Author: canopytower

Two weeks ago, Charles Eldermire and Renee Mach from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology visited the Canopy Lodge in order to work on the Panama Fruit Feeder Cam that live-streams footage of the birds at our fruit feeder. This was Renee’s first visit to Panama, and Charles’ first visit since December 2017 when the Cam was installed, as detailed in our last newsletter. The Cam began live-streaming in January 2018, and since then it has received 3.7 million views from more than 100 countries, helping to increase our knowledge and public awareness of tropical bird behavior and diversity. According to Renee, the Cam “provides us a peek at behaviors and interactions that we, scientists and citizen scientists alike, might otherwise miss,” and it continues to yield new information with the help of our viewers. For example, just in the last few weeks, three new species never before recorded on the Cam—Yellow-bellied Elaenia (Elaenia flavogaster), Thick-billed Seed-Finch (Sporophila funerea), and Bay-headed Tanager (Tangara gyrola)—were noticed by our viewers on the live-stream, bringing the total number of species recorded on the Cam to 58. In the words of Cornell Lab’s director John Fitzpatrick, asked about the partnership between Cornell Lab and the Canopy Family: “the Cornell Lab has deep admiration for their commitment to and role in amplifying the appreciation of Panamanian biodiversity, both to the people of Panama and to the whole world. I am extremely proud that we can play a small part in the latter, via our Bird Cam investments.” Having been live-streaming for over two years, the camera was due for a check-up, especially given the cloud forest environment of the Canopy Lodge. In particular, our viewers had recently been noticing what sounded like static in the audio of our live-stream. So when Charles and Renee arrived last

With Canopy Family guide Oscar Fria’s discovery of an active Crested Eagle nest on February 20, the Canopy Camp can once again offer virtually guaranteed sightings of both Harpy Eagle and Crested Eagle, the two great eagles of the Neotropical rainforests, at their nests! As reported on our social media pages, the Crested Eagle chick is estimated to be only 3 to 4 months old. Because so few Crested Eagle nests have ever been discovered, information regarding their breeding biology is difficult to come by, but observations from one nest that has been studied suggest that the chick will remain at or near its nest for over a year before becoming independent of its parents. Meanwhile, the currently active Harpy Eagle nest was discovered last October, and the chick is believed to be five months old. Like Crested Eagles, Harpy Eagles take a long time to mature; a chick typically remains within 100 meters of its nest for at least 15 months after hatching. Already our Harpy chick has been observed flapping its way out of its nest onto nearby branches, but never straying far. As a result, if all goes well, we can look forward to reliable sightings of both species for the next several months. Sightings of Harpy and Crested Eagles are highly sought after by birders for a number of reasons. Both are renowned as the largest and most powerful raptors of the rainforest. The Harpy Eagle, Panama’s national bird, is one of the largest eagles in the world and one of the largest birds in Central America, with a wingspan of around 6 feet. Both species are rare and exist at very low population densities, partially because each nesting pair requires a large territory of relatively undisturbed forest. Both species tend to hunt in the forest canopy

Charles Eldermire, the Bird Cams Project Leader from Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, with Daniel Arias, the executive vice president of Canopy Family, installing the live camera on the fruit feeder at the Canopy Lodge on December 17, 2017.               About three years ago, John Fitzpatrick, the executive director of Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, visited the Canopy Lodge in a tour group. As soon as John saw how many amazing birds there were in the gardens of the Canopy Lodge, he immediately set his mind to installing one of the live Cornell Lab Bird Cams at the place. Canopy Family, more than happy with the news, started the task and encountered a huge problem: There was not enough bandwidth at the time to maintain a camera streaming live 24/7. Therefore, we started a long process with the internet company, which had never taken internet with the required velocity to a place like the Canopy Lodge in El Valle, to make the live cam a reality. Finally, on December 17, 2017, Charles Eldermire, the Bird Cams Project Leader from Cornell, installed the camera, which started transmitting live in January 2018 with the collaboration of explore.org. We are so proud of being one of the two places in Panama, and one of the few places in the tropics, with one of these unique cameras. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology currently has 11 live cameras located in Bermuda, Peru, Canada, New Zealand, Panama and in many locations throughout the United States. The cameras allow scientists, biologists, managers and bird lovers to discover new information every day, and several research projects regarding Red-tailed Hawks, Lance-tailed Manakins and endangered species like the Bermuda Petrel and California Condor are going on thanks to the cameras. The Cornell Lab is even preparing a

