Ever since my
first visit to the
forests of the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, Sultan
Kudarat, I’ve been itching to go back. Located in south-central Mindanao,
SNA still holds surprisingly large expanses of pristine forest
clinging to the limestone mountains. Even better, Barangay Kuden is below 1000
meters above sea level, meaning that it still holds primary lowland forest, the
rarest of environments in Mindanao, where natural areas are disappearing at a breathtaking pace thanks to logging and mining, both legal and illegal.
Thankfully,
I had a free weekend in late April, so I got in touch with my contacts in the
municipal government of SNA, who were happy to help out and learn more about birdwatching as a
potential tourist activity there. Also joining was Emelie Jamorabon, the
tourism operations officer of Tacurong City, who’s done wonderful things to
promote birdwatching in Region XII. Thanks to coordination with the LGU, we
were able to get a hold of a 4x4 vehicle for navigating the rocky roads of
Barangay Kuden- much more comfortable than the habal-habal (motorcycle) I used the first
time!
We
arrived in SNA in the afternoon of Saturday, April 21, just in time for the
daily rain shower! I checked in with the police chief of SNA- always necessary
when visiting the area!- then we moved on to the Kuden barangay hall. Kap
Marzo, the local barangay captain, has been an incredibly useful resource for
birding in SNA, as he knows a bit about the local birds and is happy to show
people around his barangay. By the time we’d finished with our courtesy calls
and getting settled in, it was already dark, so we settled for an excellent
dinner of fish and vegetables. There’s a very nice little inn in SNA proper,
but we elected to sleep in the barangay hall, as it’s much closer to the
birding site and saved us a long drive on bumpy roads in the early morning.
The
next morning, we started bright and early at 4:30 in the morning, so we could
arrive at the birding site by sunrise. We were joined by Mary Jane Peroy of the
mayor’s office, who was interested in learning about birding first-hand, as
well as a couple of other LGU staff and a small police escort. I brought some
extra binoculars from the Davao chapter of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, but the pressure was on to actually find some good birds for them. Thankfully, SNA always seems to deliver in the “good bird”
department.
We
stopped just before sunrise on a hillside near a small village, where I’d seen
hornbills and imperial pigeons on my first visit. This time, there were no
imperial pigeons, but a beautiful flock of Southern
Rufous Hornbills was there in the same place it had been the last time,
showing off beautifully in the sunrise light (though unfortunately always
backlit). Along with the hornbills, we also started the morning with a few Black-naped Orioles, a Philippine
Pygmy Woodpecker of the more colorful (and less common) fulvifasciatus subspecies, and a Hair-crested Drongo, likely to be split
to become Short-tailed Drongo, a
Mindanao endemic.
 |
| Southern Rufous Hornbills at sunrise |
 |
| Hair-crested Drongo |
 |
| Philippine Pygmy Woodpecker |
After the
flock of hornbills moved on, we started walking downhill, and were greeted with
a second species of hornbill, a pair of
Mindanao
Hornbills, though they remained too high up and shrouded in fog for decent
pictures. At the bottom of the hill, we arrived at the second “magic spot” of
the Kuden road, a stretch of underbrush along the road that I knew tended to
hold some good-quality smaller birds. The second magic spot delivered just as
well as the first one, chiefly with knockout views of a male
Philippine Trogon, one of the
best-looking Philippine endemics. I’m always happy to see trogons when
introducing people to birding- even a non-birder can appreciate birds when they
look like that! My birding companions from Region XII call it the "Ibong Adarna", after the Philippine
myth about a fantastical bird of the same name.
 |
| Philippine Trogon! |
Joining the
trogon were some other very good- albeit perhaps less charismatic-
Mindanao-endemic birds, including Mindanao
Pygmy Babbler, White-eared Tailorbird, Rufous-tailed Jungle Flycatcher, and
Striated Wren-babbler. A trio of Rusty-crowned Babblers provided
especially good views, eyeing me from a vine just above my head. Up above, Rufous-bellied Eagles and Philippine Serpent-eagles soared on the
thermals, occasionally being tormented by Large-billed
Crows, while a single Blue-crowned
Racket-tail squawked noisily high in the tree-tops. A particularly good
“heard-only” was Philippine Leafbird,
a very uncommon Mindanao lowland-endemic, and another specialty of the
embattled PICOP I was excited to have in SNA. Southern Rufous Hornbills, meanwhile, gave us even better views,
with one posing for more than half an hour with a large piece of fruit in its
beak as we happily filled up our memory cards with pictures.
 |
| Rusty-crowned Babblers |
 |
| Rufous-bellied Eagle |
 |
| Fun fact: hornbills have arguably the best eyelashes in the animal kingdom. |
Perhaps most
rewarding was returning to the main group after a short excursion on a side
trail and having Ma’am Peroy from the LGU point excitedly at her field guide,
saying “we just saw this one!”- a Southern
Rufous Paradise-flycatcher, a very good-looking Mindanao-endemic bird.
There are few things more satisfying than converting the uninitiated into
birders, and having them enjoy it!
