Birdwatching in Panamá

Panama City has three protected national parks within its limits that tend to the birds nesting there. These parks also reside within the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, a conservation effort protecting the biodiversity hotspots. Because of this, these parks have become a haven for endemic and migratory birds. Closest to the city center – a 10-minute cab ride – is the Metropolitan Natural Park, a 573-acre sanctuary home to over 200 bird species. While trekking through the tropical oasis, you may spot blue-crowned motmots, lance-tailed manakins, wrens, greenlets, trogons, flycatchers, woodpeckers, toucans, tanagers, and collared aracari.

Find other birds like macaws, painted buntings, and parrots at Camino De Cruces National Park and its 4,000 hectares. The park connects Metropolitan to the 55,000-acre Soberania National Park, another prime bird-watching destination in Panama City. In Soberania, you’ll want to hike Pipeline Road, which, for several years, set the world record for 24-hour bird counts. You may spot flycatchers, woodpeckers, hawks, toucans, and rare birds, like the crested eagle and ground cuckoo. Other popular spots for bird-watching include – Barro Colorado Island, located in the Panama Canal watershed. The most intensively researched tropical rainforest worldwide, it is home to almost 400 bird species. Here, visitors might see and/or hear a toucan or two, slaty antshrikes, or a tropical mockingbird.

Beyond Panama City’s national parks are various must-see destinations for birding. Few places in the world rival the Darien National Park for bird-watching. Darien is the largest national park in Panamá at 5,750 square kilometers and resides in western Panamá near the Colombian border. Its untouched rainforests and mangroves are home to countless birds — the golden-headed quetzal, tanagers, toucans, oropendolas, black-tipped cotingas, and four macaw species, including blue and gold, red and green, great green, and chestnut-fronted. Since it’s a remote, underdeveloped area, arrangements through a tour company are strongly encouraged. They will handle everything, including lodging at a traditional Embera indigenous village, where bird-watching opportunities are plentiful. While there, arrange for a tour guide to take you on a jungle hike to the harpy eagle nesting site. The harpy eagle is Panamá’s national bird and one of the largest eagles in the world, featuring a wingspan of over two meters and claws that resemble those of a grizzly bear.

In Eastern Panamá, the Chiriqui province is a haven for many birds, one of which is the famous and highly sought-after green quetzal. Revered by the ancient Aztecs and Mayans, the quetzal is considered by many to be the most beautiful bird in the Americas. The best place to spot one is in the cloud forest of Baru Volcano National Park within the Chiriqui province. Besides being home to the quetzal, you may also spot yellow-thighed finches, black and white-hawk-eagles, black-thighed grosbeaks, and black guans. La Amistad International Park (PILA) is a bird watcher’s paradise along the Panamá and Costa Rica border. It’s the largest (and most remote) nature preserve in Central America and slightly more than half of the 991,000-acre forest resides in Panamá. The park is most accessible from Las Nubes, a small town that is four miles (or seven kilometers) past Cerro Punta in Tierras Altas. The park is home to renowned biodiversity and animal species not found anywhere else. The tropical forest on the Central Mountain Range, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, hosts over 600 bird species – 50% of the bird species in Panamá – including the beloved quetzal, the three-wattled bellbird, and the rarely seen bare-necked umbrellabird.