Palawan Part 1: Birds and Bureaucracy

Ohhh, Palawan. Unlike most of the places I visit, it's a name that will be familiar to anyone who's done even a little bit of research about tourist destinations in the Philippines, thanks to its pristine beaches and spectacular scenery. It's even more of a magnet for birders both from the Philippines and abroad, in part because it's far less environmentally degraded than most of the rest of the country, and in part because it has a huge number of birds that can't be seen elsewhere.

Geologically, it's more closely related to Borneo and mainland Asia than the Philippines proper, being much "older" than the rest of the country, which was mostly created due to volcanic activity from the Philippine Sea Plate colliding with the Eurasian Plate. Bird-wise, that means that it shares many birds with Borneo that aren't in the rest of the country, like Common Iora and Crested Serpent-eagle, and has a large number of endemic birds, including the spectacular Palawan Peacock-pheasant.

For me, the biggest reason for visiting Palawan was seeing as many new birds as possible, especially the endemic ones. Kevin, on the other hand, had one target in particular: the Philippine Cockatoo (also known as the Red-vented Cockatoo), which has gone nearly extinct on most islands of the Philippines except Palawan, where there is a small but relatively healthy population still hanging on (more about that later). Thankfully he was willing to bear with me as I looked for other birds at the same time!

After making it onto our flight from Cebu to Puerto Princesa by the skin of our teeth, we arrived on Sunday night, with only enough time to pick up our rental car, check in at our AirBnb, and go to sleep. This was the only major portion of the trip we were doing on our own without birding buddies or guides, so I'd done some pretty zealous preparation, putting together a tight itinerary and studying up on my bird ID and bird calls.

Our first full day in Palawan, we woke up an hour or so before sunrise to head to Zigzag Road, a road running through the middle of some good-quality rainforest south of the city. It's known as being a reliable spot for Palawan Flycatcher, a bird that's usually fairly difficult to see elsewhere, as well as a good general spot for roadside birding (because there's something to be said for seeing birds a walking distance from your car). We didn't end up seeing Palawan Flycatcher there (spoiler alert!), but we did see a whole host of other good birds, including a whopping 22 that aren't seen anywhere else in the Philippines. Almost as soon as we got out of the car, we saw a pair of Spot-throated Flamebacks squawking to each other on a dead tree, while the tree next it held Pale Spiderhunter, Lovely Sunbird, Common Iora, Palawan Flowerpecker, and Velvet-fronted Nuthatch. In other parts of the road, we had a pair of male Palawan Fairy-bluebirds fighting for territory, a noisy flock of Common Hill Myna in a tree by the road, and a Chestnut-breasted Malkoha sunning itself at eye-level, seeming unperturbed by our presence. A great introduction to Palawan birding!

Zigzag Road

Spot-throated Flameback

Palawan Flowerpecker

Common Iora

Palawan Fairy-bluebird

Common Hill Myna

Palawan Leafbird

Chestnut-breasted Malkoha- a truly alien-looking bird!

Our next stop after Zigzag Road was Iwahig Prison and Penal Colony, another prime birding spot in Palawan. Iwahig covers several hundred hectares of land, including very good-quality forest, and is one of the best spots to see quite a few of the endemics, but it's also extremely difficult to get into, as it's, well, a prison. It's also getting more difficult- even just last year, it was possible to just walk in and ask a guard to get a permit for you, but they've since gotten a new warden who's decided to be much stricter with birders.

As you might have guessed by the fact that it's a prime birding destination, things inside Iwahig are a little different from most prisons. It really seems more like a self-contained village, with low-security inmates working on farms, making handicrafts, or running stores for others. And they really mean it when they say "low-security"- the inmates live practically right next to the staff, and they're allowed to wander around at will. I even saw one big, burly guy in an inmate's uniform walking around with a huge machete, with the prison guards completely unperturbed.

The road inside the prison on the way towards the headquarters has rice paddies on either side, which was coincidentally a great spot to look for waders, something we otherwise weren't going to have time to search for. There wasn't much interesting there, with a lot of Wood Sandpipers, White-headed Stilts, and Common Redshanks. By far the best bird we saw was a Stork-billed Kingfisher perched in a tree above a rice field, showing itself off to us- it really is a massive, spectacular-looking kingfisher.

