Give a Panamanian man a machete, and I don’t think there is anything he can’t do! Our neighbor hired a man to cut three of her big trees in the back yard.

This is the man standing up in the tree with his machete. This is no small tree as you can see, and he did all the cutting with only his machete!

At first we thought the loss of shade in both her yard and ours wasn’t good, but we soon realized we could see trees farther away that we hadn’t been able to see before. We have seen a lot of interesting birds in a bare tree beyond her yard, but one of my favorites is the crested oropendola. There is a male who has been there fairly often and putting on his very interesting display.

These are beautiful birds and so far, I only spotted them occasionally and have hardly been able to photograph them at all. They don’t tend to sit still very long. I have heard their calls also but never was able to see the display so that was exciting. Now, I need to find out where they are nesting if I can. They make really interesting hanging nests which I saw once elsewhere, but never in this area.

Life in Panama continues to be interesting every day!

PS I’m not sure why the video is embedded sometimes, and other times it’s only a link. The video is a bit of the bird doing his display if your interested in seeing it.