      Carlos and his parents live in Calamocha, a town of 3,000 people located in Teruel province, in the northeast of Spain. Carlos´s father Rodrigo is a biologist and teaches at Carlos´s secondary school, and his mom Eva is an engineer and teacher at the same school. This means sometimes they have Carlos as their student! The Pérez family travels a lot, giving him the opportunity to explore different destinations. One day they were looking on the internet for a nature getaway in Central America, when they came across the Canopy Family. Some weeks later, they all three came to Panama and spent 5 days at the Canopy Tower and 3 days at the Canopy Lodge.         Since Carlos was born, his parents instilled in him admiration and love for nature. They gave him his first small camera as a present when he was 4. Carlos then took his first prize photo at the age of 6. When he was 8, he received the most distinguished prize to date: Wildlife Photographer of the Year in the category of children under 10 years! The prize was awarded in London by the Museum of Natural History and was presented to Carlos by Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, and the renowned David Attenborough. The winning image was a photo of a scorpion. Carlos mostly likes to photograph birds, but also all kinds of animals, people traveling, and unique landscapes.         On a foggy morning at the Soberanía National Park in Panama, Carlos took this amazing picture of a male Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth from the Canopy Tower dining room. The sloth was resting on a Cecropia tree and Carlos took advantage of being at the canopy level, which is part of the magic of staying at

      Cameron Cox is an experienced and enthusiastic birder. He has counted migrating raptors at several hawkwatches throughout the United States. Here is Cameron’s thoroughly engaging description of his experience counting for the first time in the Neotropics at the Canopy Tower, where he did an amazing work for which we are so grateful. FYI, we are looking for a volunteer counter for the Hawk Migration season in 2020!   Canopy Hawk Count By Cameron Cox         My time as a volunteer hawk counter at Canopy Tower began at 8:00 AM October 1 and began with a bang: 5,428 hawks in the first hour of the count! As hawks streamed by through the valleys on either side of the Canopy Tower, it was immediately apparent that this was a job where I would have to learn quickly, keep a high level of concentration and watchfulness, and when the poo hits the rotating device do the best job possible. My last day ended in a bit of a whimper, counting only 3,511 raptors the entire day, but the very last minute of the count at 4:59 PM on November 7, the last thing I saw on the Tower was my best view of Double-toothed Kite for the entire 300-plus hours I spent on top of the Tower. A reminder that even on a slow day at the Tower something exceptional can happen at any moment.         In between these bookends I had many other exceptional moments as I counted 515,018 raptors. “Exceptional” is also an accurate description of this season of raptor counting at the Tower. Records were broken for 7 of the 16 species that are counted regularly/semi-regularly at the Tower. In the case of Broad-winged Hawk (season count: 257,676; prior season

     As soon as Joe Miller heard the idea of painting the inside of the gigantic dome of the Canopy Tower, he accepted the challenge. It started with a year of conversation and planning with Daniel, the Canopy Family Executive Vice President, but the actual execution took just about 2 weeks. As this was no ordinary painting, the biggest challenges were how to reach the upper part of the dome, and the combination of humidity and temperature inside it, with the physical strain on his back and shoulders from painting the upper part of the dome adding an interesting level of endurance to the job. However, Joe enjoyed every part of the process, and the experience of staying at the Canopy Tower surrounded by flying birds and nature was his inspiration for finishing this incredible masterpiece. For sure, he added priceless value to our dining and living room, as he did at the Canopy Tower entrance on the first floor with his amazing mural. Both artworks will make your experience of staying at the Canopy Tower unique! Want to learn more about the process? Watch the video here.      Joe has been doing artwork his entire life, but it was only right after graduate school that he quit his job and started working as an independent artist. He has been painting on his own for a decade now. It was hard at the beginning, and many times he thought about quitting. However, he wouldn´t want to let down all the people who supported him on the way to becoming a professional independent artist, and as that support continues to grow, nowadays he is pretty busy and with a lot of wonderful artwork to do!

Recently, a conversation came up between Canopy Camp Darien manager David Byers, and guest Dr. James (Jim) Karr, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, regarding interest in the annual rainfall in Darién and in Panama overall. In general, the Caribbean side receives 3-4 times more rain annually than the much drier Pacific side. But, Jim wondered, along with many of our guests, what do the numbers really look like? David and Jim dove into a bit of research, and here’s what they came up with: David found this link with a summary of the climate situation for Darién & the Choco region. However, the coordinates bring us to western Colombia, deep in the heart of the Choco region, one of the wettest areas on Earth, where rainfall is likely higher than in most areas of Darién. Still, it gives a good overview of the nearby climate, and at certain times, it can feel like there is definitely some carry over! Jim searched further and found a World Bank site for seasonal temperatures and rainfall data for sites throughout Panama. This site has good data summarized by a group from the University of East Anglia in Britain. They modelled Panama's climate using records from 1901 to 2015 – over 100 years of climate data! Here are some maps from this World Bank site outlining seasonal temperatures and monthly rainfall for areas close to the Canopy Family Lodges: Canopy Camp Darien (Yaviza, Darién) Canopy Lodge (El Valle de Anton) Canopy Tower (Soberania National Park)   Jim looked further at these graphs, considering monthly shift in rainfall and through a conversion of the graphs he estimated annual rainfall at the Canopy Family lodges: Canopy Tower: ~2,790 mm (98 inches) per year Canopy Lodge: ~1,880 mm (66 inches) per year Canopy Camp: ~1,400