American agouti who never stopped munching made me laugh as it chased a brilliantly-coloured rufous motmot that flew too close to its food! Watch the action here:
My tour was curated by Wildfoot Travel. For more information or to book a similar tour follow this link: https://www.robertefuller.com/travel/