Birds, birds, birds.....

Ok. I know.  It's been a reeeeally long time since I've added anything to this blog.  We've pretty much been doing life, and when you get into a routine, there's not a whole lot to share.  I'll try to do better.

Every morning...well, pretty much all day...we hear the sounds of birds in the trees.  All with different  calls. Some singing, some squawking, some cackling, some tweeting.  They are all different and very distinctive...some much prettier than others.  Oh, I just heard some whistling, too.

And lets not forget the abundance of roosters ....  giving their wake-up calls at all hours of the day.  Pretty sure they don't have any built in clocks.

Until recently though, I had no idea just how many birds are in Panama.  There is an extraordinary wealth of birds here. 976. Yes, just under a thousand species!  In a country the size of South Carolina!

They say that part of the reason is that this is as far as many birds from the north can go, and this is as far as many birds from the south can go.  This is the "bridge" from North to South America and visa versa.

And we get the benefit of that.

 One day we looked out the window and saw that the orange tree was FULL of these beauties.

 And....One evening, about 6:00, we were having dinner on the patio and saw 5 or 6 of these toucans in the trees just beyond where we eat.  We've never seen them before, and haven't seen them since.

We have a whole bunch of these who come visit our feeder everyday...and try to stay out of Bandido's reach.

 We see these all the time....especially in the mornings, while having breakfast on the patio...perched on a line, or in the mango tree, or flitting around here and there.

 We've seen hundreds of these as they leave one tree and head to another....like a colorful symphony.

And these...I can hardly describe the depth of color.  The red and black both are like deep rich velvet.

This is only a very few of the birds here, and many of these we have pictures of, we've never seen, except at the zoo (yes, we have a zoo).  This would be a bird watcher's paradise, for sure.

I've often wondered which sound we're hearing belongs to which bird....then noticed the other day, that our nephews' and nieces' monkey (Mona) chirps like a bird.

Hmmm....Wonder what we're missing....