Hello! This is The Accidental Birder, a memoir where travel, birds, and love converge into illustrated essays. If you missed previous chapters, you can find them here or start from the beginning here.
“Hurry! Come on!” my husband, Steve, tugged my arm to get me moving.
“But army ants.” I whispered. “Why would we want to go where there’s a swarm of ants?”
“Because they’re cool, and I’ve never seen them before.”
I sat in the back of our parked car at the edge of a jungle in Panama, trying to decide what to do: Follow Steve and our local guide, Beny, into that jungle to find the swarm, or stay at what seemed to be the most logical, safe place.
Beny also realized I wasn’t leaving the car. “You’ll be fine. We will get good birds here.”
Another group of four birders—all men—was already there, spilling out of their car with their binoculars, cameras and scopes. Everyone was wondering why I wanted to stay in the car, but no one was interested in waiting for me to make up my mind.
We met the four earlier that morning over breakfast at our bed and breakfast inn in nearby Gamboa, a small town folded into the remnants of the former U.S.-controlled Canal Zone. The zone spanned about ten miles on either side of the waterway and, from 1903 to 1979, served as a residential district for American employees and their families. Now, the neighborhood was mostly abandoned, save a few residences, vacation homes, bed and breakfast inns, and research facilities for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
During World War II, when the United States controlled the Panama Canal, ammunition was stored in bunkers to protect the waterway from Japanese attack. This military zone—the Canal Zone—was also where engineers dug ponds to ensure easy access to water in case of fire. Though the military presence has long since withdrawn, the ponds remain, forming small wetlands on Gamboa’s outskirts and making birding both easy and accessible.
The U.S. also built a pipeline during that time as part of its defensive strategy. The military carved out an area along the canal to transport fuel from one ocean to the other in case the waterway was attacked. It was never used, but the relatively flat, abandoned gravel service road remains and is now called Pipeline Road—a well-known birding spot in Soberania National Park’s 55,000 acres of tropical rainforest that attracts 525 different bird species.
Just as we sat down for breakfast the men had begun talking about venomous snakes and a fellow birder whom the group seemed to know.
“Didn’t he run into a fer-de-lance viper when he was bushwhacking last time we were here?” one of them said.
“Oh right!”
“Yeah, they had to get him to a hospital. That was a close call.”
They laughed and chuckled at their friend’s near miss and talked more of other dangerous snake encounters. I focused on my eggs and toast to tune out the men who turned into young boys, excited about every slithery, moving thing. Steve chuckled, wide-eyed with excitement as they shared their stories. I turned my focus back to my breakfast, willing my body to ignore the twitch of unease crawling up my spine.
No one would blame me for not wanting to follow these men into the jungle to chase army ants.
There are several countries in Latin America that claim to be the birdiest—Ecuador and Colombia are likely contenders—but Panama is an isthmus, and it becomes a kind of avian highway, with the densest concentration of birds. Migrating birds tend to follow land or rivers, and they are funneled in when they reach that narrow neck of land at the bottom of Central America.
I contemplated my options. A swarm of army ants sounded like a waking nightmare. Yet, sitting in a car in Panama seemed hot and miserable. Plus, I didn’t want my husband to be disappointed that I didn’t join them.
“Hey, wait up,” I said to everyone as they were making their way into the jungle.
“Your pants,” Steve said, pointing to my ankles. The others had stuffed the bottom of their pant legs into their socks, so I did the same and caught up with them.
Beny was pleased and flashed his wide smile at me and said, “You’ll be happy you came.”
We walked single file on a pathway under the tree canopy. Everything was in the shadows, and it felt like someone dimmed the lights in a room. Usually, when birding you look up, searching for movement in the branches. But this time all eyes were on the ground, watching where they stepped, looking out for the swarm.
“It’s raining,” I said to Steve, wishing I had brought my jacket I had left in the car. It sounded like a soft patter on the leaves—not a full shower, but a gentle staccato.
“That’s not rain. Those are the ants.”
I froze. Once my eyes adjusted in the low light I looked down at the ground and it was moving as if it were alive.
“Be careful,” Beny cautioned me. “They’re all over the place. Watch where you step.” He explained how the ant colony works as a super organism and behaves as though it were one entity composed of several million subunits. A living current of countless ants—that was the sound I’d been hearing. It felt like they were closing in on me.
