Bird Watching at Pipeline Road

Sightseeing  :  Panama  :  Panama  :  Panama City  :  Nature & Wildlife

Panama is home to some of the most beautiful and diverse natural regions anywhere in the world. It forms both a land bridge for many species and a bio-geographical barrier to others. The abundance of protected tropical rainforest provides a rich habitat for many components of the avifauna of North and South America. A veritable "Birders Heaven", Panama offers some of the best bird watching in the world and is home to nearly 1,000 species of birds in a small area of just 72,000 square kilometers; smaller than South Carolina. This is the perfect introduction to South and Central American birding. This beautiful and very accessible country offers a great diversity of neo-tropical bird species; many very difficult to find elsewhere. One of the expert bird watching guides will help you to find and identify hundreds of birds and bird's songs of the area.

Pipeline Road is perhaps Panama's most famous birding destination. It is 10 miles of secondary and primary rainforest, with a dirt road that snakes through the forest, passing a series of small creeks. This road is also used by the Smithsonian Institute as a research area. It is well known for its quality birding that includes Rufous-vented Ground Cuckoo, Speckled Mourner, Red Capped Manakin, Streak-chested Antpitta and Ocellated Antbird.

The entire 17.5-km length of Pipeline Road is easily walked. The first 7-km section is mostly level, whereas the 10.5-km section farther in is more hilly. Walking offroad in the forest is quite easy because the mature forest canopy precludes most understory growth. 
The narrowness of the road allows the tree canopy to continue uninterrupted, so birds are easily seen both in the forest and directly overhead. From 2 km onward, the road is barely wide enough to permit passage by a 4-wheel-drive vehicle; there, the road seems more like a trail. In that section, birds including antwrens, trogons, motmots, and puffbirds often are only 2 to 10 meters from the birders