Isla Escudo de Veraguas
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Escudo de Veraguas is an island belonging to Panama in the Golfo de los Mosquitos, Caribbean Sea. The 4.3 km ² almost uninhabited island belongs to the province of Bocas del Toro, it is isolated 17km of the Peninsula Valiente of autonomous indigenous territories with provincial status Ngöbe Buglé -. It was separated by rising sea levels after the last ice age about 8,900 years ago from the mainland, and was already separated from the mainland about 1200 years after the separation by 12 km of water. It has an approximately triangular shape with a length of about 4 km (~ east-west) and a width of 1.5 km (~ North-South), the western tip continues in some tiny islets. Only 5 % of the island surface are cultivated land, including some coconut plantations. The remaining 95 % are covered with Always Green Forest, to the east and west coast in the form of dominated by the red mangrove swamps. The rest is covered by forest, mostly primary forest, in the West, however, some younger forest patches of overgrown farmland. The landscape structure is determined by a series of parallel low (≥ 50 m) and shallow -domed hills, alternating with marshy lowlands.
The island is far enough from other islands and the mainland isolated that the populations of some occurring on the island of mammal and bird species that substantial deviations from the populations on adjacent land masses have some endemic, including the pygmy sloth ( Bradypus pygmaeus ), a inselverzwergte type of Three-toed sloths, and a species of bat of the genus authentics fruit vampires, Artibeus incomitatus. A total of nine species of mammals from the island are known, along with six species of bats and the dwarf sloth the Central American Wool opossum ( Caluromys derbianus ) and a spiked rat ( Hoplomys gymnurus ). The island has a species-poor for the region, but individual- rich birdlife. Wetmore observed in 1958 in a multi- day observation of birds 17 species, including three endemic on the island subspecies, Manacus vitellinus amitinus from the family of Pipras, Thryothorus nigricapillus oducus the genus Thryothorus the wrens, and Thraupis virens caestia the genus Blautangaren. In addition, lives on the island, a temporary respected as a separate species subspecies of Rufous - Amazilie, Amasilia tzacatl handleyi.
Francis Drake visited the island in January 1596 for two weeks, many of his crew members and he also suffering on the island at the Ruhr; Drake died five days after leaving the island on lake at Portobelo from the disease.