Backyard Beasties

From baby iguanas, through katydids, hummingbirds, even a pit viper! The variety of creatures we can see without even leaving our neighbourhood never ceases to amaze me. My daughter, the nature nut, frequently brings home one or two baby iguanas for us to see, sometimes as many as four at a time! Here she is with her friend from round the corner – his ‘n hers baby iguanas.

And here is a very common sight in our house. A bit fuzzy, but you get the idea.

Luckily for us, this Pit Viper, a member of the rattlesnake family, very possibly the legendarily dangerous Fer de Lance, was not found in our backyard. But it was in our next door neighbour’s but one! Rather foolishly I went out to their yard to take some pictures of this intimidating creature. As you can see, it was coiled in a defensive/aggressive stance and ready to strike. A creature to reckon with for sure. This one ended up dead I’m afraid – sometimes it’s them or us, and if you google Fer de Lance (which I do NOT recommend), you will see that our neighbours could not take the risk of this potentially deadly beast escaping.

It is still a novelty for us to see six inch long insects, such as this impressive katydid on the wall of our house, spotted, of course, by our daughter.

If you look closely at this picture, you will see an Amazon parrot camouflaged among the greenery. This illustrates perfectly why so many of the parrots and parakeets are bright emerald green – they are virtually impossible to spot in the trees, unless you happen to see them landing. This tree is right outside our backyard, and these large parrots fly over our house, squawking in pairs, every morning and every evening as they go to and from their roosting place.

And, to finish, some nice soothing pictures of a hummingbird at our feeder.

Coco Solo: The Other Side of Paradise

Coco Solo – sounds like a fun place to be, doesn’t it? The name makes me think of piña coladas by the beach, crazy pool parties…

The reality is far from this, however. The place where Senator John McCain was born, once a US Army base, has been abandoned, and is now a hovel where children play in water contaminated with raw sewage.

Here, Pastor Mikey, a resident of Coco Solo who has adopted six boys and set up a kitchen to feed the children, explains life on the edge, and imagines a youth using a .38 to hold people up – if he doesn’t hold people up, his family get no money, his children get no food. He asks ‘Would you put down your .38?’. Easy to say you would, I suppose, but I would do anything to feed my children…. He also explains how many of the girls are pregnant and having their own babies as young as twelve, creating a vicious cycle.

It is very hard to see any way of escape for these people living in their rubbish strewn plywood houses, so near, yet so far, from the Manhattan-by-the-sea skyscrapers of Panama City, where people (including myself and my family) attend frequent pool parties overlooking the Pacific.

An inspirational Coco Solo photography project, Cambio Creativo (Creative Change), encourages children and young people to explore their creative side by photographing the areas in and around their home. Here is a link to a Global Voices article about this project if you would like to find out more, and possibly buy a photo or two to help support this ravaged community.

Global Voices: Online Videos Expose Marginalized Community

Dumb Vultures

On one of our many many visits to Summit Zoo we watched this vulture as it sized itself up in the mirror, before repeatedly attacking its own reflection.

These are American Black Vultures, very common here in Panama. As commonly seen here as pigeons are seen in the UK. Much as I am a nature nut, and love all God’s creatures, this is where I come close to drawing the line. They really are repulsively creepy looking, with their crinkly wrinkly heads.

Now, it might not be such a bad thing to be no great beauty, as long as you were blessed with brains by way of compensation. No such luck for these critters, unfortunately.

And again! You know, I could just do this all day!

Quite a Conflagration

An area just beyond the City Of Knowledge, North of Panama City is aflame as I write. The area behind our house, across a narrow river, is ablaze.

The noise of the fire has been a crackling phenomenon. Large chunks of ash are landing all around as we walk round our village.

Hoses are sending out 100ft jets of water. Helicopters circle overhead.

And, by the time this video taken from our bedroom has finally uploaded to Vimeo, all is dying down, thankfully. We can still smell smoke everywhere, can still hear crackling flames, and there is ash all over our back patio. But it seems as if we have been spared….

Panama Air Show 2012

This morning we made a last minute decision to go to the Panama Air Show at Howard Air Base, an ex-US Air Force Base on the other side of the Bridge of the Americas from Panama City. As we were meant to be Skyping grandparents at this time, we took the iPad and Skyped from the car on the way to the show, meaning they got to travel across the Bridge of the Americas, all the way from Glasgow.

The show was free – free entrance, plus free goes on Bouncy Castles for the children! Here is a DHL cargo plane, which was a nice sight to see, but I couldn’t really understand why there was such a humongous queue to get to see inside. We passed, as we have three youngsters who get restless in queues, not to mention me!

There were some very pretty biplanes doing death-defying stunts, such as loop-the-loops and flying across each other while diving and twirling down to the ground. I took some pictures of tiny specks high in the air….

And here are some of the biplanes on the ground. Very pretty…

I liked seeing this family sheltering from the baking sun under the tail of a little plane. This is one of the many things I like about Panama – in the UK at a similar kind of event, the public would not be allowed to get so close to the planes, let alone sit under a tail like this!

I believe this airport featured in the questionable Bond film, Quantum of Solace, where it stood in for Bolivia so it may look familiar to you.