A week in Jaqué, Darién
Delicia and Darién Montañez spent a week looking for Darién lowland specialties in Jaqué. Good forest was a two-hour hike away from town, but there were enough nice orchards and shrubby areas along the way to keep one distracted. The one day we hired a boat to go upriver (to the better forest) we had torrential rain which pretty much ruined any shot at real birding. Still, we scored some nice sightings, the highlight being a pair of Chapman's Swifts seen flying over the airstrip on the morning of July 5th: large, very dark swifts with long tails, shaped like Chimney Swifts. Every now and then one would fly against a dark background, showing the chin and chest to be only slightly paler than the rest of the underparts. The undertail coverts were not noticeably lighter than the breast. We never got a look at their rumps, but feel pretty confident about the ID. Total observation time was about a minute. All the other swifts seen were Band-rumpeds. Noticeably smaller, with the easily-se...