“They swarmed my grandma’s home recently,” Beny said.
“Oh, no!” I said. “What did she do?”
“Happens all the time here. You can’t stop them, so you just let them take over and then they’ll leave and take all the insects with them. Good way to clean house!”
“Whoa, this is a big swarm,” someone in our group said.
“Over a million?” asked another.
“For sure,” said Beny.
The ants marched with furious speed, not just in one group, but in groups forming columns that fanned out over the two-acre clearing under the forest canopy where we were standing. The formations looked like 4- to 6-inch-wide rivulets and tributaries of ants foraging and raiding the area where we were standing. Some trails were climbing forty feet up tree trunks and out to their branches searching for prey, such as other insects, spiders and scorpions. Steve squatted down near a rotted log on the ground and pointed at what first looked like just a mass of ants jumbled together.
As I leaned in to get a closer look I saw a living bridge of about 30 ants, each ½-inch in size, clinging to one another and interlocking their legs, to stretch over the gap. Bigger ants in the colony scurried across the ant bridge.
“See? They’re forming a bridge with their bodies,” Steve said. “These are worker ants. They’re the army engineers.”
Steve pointed to a larger ant with a yellowish head, three times larger than the worker ants. It was standing just outside the column, looking toward the foraging ants. “That’s the soldier ant. It’s on the lookout for any threat to the swarm and will attack it.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
The men chuckled all together. “Every eight-year-old boy learns this,” one of them said.
I was careful where I stepped. Ribbons of movement unfurled in unpredictable patterns, quick and erratic. Everyone but me looked for the birds they were expecting. I focused on staying out of the ants’ way, knowing they could easily use my leg as one of their routes.
We had come for the antbirds —shy, elusive ghosts of the understory. They are songbirds, but their names speak of ants: Ant Thrushes, Antshrikes, Antwrens, Antvirieos, and Antpittas. Their lives revolve around one thing—the swarm. Over 230 antbird species are known, scattered across shadowy tropical forests. To find these specialists, you don’t search for the bird. You search for the chaos.
“Look up!” Beny was pointing to a wasp nest 40 feet up on a palm tree. “They are attacking that nest.”
A column of ants poured into the opening of a brown football-sized nest that clung to the tree trunk. They overtook wasps and raided their grubs. In reverse direction, another band of ants marched down the trunk, carrying their bounty. It was a two-way traffic of terror as the ants piled on and dismantled anything in their path—scorpions, orthopods, other insects. Body parts were scattered like battlefield debris. A mantis leg, still flexing, was dragged away—like a prop from a horror show.
“Where are they taking their prey?” I asked. “To their nest?”
“Yes. It’s called a bivouac,” Steve answered. “They take their prey back to the colony to feed the ant queen and her millions of larvae.”
Bivouac was not part of my vocabulary before that day. Yet somehow, Steve, who had never seen an army ant swarm knew what it was and understood all the roles of the army ants. His curiosity and knowledge propel him forward, whereas I tend to stand uncertain, my fear rooted in everything I don’t know.
We were in the shade, but I was melting from the smothering heat. DEET mosquito repellent dripped down my face, stinging my eyes. We had only walked 200 yards, but it felt like we had hiked for hours. It seemed the best way to get through this was to watch what everyone else was doing. They all seemed exhilarated. The men were just as giddy as they had been at breakfast when talking about the deadly fer-de-lance. The only way to get through this, I thought, was to ride their wave of excitement.
Beny was still looking at the wasp nest with his binoculars. He knew that if there were grubs and insects being carried away, birds would be there.
“Guys! Ruddy Woodcreeper over here!”
All heads turned toward Beny as he pointed to a branch near the nest. The Ruddy Woodcreeper had arrived. Seldom seen, and like the antbirds, it follows swarms. Beny, who knows these jungles intimately and has spent his career looking for birds in Panama, had rarely seen one. It’s a woodpecker-like forager, chestnut-colored and fast. He couldn’t stop smiling as the bird darted in, snatched an insect, whipped it fiercely in its beak to shake off the clinging ants before swallowing the prize.
“Oh! I see now,” I said to no one in particular. “The birds aren’t here to eat the ants, they’re here to steal from the ants!”
“And also, to pick off any critter desperately escaping,” a man in our group added. The threat from the active ants sent so many insects flying into the air that it was a bounty for opportunistic birds.
