Birding Fortuna and environs
Rosabel & Karl Kaufmann and Darién Montañez spent the better part of the last two weeks chasing after their 600th year birds in Western Panama. First stop on November 3 was the marsh at Las Lajas beach, where the highlight was a calling Gray-breasted Crake . We then headed to the Fortuna area, which we birded out of the ANAM sation in Palo Seco. We got to Chiriquí Grande at dusk, right in time to coax responses from a pair of Uniform Crakes by the Two Tanks Road dump. November 4 began at Continental Divide Trail, which had the usual big mixed flocks interspersed with long periods of birdless quiet, and produced Black-thighed Grosbeak, Rufous-breasted Antthrush and Rufous-rumped Antwren. The access road beyond the trailhead is now paved [map], and dives into Palo Seco all the way down to a Petroterminales pumping station at 725m. A stop at around 900m got us Black-headed Nightingale-Thrush , White-crowned Manakin , and Blue-and-gold Tanager. Verrugosa Trail [ map ] is stil...