Wood Sandpiper

Stork-billed Kingfisher

At the prison headquarters, we were shunted from person to person, until I was told to compose an official letter requesting access to the prison for birding. This was a more demanding task than it might seem, as some birders have apparently been rejected for writing letters that weren't flowery and official enough. Thankfully, I had a secret weapon- approximately half of my job consists of writing flowerly and overly obsequious letters to government officials in the Philippines, so I knew the sort of thing they were looking for. Once I had finished the letter, I presented it to the sub-colony supervisor, who was suitably impressed. However, it turned out that, in order to get a permit, we had to first pay an "environmental fee" at the Puerto Princesa City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO), then come back with the letter, so that they could then issue us a permit from the prison and apply for another permit from the local barangay.

After getting that bit of frustrating information, we headed into Puerto Princesa proper for our next good taste of birding bureaucracy. Our destination for the next morning was the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River, a spot along the coast north of the city. In order to get access to that, you had to first get permit at the PPSR headquarters in downtown Puerto Princesa, then get that permit stamped at the other PPSR office at the Sabang pier, where the boats depart from. The catch? The second office is a 90-minute drive from the first one, and closes at 2:30 PM. Since we didn't get our first permit until around noon, and we were hoping to take a very early morning boat ride the next morning, we had to immediately hightail it up to Sabang, rather than enjoying an afternoon nap like I'd planned to do.

The drive from Puerto up to the Sabang area is a beautiful one, with degraded forest in the southern part turning into lushly forested limestone mountains as you head farther north. Unfortunately, as we were working against the clock, we didn't have time to stop for anything on the way, not even to take pictures of the uncommon Changeable Hawk-eagle we spotted flying above us while driving. True to form, we made it to Sabang office at 2:29 PM and got our permit stamped at the last possible minute. After reserving a boat and checking into our hotel, we decided to spend the last few hours of daylight exploring birding spots off the Puerto-Sabang road, as the Sabang area in general has some of the best birding in Palawan.

We first stopped at an ATV trail near the pier area. In addition to being an attraction for tourists who want to spend time getting muddy while driving at unsafe speeds, it's a well-known spot for night birds and the Falcated Wren-babbler, a very uncommon Palawan endemic. While we didn't see any Wren-babbler (a bird that was quick to become my "nemesis bird" of the trip), we did see a pair of Palawan Blue Flycatchers and a Blue Paradise Flycatcher, both endemic birds. We stopped next at a pretty viewpoint we'd seen along the way, looking over bright-green rice fields and spectacular limestone pinnacles. While not a birding spot per se, we did hear Red-headed Flameback, the most uncommon woodpecker in Palawan, calling off in the distance.

Palawan Blue Flycatcher

The view from the road

Our main destination, however, was a site known as the "Sabang Cockatoo Viewpoint"- our reason for visiting should be obvious by the name! It took a little bit of finding, as it's basically just a tiny dirt path off of a corner of the road, with a short climb to a hill overlooking a valley with some rice fields and jungles. Once we found it, it took all of 30 seconds after we got out of the car to hear squawking overhead and spot a flock of Philippine Cockatoos in a tree nearby! While Philippine Cockatoos used to be common throughout the country, they were almost driven to extinction by trapping for the caged-bird trade, as they fetch a high price from aviculturists in the US, Europe and Asia. Today, they're considered critically endangered, with a population of no more than 1200 throughout the Philippines, of which around 700 are in Palawan. The population in Palawan is relatively healthy, as there are vigorous conservation efforts ongoing, but they're not common anywhere. It was a huge relief for us to see six of them right in front of us!

Our view from the Cockatoo Viewpoint 

Philippine Cockatoos!

Flush with success, we returned to Sabang proper for dinner, then went back to the ATV trail to try our luck with owling. Unfortunately, our bad owl luck had followed us to Palawan, and although we heard at least six Spotted Wood Owls calling, we never saw a single one, nor was there any sign of the two endemic night birds, Palawan Scops Owl and Palawan Frogmouth. We eventually got tired of getting lost in the dark, so we headed home to sleep for a while before the next morning's adventure.

Tuesday morning's destination was the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River, a river that flows through some lime stone caves before reaching the West Philippine Sea. Tourists go there for the river cruise and nice views, while birders visit chiefly for one bird: the Palawan Peacock Pheasant that calls the ranger station near the river mouth its home. Others who visit the area come back with glowing reports of having an entire beach and jungle area to themselves, full of good views of rare birds. Our experience was... less than spectacular.

