Hola Amigos,
Glad to hear you would like to visit the Darien region. You are right, the Darien is one of the most exciting places in Panama to visit. It has more than 500 different species of birds recorded, including a couple of endemics and many restricted to Panama and Colombia in the Choco bioregion.
The easiest / most convenient way to visit Darien, as you guessed, is on a birding tour.
Of which we can offer a couple of birding programs both in the lowlands and in the mountains.
If, on the other hand, you don´t particularly need to have a bilingual birding guide, don´t care using public transport, or don´t need fancy meals, and so on; we may be able to help you as well.
Our company, Advantage Tours, manages the Chucanti Private Nature Reserve in the highlands of Western Darien where many of the specialties and endemics are found.
If you don´t need to go there on an official tour, you may just join one of our regular staff trips there tp bring in supplies to the field station or when our rangers are changing guard.
We are also currently building a new field station at the Chepigana Forest Reserve just West of the Darien National Park, quite distant from any area of potential conflict.
The site is really great for birding, with a couple of harpy eagle nests in the vicinity and macaws flying over the site. If you don´t need to join one of our regular birding tours there, you may tag-along on our staff trips to the site and enjoy the birds on your own while just paying a symbolic fee to cover meals, entrance fees, and the like.
Enjoy Panama.
Saludos,
Guido
PS. Quick note to advise that many North American migrants have already arrived in Panama. This last week we conducted a 9-day birding program (Sept 14-22) for some folks from the US and Australia and out of the 403 birds recorded, there were many migrants.
It was interesting to find mix flocks in the mountains with Golden-browed Chlorophonia, Spangle-cheeked Tanager, Common Bush-tanagers, large numbers of Blackburnian Warblers and Red-eyed Vireos. Also seen were Black-and-white, Yellow, Golden-winged, and some rarities like Cerulean Warbler and a Black-troated Blue Warbler.
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Guido C. Berguido
Biologist - Operations Manager
Advantage Tours Panama
"Adventures in nature with the local Advantage"
P.O. Box 0801-00051
Republic of Panama
Tel. 011-507-6676-2466
fax: 011-507-221-9246
e.mail:
[email protected]
web:
www.advantagepanama.com
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