Listening to the Forests

I was sitting in the bow of a narrow wooden panga, gliding silently through the darker edges of Panama’s lowland rainforest—a place where the landscape becomes blurred between water and land, where roots and reflection seem to trade places with each bend in the flooded channel. It was early morning, the air still cool and heavy, the light still soft. Howler monkeys roared from deep within the canopy, their guttural calls echoing like thunder through the mist. Amazon red-lored parrots cut across the sky in electric green streaks, their wingbeats as loud as their voices.

Then came a sharper sound—high-pitched, clipped, and metallic. A single call, then another. We paused our paddling. It sounded like a tyrant flycatcher, one of the many common species that fill the lowland forests with their short, explosive notes. But something about the rhythm of the calls made us wait. And in that stillness, a flicker of movement emerged. Just above the bank, a small monkey with a black face and white crest darted into view. Then another. Geoffroy’s tamarins. Fast, elusive, and suddenly all around us, leaping branch to branch, chattering softly as they passed through the understory.

This wasn’t a lucky coincidence. We had followed the bird calls. Or at least, we thought we had.

Geoffroy’s tamarins (Saguinus geoffroyi) are among Central America’s smallest primates—rarely larger than a squirrel, but far more elusive. Their appearance is striking: a dark mask-like face, a crest of white fur, and long limbs that move with uncanny speed. They travel in small family groups and prefer the mid-canopy, rarely pausing long enough to offer a good look, much less a good photograph. They’re easy to miss, even when you’re close.

But what makes these monkeys truly fascinating is something you might never guess unless you’ve spent time in the field: they sound like birds.

Specifically, they produce high-pitched, staccato calls that are almost indistinguishable from those of tyrant flycatchers—a diverse family of vocal insectivores known for their sharp, percussive calls. In the rainforest, it’s easy to mistake one for the other. But the mimicry, if that’s what it is, may not be accidental.

Biologists studying mixed-species foraging groups in Neotropical rainforests have observed a loose association between tamarins and flycatchers. The birds often follow tamarin groups through the forest, catching insects stirred up by the monkeys as they forage. And tamarins, in turn, seem to respond to the alarm calls of these birds—taking their cues from the creatures above them. It’s not quite symbiosis, but it is something rarer: an example of inter-species acoustic association, where two animals share space and communicate across species lines.

For wildlife photographers, that behavior becomes more than a curiosity—it becomes a strategy. The calls of a bird become clues to the movement of a monkey. And if you know what to listen for, you can find subjects that others miss.

In Panama, I’ve learned to slow down when I hear flycatchers calling from low perches near fruiting trees or riverbanks. Their voices often come just before a troop of tamarins moves into view. The monkeys follow the food, the birds follow the monkeys, and the attentive photographer follows both. In the layered complexity of the rainforest, these associations are often the only breadcrumbs you’ll get.

That morning on the water, I was in the right place—but it was listening that made it the right time. We hadn’t seen the tamarins. We’d heard them. Or rather, we’d heard something that led us to them.

The Naturalist’s Edge

This is the kind of moment that reinforces a truth many photographers learn slowly over years in the field: being a better naturalist makes you a better photographer. It’s not about having the longest lens or the latest sensor. It’s about knowing the forest. Knowing what that sharp call means. Knowing that tamarins travel in loose groups and often revisit favored trees. Knowing that tyrant flycatchers aren’t just loud—they’re alert, and their presence can signal something more.

Geoffroy’s tamarins are hard to find. Their home range is narrow, stretching only from eastern Panama into a sliver of northwestern Colombia. And even within that range, they’re easily overlooked. But they are not invisible. They move with rhythm. They forage with intention. They vocalize in ways that give them away—if you know what to listen for.

This is what it means to develop fieldcraft: not just to recognize species, but to understand relationships. To read a place not as a list of animals, but as an interconnected system. Flycatchers and tamarins. Howlers and parrots. Water and land. All overlapping in a living, shifting mosaic.

The tamarins stayed within sight for only a few minutes. One individual, I believe to be an adult female, lingered on a branch wrapped in a tangle of vines. That was the frame. The one worth waiting for. The one I wouldn’t have made if we hadn’t listened for the sounds of a bird.

It’s easy to focus on the gear. But sometimes the most important piece of equipment is your attention. Your ability to hear something subtle and wonder what it means. To ask, why here? Why now?