Pajareo sin fronteras

Few events have shaken the birding and bird photography world in the Philippines in the past year like the discovery of a freshly built road through primary mountain forest in Infanta, Quezon, just a couple of hours southeast of Manila. Suddenly, endemic birds that were previously extremely difficult, such as Flame-breasted Fruit Dove, Bicol Ground Warbler, and Olive-backed Flowerpecker are now accessible along the side of a nicely-paved road, just a quick trip from home. It's hard to know long it will stay like that- new roads in the Philippines also tend to mean new settlers and new land opened up for illegal logging and slash-and burn agriculture. But for now, it really is a fantastic spot for even the laziest of birders. This meant less for me as a Mindanao-based birder, as all those birds are still a long plane-ride away, but I still welcome the chance to visit the site on my rare visits back to Manila, especially since every time I go good sightings of the best birds tend t

Following my  adventure in Sultan Kudarat , I barely had a day of rest before starting on another week-long staff training, followed by a full month outside of Mindanao in various islands (and countries!). My IPA project, after all, has a sample area in the Bicol Region as well as Mindanao, though it's unfortunately a small sample. It was, however, enough of a sample for me to get sent to Naga City to train some new staff on our new survey. Before jetting down to Naga, however, I had a weekend in Manila to spend birding in some of my favorite spots. My first day there, I spent a nice morning at La Mesa Ecopark, one of the few remaining green spaces in Manila and a surprisingly good birding spot considering how close it is to the urban jungle that is the National Capital Region. The main targets at La Mesa are Hooded and Philippine Pittas (which I didn't see, though I didn't try particularly hard), and Ashy Thrush, a thrush endemic to Luzon that's nearly impossible to