The Embera Drua Village:Two Thumbs Up!

Today students visited an indigenous Embera Drua village where the people live in harmony with nature.  “The Embera Drua community is located on the Upper Chagres River. A dam built on the river in 1924 produced Lake Alajuela, the main water supply to the Panama Canal. The village is four miles upriver from the lake and encircled by a 129.000 hectare National Park of primary tropical rainforest.”  On the way to the village students had the opportunity to swim in a waterfall before reaching their final destination to learn about the lifestyle and traditions of the Embera Drua. During the boat ride to and from the village students were able to spot Little Blue and Green Herons, Great Egrets, Amazon, Ringed and Green Kingfishers.  Students were sad to leave because the wanted to spend more time in this very peaceful village.
For more information about the Embera Drua please go to this link:

http://www.nativeplanet.org/indigenous/embera/emberadrua.htm

Please remember that we leave for Cocobolo on Tuesday and we will not be able to communicate with you for the next seven days.

Tiger Rat Snakes, Crocodiles, Monkeys...Oh My!

BCI Group

            The first full day in Panama was thrilling. My group and I visited BCI, a Smithsonian Research Station located on Barro Colorado Island. Our informative and adventurous tour led us to see many animals and massive trees.  There were howler monkeys, Keel-Billed toucans and even a tiger rat snake (Which Twan wrestled so students could get a better look at this interesting snake. Don’t worry we were instructed not to try this on our own!)  We saw a 600 year old tree that was really awesome, especially the bats clinging to the bark.  The leaf cutter ants captured our attention for several minutes and are the major herbivore in the rainforest.  We learned about the strange social behavior of ocelots at their latrines and Bryn and I are now on the lookout for Ocelot latrines in Cocobolo Nature Reserve to set-up our camera traps to capture this behavior. Overall the first day, has been a blast. I look forward to visiting the Embera village tomorrow.

Birds

Slaty-tailed Trogon

Violacious Trogon

Crested Guan

Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher

Gray B Martin

Great Kiskadee

Crimson-Crested Woodpecker

Tinamou

Magnificent Frigatebird

Agoti

Mantled Howler Monkey

Red-Capped Manakin

Amphibians

Leaf Frog

Green and Black Poison Dart Frog

Blue Morpho Butterflies

Glasswing Butterfly

Tiger Rat Snake

Leaf Cutter Ants

Other

Saddle moth caterpillar

Canal Tour and Miraflores Locks

Today, the other half of the group, Alec, Forrest, Zachary, Sean, Erin and I went on a boat ride on the Chagres River and Gatun Lake.  We saw lots of wildlife. The highlights of the trip were seeing the American Crocodile from the shore and learning about how Aztec ants can be crushed and used as insect repllent.  Here is a list of the wildlife we saw:

Reptiles

American Crocodile

Green Iguana

Common Basilisk

White-lipped mud turtle

Mammals

White-faced capuchin

Mantled Howler Monkeys (Heard)

Birds

Brown Pelican

Anhinga

Magnificent Friget Bird

Great Blue Heron

Black Vulture

Turkey Vulture

Osprey

Snail Kite

Common Moorhen

Wattled Jacana

Pale vented pigeon

Amazon Kingfisher

Keel billed Toucan

Social Flycatcher

Tropical Kingbird

Mangrove Swallow

Yellow-rumped cacique

Yellow-crowned Euphonia

After we had lunch on a small island, we then traveled to the Miraflores Locks and saw a movie about the Panama Canal, toured the museum and watched the ships go through the locks.  It was a great first day for the second group as well.

The entire group came together at the end of the day to enjoy dinner at Miraflores Locks where boats passed through the locks as we enjoyed a hearty dinner.

Blog Entry by: Raymond Tinglin & Alex Kricheff
Photos by:Alex Kricheff, An Wang, Erin O'Connell and Laurie Doss