Thursday, December 29, 2011

Birds of Panama and Costa Rica

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to Panama and Costa Rica with Lindblad/National Geographic.  We were aboard the National Geographic Sea Lion, a relatively small cruise ship that holds about 62 passengers and crew I would estimate at something over 20.  This is a photo of the ship taken early in the voyage when our weather was overcast with real and threatened rain, even though this is supposed to be the dry season. 


On our forays from the ship we used Zodiacs which would usually be loaded with ten people.  In some cases we did Zodiac tours and in other cases we were landed on the beach for hiking, kayaking, swimming or other activities.  This was on the first full day of our voyage and our first Zodiac tour around Barro Colorado Island... and it rained on us. The weather improved significantly on the Pacific side of our cruise and so did my photographs!  (Trust me on this... I obtained some spectacular photographs!)  On this particular tour we saw a couple of small crocodiles on logs, Howler monkeys, toucans, an Osprey and other birds. 


If I am remembering things correctly, this is a Social flycatcher.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to ever get a photo of the bird in a natural setting.  There were also Great kiskadees in this area.  


This was our introduction to the Magnificent frigatebirds which usually were around on our entire voyage. 

And another photo of a Magnificent frigatebird... 

No comments:

Post a Comment