We moved
further down the road to a third spot I knew of from the last time, with very
good primary rainforest. It was getting hot by that time and the birds were
less, but we still added some very good birds to the list, including Philippine Oriole, Black-bibbed
Cuckooshrike, Metallic-winged Sunbird, Philippine Drongo-cuckoo, and Yellow-breasted Fruit Dove. From the
car, we saw two endemic raptors of very different sizes: Philippine Honey-buzzard and Philippine
Falconet.
 |
| Philippine Drongo-Cuckoo |
 |
| Metallic-winged Sunbird |
 |
| Everett's White-eye |
 |
| Hoverfly of some sort |
 |
| Philippine Falconet |
 |
| Philippine Honey-buzzard |
It was getting
hot and the birds were very quiet, so we stopped at Kap Marzo’s farm house for
an excellent adobo lunch and an afternoon nap. Once we were fed and rested, we
continued on, driving through kilometers of depressing landscape- denuded hills
and burning vegetation, denuded by kaingin (slash-and-burn) agriculture. The limestone soil of the mountains there is unstable and
infertile, and newly deforested land will only be productive for a few years
before the topsoil is lost thanks to a lack of stabilizing tree roots, thus
meaning that farmers must move to a new hillside and clear even more forest.
There’s
nothing inherently wrong with kaingin on
a small scale, as it’s what’s been practiced by indigenous Filipinos for
centuries. However, with an increasing population of settlers in the area, it’s
become an incredibly unsustainable practice, and it’s only a matter of time
before the forest in Kuden is lost, if things continue the way they are now. Of
course, there’s such a thing as sustainable forest use; SNA is also the largest
coffee-producing region of the Philippines, and we saw examples of shade-grown
coffee in our birding sites, where the coffee plants can be grown on the
ground, while the natural forest cover remains undisturbed. Hopefully
sustainable agriculture and land use can be promoted in this area so that the
local human residents can benefit both from cash crops and from the incredible
biodiversity of their home.
Our afternoon
birding site was another large patch of forest, with huge trees towering over
the road on both sides. This proved to be another fruitful area, with some great
new species added to our day list, including White-bellied Woodpecker, Buff-spotted Flameback, Citrine
Canary-flycatcher, Black-faced Coucal, and Red Junglefowl. Best, however, were the knockout views we had of a Philippine Honey-buzzard, an endemic raptor that's very good at imitating a Pinsker's Hawk-eagle, another much-rarer endemic bird. While Pinsker's Hawk-eagles are at the top of the food chain, honey-buzzards have small, weak claws and smaller beaks, subsiding mainly on bee-hives that they raid. I assume that imitating a more dangerous bird makes them less likely to fall victim to depredation themselves.
 |
| Large-billed Crows in a rice paddy |
 |
| Philippine Honey-buzzard |
 |
| White-bellied Woodpecker |
 |
| Metallic-winged Sunbird |
 |
| Citrine Canary-flycatcher |
Satisfied with
a very, very successful day of birding, we drove back to the barangay hall,
where we bid goodbye to our companions from the LGU. I had originally planned
to spend the night in comfort at Dannah’s Inn back in the SNA poblacion, but
Emelie and I decided we hadn’t quite had enough of birding- so why waste a
perfectly good morning sleeping? Instead, we spent another night in the
barangay hall, having dinner and a very productive conversation with Kap Marzo
and his wife.
Monday
morning, we started the day early as usual, arriving in time for sunrise. We had
hoped to arrive in the dark with some time for owling, but the habal-habal took
a while to pick us up- the owls will have to wait for my next visit as well.
The morning was misty and unusually quiet, with the mixed flocks I’d hoped for
never showing up. Deeper in the forest, we did, however, have a small flock of Brown Tit-babblers, a number of calling
Mindanao Blue Fantails, an Oriental Dollarbird, another heard-only
Philippine Leafbird, and, best of
all, a quick glimpse of a couple Mindanao
Wattled Broadbills, a mega bird that I’d seen on my first visit and hoped
to rediscover this time.
 |
| Sunrise along the birding road |
On the way out
of the woods, we had a very noisy flock of Mindanao
Racket-tails, as well as more fabulous views of Southern Rufous Hornbills, including a male in the process of
adding mud to a nesting hole on the side of a large tree. Even better, I heard
a flock of Writhed Hornbills, the
third and rarest of the Mindanao hornbills, and after a bit of searching we saw
a flock of eight feasting on a fruiting tree some distance off, along with Philippine Green Pigeons and Scarlet Minivets.
 |
| Southern Rufous Hornbill at a nest cavity |
 |
| Blue-crowned Racket-tail |
 |
| Writhed Hornbill |
We
could have stayed out birding all day, but instead had to return to the
barangay hall to do some quick washing up so that we could go to the SNA
municipal office in time for a meeting with the mayor. Mayor Ecija is young and
active, and was very interested in our descriptions of the site and its
birdwatching potential. Hopefully action can be taken in the LGU and barangay
to protect this fantastic area from deforestation, and prevent the trapping and
hunting of native birds.
By
the time I’d finished my brief visit, the site had a new total of 81 species, a whopping 54 (2/3!) of which are Philippine
endemics and 21 of which are endemic
to Mindanao or greater Mindanao. That number has since increased to more than 100 species in my next two visits, and I'm sure it will increase more in the future. As the
once-great PICOP, the current go-to spot for lowland birds in Mindanao, is decimated before our eyes, it’s a huge relief to know that
another site with most (and perhaps all!) of the PICOP specialties exists, and
may even have a chance of being preserved for future generations.
Comments
Post a Comment