Steve smiled and I could see that he was excited I was interested. “Antbirds are called obligates,” he said. “Their diet relies on following these swarms. See their thick legs? That’s so they can grip vertically onto trees and branches. They’re designed for this.”
My curiosity turned into understanding, and I recognized I was okay. At first, that realization startled me. Nothing in the forest had changed. The ants still surged in numbers too great to count, birds still sliced through the understory in pursuit of prey. But something in me had settled. My mind, now fed by wonder instead of worry, loosened its grip on fear. The tightness in my chest melted, replaced by a quiet alertness I hadn’t felt before.
More birds came in and the scurrying sound of army ants moving around no longer bothered me. I relaxed and watched the ant trails and columns move around the ground like blood running through veins. The swarm moved like a mobile ecosystem. It churned with disruption and design, pulling life from hiding and setting everything in motion.
It was violent. It was brutal. It was ugly. But it was also beautiful.
I could now see the elegance and ruthless efficiency in its organization. The swarm spread out with purpose, each ant with its own job, as if preordained. I stood in awe of the activity swarming around me.
Steve shifted his focus from ants to birds. He held his binoculars up to his eyes, scanning trees looking for movement. He occasionally swiped at his pant near his ankle to whisk away an ant or two, but birds were the priority now.
We all worked as a team, looking for birds. I was hoping to contribute but I still considered myself new to birding. I focused on just spotting movement in the leaves and branches. If I saw fluttering leaves or moving shadows, all I had to do was say, “something over here” and someone always jumped in to identify it. Sometimes birding is a solitary activity, but with a group, the more eyes you have looking for something, the more birds you will find.
“There’s one!” one of the men exclaimed. “Barred Antshrike!”
“Female!” he added.
I followed his finger to see the rusty-colored bird perched on a branch in the open, with a crest atop its head fanned with excitement. It was focused on the ants on the nearby tree trunk.
“Bi-colored Antbird!” another said. All eyes turned his direction now.
More birds began to come in.
Just as I got the bird in my binoculars someone would call out another bird.
“Ocellated Antbird!”
Gasps rose from the group. A new bird stood about eight inches tall, with a bare-skinned, bright blue face that glowed like a mask in the shadows. It perched low, alert and still, waiting for the chaos to deliver its next meal. This was no ordinary sighting. The Ocellated Antbird is rare, drawn only to the frenzy of army ant swarms. It felt like the forest had offered us a secret.
From the dim understory, birds with wonderfully specific names flew in fast. Next came the Fasciated Antshrike, Barred Antshrike, and Plain Antvireo. Then the forest seemed to release another wave: Dot-winged Antwren, Red-crowned Ant Tanager, and the Check-throated Antwren—recently renamed the Checker-throated Stippelthroat, because bird taxonomy apparently needed more whimsy.
After two hours, the hum of millions of ants disappeared. Their pathways dissolved into the forest, like something out of a fantasy movie. The birds followed the swarm, leaving us in the quiet jungle. We walked back to our cars and took a break, leaning against them while eating granola bars and apples. No one held back, recounting the thrill of the swarm like kids after summer camp. It was an enormous swarm, and everyone was excited about all the birds they saw. This would be another one of the stories they would tell over breakfast on another trip.
I admired the way those intrepid birders hiked without hesitation into the shadowed jungle to chase a swarm of ants. For everyone else it was easy. For me, it was a shift I hadn’t seen coming. Quiet, but certain. I hadn’t expected it to feel so right. What else might I say yes to, if I stopped bracing for the unknown?
Then again, I hadn’t crossed that threshold alone. Steve’s steady presence, Beny’s calm assurance, and the men’s wild joy had pulled me forward. I’d stepped into the unfamiliar and I didn’t want to turn back.
“Hey,” I said. “Let’s go find another swarm.”
This essay, “Into the Swarm,” won Gold in the Animal Encounter category of the 2022 Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing.
Wow!!! Okay. First of all—Panama added to my birding destinations list. Second—wonderful storytelling, Lisa. It takes some real guts to journey into the unknown. So glad you didn’t stay in the car. Sounds extremely rewarding.
Loved reading this story, so rich - the dynamics between birds, ants, and curious humans…truly fascinating!! 👏👏👏