Darién National Park, Panama
VICTOR EMANUEL NATURE TOUR
February 24-March 3, 2007
Guides: David Wolf and Ivan Hoyos |
By Linda G. Donelson
Note:
this report presents an overview of the facilities and trip experience.
David Wolf's birding report and birdlist for this trip is available at VENT Tours.
Participants:
Terrence Dini, John and Linda Donelson, Charles Durrin, Jim Griffin,
Karen and John Shrader, Larry Schwab, Jan Wieczynski, Jean Wilson
Black-throated Trogon
Cana
station, in the Darién National Park, Panama, is one of the
birdiest places in the world. We spent eight days there in 2007 with
Victor
Emanuel Nature Tours of Austin, Texas. Since then we've birded on 6
continents, but Cana remains our favorite destination. Victor
Emanuel says Cana is one of the three most significant birding areas he
has ever visited. We've since met other experienced birders who say, if
they had a chance for only one birding experience, it would be Cana.
The station lies in the center of a million-acre
national preserve, surrounded by another, roughly, million acres of
forest inhabited by Embera Indians and other peoples. The rainforest
and swamps are home to some of the finest and most accessible tropical
wildlife in the world.
Cana has been a focus of gold-mining since
before recorded history. In the seventeeth century 20,000 miners lived in this
bowl-shaped valley along the Cana River. A small rail line briefly
served the area after the turn of the twentieth century. Mining attempts were made
as late as the 1970s, but due to poor yields the area was abandoned.
Second growth forest has come back impressively, and the land is now
managed by Ancon, a private ecodevelopment company in Panama.
Althugh an occasional tour comes in on foot from the nearest
village, Boca de
Cupe, thirty miles away by foot trail, there are no roads within 100
miles of Cana. Nothing can match the excitement you feel as your small
plane comes in view of the Cana clearing in Panama's immense forest.
The camp, valley and surrounding
trails offer a plethora of birds, with many endemics found nowhere
else. Birds of Panama by Robert Ridgely and John A. Gwynne, Jr.,
pictures twenty-five Darien specialties. We saw fifteen of these during
our stay, plus Swallow Tanager, Beautiful Treerunner, Yellow-collared
Cholorphonia, Green-naped Tanager, and Violet-throated Toucanet. Throughout our stay we identified 281 species
of birds.
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