Luzon, Luzon, Davao, Luzon...

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 spot pretty much anywhere except for this park in Manila, where there is a breeding pair that can offer excellent sites. I decided to make this my target, since I still don't have any decent pictures of it.

It took some searching, and a lot of sitting around in the undergrowth, but eventually I was able to spot a juvenile Ashy Thrush hopping around incredibly close to me! It was terrible light, but it was close enough and my lens is stabilized well enough that I was still able to get some halfway decent pictures. It honestly amazes me that the thrushes have survived as long as they have, considering how tame they are, and how many hungry-looking cats I see stalking around in the forest area- they must have better reflexes than they look like. Although either way I wouldn't mind if one of the locals decided it was time to cook up some adobong pusa (does that make me a bad person?).

Ashy Thrush

Unfortunately, the thrush got scared away by noisy trail bikers, so I continued wandering around the park looking at other birds. La Mesa is a great birding spot, but it's also one of the few "trails" that are easily accessible from Manila, meaning that beginner trail bikers make it their designated practice spot. I don't generally have a problem with trail biking or trail bikers per se, but for whatever reason the ones in Manila seem to think they need to shout as loudly as possible while biking, making it not exactly compatible with birding, or general enjoyment of anything. Nonetheless, I was able to see some of the more common birds around the park, including a pair of singing Philippine Magpie Robins, definitely my favorite of the Philippine "trash birds".

Philippine Magpie Robin

Orange gull (Cepora aspasia olga)

Ophthalmis lincea

Black-naped Oriole

Yellow-vented Bulbul

On the way out of the forest area of the park, I ended up getting lucky- I saw the Ashy Thrush was perched on a branch right next to the trail! I was able to sit and take hundreds of pictures as it carried on with preening, sitting less than 3 meters in front of me. There's definitely something special about close encounters with wild birds, especially when they're wild and unfed, and even more especially when it's a beautiful endemic bird like an Ashy Thrush.

It may have gotten a little bored with me taking pictures...

As I stopped for a breakfast of adobo and rice, I noticed a Common Kingfisher perched on a stick in the park's small pond. Common Kingfishers aren't quite as common in the Philippines as their name implies, and they're also absolutely beautiful to behold. One of my favorite photography subjects.

After my quick weekend in Manila, I spent two weeks in Camarines Sur province in the Bicol region of Southeast Luzon, training new hires for my project's survey and observing the rollout of the survey there. Training and fieldwork didn't leave all that much time for birds, but there happened to be a small rice paddy nearby my hotel that I spent a couple of evenings in, getting pictures of the more common birds- highlights were Paddyfield Pipit, Cinnamon Bittern, and Scaly Breasted Munia, much less common than its chestnut-colored cousin.

Red Turtle-dove

Juvenile Chestnut Munia

Scaly-breasted Munia

Cinnamon Bittern

Paddyfield Pipit

I also got the chance to see lots of rural Camarines Sur while doing fieldwork- not much in the way of birds, but lots in the way of beautiful landscapes. I occasionally complain about my job, but when I find myself hiking an hour through coconut plantations after a 45-minute boat ride past sandy beaches, I remind myself that I definitely made good career choices.

My office, sometimes.

Also my office.

Golden-headed Cisticola

Mount Isarog, viewed from the coast of Tinambac municipality

Grey Wagtail

Sunset on the coast of Tinambac

The best birding area I visited was by far Cabusao Wetlands, a fabulous wildlife sanctuary on the coast about an hour away from Naga City. In addition to a great wetland habitat, it has extensive mudflats where hundreds of shorebirds and thousands of migratory ducks congregate during the winter months. The nature preserve shows what proper enforcement of wildlife protection laws can do- there are flocks of hundreds of ducks within spitting distance of coastal villages, seemingly unperturbed by human presence. If that were the case here in Davao, or most other parts of the Philippines, they all would be turned into soup in the space of about a week. It was really a fantastic spot to visit, and it's unfortunate that it's not often birded, considering the vast diversity of birds that can be found there, and the well-maintained infrastructure. Certainly better than Candaba Wetlands, the current #1 hotspot, where the wetland areas are all in the process of being converted to yet more farmland.

Unfortunately I never managed to have a great experience there myself- my first visit, it took nearly two hours to arrive, as every form of transport I took to get there was late for various reasons. By the time I arrived it was well past sunrise, and swelteringly hot. That plus slogging through kilometres of mudflats and getting my clothing coated in thick mud made it... not the best experience ever. My second visit was in the afternoon, and instead of beating sun I was greeted by constant rain and strong winds, which led me to abort the mission far sooner than I'd hoped. Nonetheless, I was very happy to have visited, especially after seeing more than a thousand Garganey and Northern Shovelers flocked right in front of me, and a small flock of my Philippines-lifer Tufted Duck a little further out in the ocean.

Fisherman off the shore of the sanctuary

The path into the sanctuary

Garganeys in flight

Common Greenshank with a snack

Garganey

Whiskered Terns

Brahminy Kite

Horsfield's Bush-lark

More than 100 Northern Shovelers- right in front of a village!

My time in Bicol was unexpectedly punctuated with a quick trip back to Davao, for the best reason possible- birds! In early March, Davao resident and super-birder Pete Simpson managed to find a Chinese Crested Tern in Panabo, only 45 minutes or so from my house. Unfortunately, he was rude enough to find it the day after I'd left Davao, with plans to be gone for a month. I initially just chalked up to my frequent bad bird luck and moved on- mega rarities like that don't tend to stick around longer than a day or two. But then it stuck around day after day, and I realized that it would be foolish for me not to twitch it.

Now, a bit of context for those of you who (understandably) judge me for flying all the way to Davao just to see one bird: the Chinese Crested Tern is one of the rarest birds in the world. It was thought to be extinct for most of the latter half of the 20th century, until a small breeding colony was discovered in southern China. The population is today estimated to be about 50 (!) birds. In Davao, there was a total of 3 birds seen- meaning that those 3 birds represent 6% of the worldwide population of Chinese Crested Tern! It's harder to get much rarer than that.

Pete picked me up early on a Sunday morning, and we spent a good 45 minutes searching around the Panabo coast for any good-looking terns, to no avail. The problem with Panabo is the fact that terns like to sit on bamboo poles way off shore, meaning that unless you're lucky, or specifically looking for them, they're hard to find. Furthermore, Chinese Crested Terns are almost identical to the much more common Greater Crested Tern, with the primary difference being the black tip at the end of their bill. Finally, however, Pete spotted one through his scope, and just like that I became one of very, very few people to have seen a wild Chinese Crested Tern.

Chinese Crested Tern!

Horrible digiscoped picture... but when the bird in the picture represents 2% of the world's population of Chinese Crested Tern, it's hard to complain.

We spent a bit longer in the area, enjoying views of the mega rare tern, as well as other terns and gulls in the area, then headed back home. I took a quick nap and got some work done, then headed to the airport and back to Luzon, having both joined the exclusive "Chinese Crested Tern Club" and the "Certifiably Insane Birder Club".

Territorial Black-headed Gulls