We arrived at the pier area just before 5 in the morning, as I had specified many times the previous morning that we wanted to arrive at the underground river around sunrise. To our dismay, rather than being the only ones heading over so early, we found the pier area already packed with people. As it turned out, there was an event for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN-  it's like the EU of Southeast Asia, except even more dysfunctional) going on in Sabang, and the day we'd picked to visit was also the day there was to be an official event held at the PPSR. We watched as boatloads of other people departed before us, while our own boat was nowhere to be found. Finally, I talked to some tourism staff who took pity on us and tried to find our boat captain. As it turned out, he'd completely forgotten to take us, and was still asleep. In the end, we didn't end up departing until after 6 in the morning, well past sunrise.

Our grumpy mood didn't improve when we arrived by the ranger station, and found it already crawling with people. Lots of people in shiny vests and policemen with excited dogs isn't exactly a good way to see a lot of birds. We did see a few White-rumped Shamas and Ashy-headed Babblers, both Palawan endemics, and a couple of massive Palawan Monitor Lizards gorging themselves on trash, but overall the forest was nearly silent,but for the calls of the annoyingly bold pack of Philippine Macaques that live near the ranger station. Worst of all, the Palawan Peacock Pheasant was nowhere to be found.

Sunrise from the Sabang Pier

Macaques are cool the first time, but after seeing like 36 of them you start wishing they were birds...

Palawan Monitor Lizard

We wandered around the forest area for a while hoping to find something good, but nothing really new ended up turning up, though we did have more Chestnut-breasted Malkoha and Spot-throated Flamebacks. At some point we were nearly ready to just give up and leave the park, when a tourism guide approached us and excitedly told us that the Palawan Peacock Pheasant had come out of the woods and was feeding near the ranger station! The Palawan Peacock Pheasant is arguably the best-looking of an attractive genus (the peacock-pheasants), and also extremely rare throughout Palawan, as it's a target for the illegal wildlife trade, and apparently good eating to boot.

Thankfully, one spectacular male bird has decided to take up residence in the PPSR, where the rangers feed it rice every morning. He's been displaying like that for more than a decade (bird guides call him "old faithful"), and when he eventually passes away from old age it's going to be far, far more difficult to see one in the wild. Seeing a semi-tame bird like this gobbling rice just a few feet in front of you doesn't feel like a great way of ticking a bird, considering how easy it is, but we'd suffered enough frustration to see it, so it we were really just happy to see such a beautiful bird.

After finally seeing the bird we were after, we decided to leave the PPSR as soon as possible to get to some less frustrating places. We checked out of our hotel, packed up the car, and started heading southwards. We first stopped at the viewpoint where we'd heard Red-headed Flameback the previous day, as I recognized it as a place that often has Palawan Hornbill nearby. Sure enough, almost as soon as we got out of the car, I spotted movement on the hillside opposite us and recognized it as a flock of Palawan Hornbills! We had a great, although distant, view of the flock foraging in some pandan trees, then flying directly overhead. What spectacular birds- one of the best-looking hornbills in the Philippines, without doubt.

Palawan Hornbills

We also explored the forest area nearby in hopes of seeing the Red-headed Flamebacks, though we came up empty. We did, however, get good views of a few different kinds of Bulbuls, as well as a Pale Spiderhunter. We next stopped by the cockatoo viewpoint, which, although it didn't have cockatoos, did have a huge flock of Brown-backed Needletails swooping overhead- a lifer for me. Our last lifer for the day was a Crested Serpent-eagle on the drive back towards Puerto Princesa- apparently that stretch of road is good for roadside raptors!

Pale Spiderhunter

A terrible picture of Brown-backed Needletails

Crested Serpent-eagle

The drive back towards Puerto Princesa was our last real birding of the day, but, alas, there was more bureaucracy to be confronted. We first stopped by the Puerto Princesa CENRO to pay our environmental fee. I had to wait a while in the proper sub-office so that the appropriate lady could stamp my permit request, then head to an entirely different office to actually pay the fee, because of course it works like that. Once that was finished, we headed back to Iwahig Prison to actually formally get our permit.

As it turned out, getting the permit was fairly easy once we had all the appropriate documents, though we had to spend quite a bit of time listening to the Prison warden giving us an excruciatingly detailed account of his family history as we waited for the clearance to come through. Finally we met our guide and arranged for him to meet us at Iwahig the next morning. After the amount of work we put into getting that permit, we were really hoping that morning birding experience would prove to be worth it!

The answer to that will have to wait until my next blog entry however... stay tuned!