Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Panama: Birds, Waterfalls, Capybara and Mountain Produce

The Quilt returned to Panama in November. It didn't really have a good time last time, and so decided to give the country another chance. First stop was the Gamboa Rainforest Lodge on the Chagres River where it meets the Panama Canal.

Birds, birds and more birds. At our second stop, the Coffee Estate Inn, the birds would flock to the feeders to eat bananas and oranges. Five different species can be seen in this photo. We saw a total of 224 species this trip.

In the mountains near Boquete, we hiked to the end of the Pipeline Trail and came to this beautiful waterfall. It was an adventurous hike, crossing scary bridges and fording streams.

The grounds of the Coffee Estate Inn were beautiful. The purple flower loved to wander around on the many trails visiting.

Near Gamboa we saw many wild capybara. I know there are people who think they are cute, and want to pet them or keep them as pets. The Quilt feels that they are best left to graze in the wild and isn't impressed with their looks.

The purple flower made many friends during it's afternoon hikes. Here it spends some time hanging with some oranges.

The purple flower tries to decide which it likes better, red berries or green berries. In any instance, the mixture of the two brought Christmas to mind.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I am very interested in capybaras. You may have heard of my pet, Caplin Rous, who is the (self-declared) World's Most Famous Capybara. His blog is at www.GiantHamster.com.

But the thing is, I have been looking for photos of the lesser capybara whose range is from souther Panama to north-western Colombia, theoretically. In fact, there is very little data on this species and I have been unable to find any photos. Yours is the first I've seen that would conclusively be a lesser capybara. Do you have any other photos?