Pajareo sin fronteras

For years, there have been reports of a strange endemic bird found at very high altitudes on some mountains of Mindanao. The supposed bird, which some have even gone so far as to name  Apo Myna is a big all-black starling with a huge yellow bald spot on its face, a silly-looking crest, and a metallic call that sounds like an extra-angry Coleto. From the description it sounds like a bird someone doodled in their spare time and decided to put a name to, but enough people I (foolishly) trusted claimed to have seen it, so I was hoping to catch a glimpse of one myself during my few visits to high altitudes on Mindanao. I looked for it  many   times , but never managed to find it, even in spots where others told me it was "common". I began to suspect that Apo Mynas may not, in fact, exist. Eager to prove to me that Apo Myna was a thing, and also just to do me a favor before I left Davao forever, Mindanao bird guide extraordinaire  Pete  offered to take me up Mou...

I was scheduled to leave the Philippines (at least for a couple of years) in mid-August, so by the time the first week of August rolled around I had plans to head to some of my usual birding spots for one last visit. Summer isn't a very good time of year to visit the salt pans in General Santos City, since most of the migrant shorebirds and other things won't be around, but it's still got a fun marsh area to visit, and the possibility of seeing some rare Australasian summer vagrants like Sacred Kingfisher- or something even more interesting, I suppose (spoiler alert: I didn't).  I took the bus to GenSan on the evening of August 4th, then spent the morning of August 5 in Barangay Buayan, at the moment probably the best spot for shorebirds and marsh birds in Mindanao. My first stop was the mudflats that the DENR is doing its best to destroy by putting in a mangrove plantation. Some good things can turn up there during the winter, but this was the late summer so the o...

After my  unpredictable but productive  trip to Camiguin, it was a long, tiring bus ride on twisty roads back to Cagayan de Oro city, where we spent the night before parting and going our separate ways the following morning. The plan for me was to take the long bus home to Davao and finally spend a bit of time back in my own home... but sometimes all it takes is one post on social media to rearrange everything.  In this case it was a couple of pictures posted on Facebook by my friend Eti Rene Vendiola, a  well-known conservationist  who manages a reforestation project on the island of Negros. He'd seen a pitta in his back yard, and posted some pictures from his phone, pictures that weren't clear enough to ID down to species, but clear enough to tell that it was either a Fairy Pitta or a Blue-winged Pitta, either of which would be an absolute mega find for the country. Great excitement spread among the birding community in the Philippines, and I began schemi...