When I left off from my previous post, we’d just spotted Toucans! I was really happy with all of the small birds and butterflies we say but the toucans were definitely a treat.
As we continued along the path, we arrived at the penultimate lookout area where we again were reminded that the city was nearby despite us hiking through a rainforest. But also the view let us see raptors flying near the city. It was really hard in the moment to identify soaring birds, even when looking through my zoom lens. They moved quickly and all looked black against the sky.
After my last post, I’d assumed that all the birds we saw were the Common Black Hawk, but upon closer investigation of the additional raptors that seems to not be the case! On zooming in a bit on the bird below you can notice some red near its head that could mean that it’s more likely to be a Turkey Vulture? I’m not certain because it’s so hard to see even zoomed in. The bird against the city against the mountains is an amazing mix of urban and nature though.
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| No animals in this shot, but I loved the foreground flowers against the mountains and town in the distance. |
A final staircase took us up to the highest point in the park. Here we found the best view of the city. By the time we got here we’d agreed that we’d need to hustle back so that we could shower before our massage appointments that we’d made for the afternoon. I was disappointed that we didn’t get the opportunity to see any mammals in the park, but was quite happy with the variety of birds and butterflies.
One the way back, we took the easy trails. As we started down, off in the trees I saw something that didn’t look a part of the tree. But I’d been fooled earlier in the day by dead leaves on trees that seemed a bit large. I decided to check through my viewfinder to see if was a mammal hanging from the trees. I found myself travelling the emotional rollercoaster from disappointment at no mammal sightings to seeing a sloth!
I’ve brightened this photo up quite a bit in post processing, but was happy to get the side of this sloth’s face including an eye. It was moving quite a bit through the canopy and even though they have a reputation for being slow it was somewhat hard to keep up at my 400mm focal length.
As I called Alek back to see the Three Toed Sloth (you can tell by its three toes), another visitor at the park stopped to ask me to point it out to him. After I did he told me that there were also monkeys nearby and offered to show them to me. I was elated!
As he pointed them out to me, the monkeys were super keen on making sure that I got photos of their genitals. After lots of photos and some patience on my part (despite kinda being in a hurry) I got some really cute photos that included a face.
One of the monkeys is looking up contemplating life with his (definitely his) tail wrapped around the branch while another was wriggling on the branch in front of him seemingly scratching its back. These look to be howler monkeys, although they were relatively quiet when we saw them.
A little bit more down the path we saw a few people taking photos, so we asked them what was there. They pointed out some coati to us as well as another group of howler monkeys!
There were four coati in total, one sprawled out on a log. It was 90F and very humid, I kinda wanted to lie on a log too. After a little rest, this one got up and joined the group.
From sleepy coati, to sleepy monkey – noon seems to be the right time for a rest in the rainforest.
At this point it started to drizzle and we really needed to get going. So we put the cameras away and made our way down. Until we got to the turtle pond, that is! There were lots of turtles there, but this one in particular was posing very nicely on a log.
As we were heading back we saw a few more toucans, but the photos I got weren’t as good as the initial pair. And then we saw a ñeque in the woods. This is a little rodent, it kept wanting to face away from us so I captured on photo with its face and many photos of its butt.
After 3 hours of walking and looking up the massages which we were back in time for were well earned!
I strongly recommend the Metropolitan Natural Park if you find yourself in Panama City with 3-4 hours to spare. Everyone was friendly and it was an amazing start to our trip in Central America!
