A Mega Pitta and a Tiny Owl

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 scheming. 

I don't often embark in twitches, as I figure I'd rather spend my limited time and resources seeing the Philippine-endemic birds that I haven't seen yet. I'd done so twice before this, with... mixed success: once on a quick overnight trip to Davao to see Chinese Crested Tern, and once on an ill-fated trip to another part of Negros to see a Spoon-billed Sandpiper that may not have even existed in the first place. Would it still be there when I got there? It was a risky choice either way- I had the choice of either going all the way there and having the bird disappear already, or returning home only to see every birder and their grandma posting fabulous pitta pictures when I'd missed my chance. 

I'm not going to twitch it, but I'll look at flights just for fun.

Oh look, there's a flight for less than $40 from CDO to Dumaguete this afternoon. 

I'm not going to twitch. Flights back to Davao will be too expensive.

Oh, there's another flight from Dumaguete to Davao for less than $40. 

I'm not going to twitch. The bird's probably there anymore.

Oh, Eti Rene says the bird is still there as of this morning...

Some bad decisions are just too easy to make. And so it was that I suddenly found myself buying same-day plane tickets to leave for Negros. I had a final breakfast with Mika and Yuki, got as much work as I could done in the morning, and headed to the CDO airport for the 40-minute flight over to Dumaguete. 

Once in Dumaguete, I rented a motorcycle and headed to Valencia, a town up the mountain from Dumaguete proper, where Eti Rene lives. His son Leonard guided me to the house from Valencia plaza- I'd visited once before in 2017, but didn't exactly remember how to negotiate the twisting back-country roads to get there. I arrived in Liptong Woodlands with about a half hour until sunset- barely enough time to see anything. Still, Leonard and Tatay Eti seemed confident...

They led me to where they'd been seeing the pitta, and it took about a minute of panicked searching (what if it's not there? What if it flies off?) before we finally spotted some movement in the bushes. We got a bit closer, and suddenly out hopped a pitta into the open. Dark-yellow belly, white spot on the wing... Blue-winged Pitta! I scrambled to get pictures before it got dark, having to use the flash in order to get an ID-able shot. Blue-winged Pittas are fairly common in their normal range of mainland Southeast Asia and Indonesia, but hadn't been recorded in the Philippines since 1907- a gap of 111 years! 

Blue-winged Pitta

It was a true mega find, and I was lucky enough to be the first birder to get out there and positively ID it thanks to getting lucky with flights. It also ended up being the first eBird record of Blue-winged Pitta for the Philippines, I suppose because bird collectors in 1907 weren't terribly keen about using eBird (sadly, lots of present-day birders in the Philippines aren't too keen on eBird either). Most of the credit goes to Tatay Eti of course, both for finding the bird and for all the conservation work he's done to make his home a welcoming one for lost migratory birds. 

Bucket-list item down!

After confirming my pitta ID, I went to the plaza of Valencia for some excellent lechon (it's a little-known fact that the best lechon in the world is, in fact, found in a food stall in the Valencia town square), then returned to Liptong Woodland to try to see Negros Scops-owl. On my previous visit to Tatay Eti's I'd heard the owl calling and seen it very, very briefly, but never gotten a picture. This shouldn't be a surprise considering my many, many disappointing owling experiences, but I wanted to give it another shot anyway while I was in town. 

Leonard and I spent a very long time walking around and around in the woods trying to listen for an owl call, and most of it was a blistering failure- not a single owl calling, not even the Luzon Hawk-owls that are usually relatively common in the area. It was looking like my usual owl luck was holding. One silver lining was happening on some roosting day-birds, including a young Mangrove Blue-flycatcher, a family of Philippine Magpie-robins, and a Visayan Bulbul.

Mangrove Blue-flycatcher

Philippine Magpie-robin

Visayan Bulbul

Just as we were ready to give up, we heard the rasping call of an owl in the distance. We moved carefully over to where it was, and Leonard soon had the flashlight on a juvenile Negros Scops-owl about 2 meters in front of us! I kept the light on it just long enough to take a few pictures, then left it alone so as not to disturb it too much. Negros Scops is an amazingly tiny owl- only about the size of a dove!-, and seeing it up close was... well, one of the best owling experiences I've had. Not that I've had many good owling sessions. 

Negros Scops-owl

After a highly successful afternoon and evening of amazing birds, I headed to my AirBnb and settled in for a quick sleep before returning for another look at the pitta. Though I'd seen it the night before, I wanted to try again for a good picture, not to mention meet up with some other birders who were flying in from Manila for a twitch. I arrived at Liptong just after sunrise, and sat on the path near the bird's favorite corner, waiting for it to come in. The next hour or so was an amazingly intimate bird experience, as the pitta hopped all around me foraging for worms, keeping an eye on me but seemingly more or less unafraid of my presence, sometimes coming almost close enough to touch. I spent the entire time sitting on the muddy ground without moving, taking almost 1000 pictures of it. 

A couple of hours after I arrived I was joined by my birding friends Tonji and Sylvia Ramos, Rob Hutchinson, and Christian Perez, who altogether represent over half of the "500 Club" (people who have seen way more birds in the Philippines than I probably ever will). The pitta was a bit shyer with more people around, but they all got great views (and great pictures) of it anyway. It was a privilege being able to see the bird with other bird enthusiasts, especially before the rush really started. 

It's hard to stifle bird news in a country with a small but tight-knit birding community, and it wasn't long before the pitta was creating quite the buzz on social media in the Philippines- one of my pictures even made the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the national newspaper of record. Along with the buzz came lots of interest in seeing the bird, and lots and lots of visitors to Liptong Woodlands. Tatay Eti did his best to keep the visiting birders and photographers from crowding too much and scaring away the pitta, but the bird disappeared after about a week of celebrity, never to return. It's hard to know what happened to it, but my suspicion is that lots of people with heavy tripods and bazooka-style lenses ended up chasing it around too much and scared it off to somewhere probably far less safe. Some have suggested that it left because it ran out of food and moved to a new area, but considering it had been in the same little corner since March, my suspicion is that it had more to do with some bird photographers being prats as they like to do (ah, the things I can say now publicly now that I'm no longer living in the country). Sad really, since all they needed to do was take turns and sit quietly on the ground until it walked past on its own.

The rest of that day I spent working online, but as my flight out wasn't until the afternoon of August 1, I decided to spend my morning in Balinsasayao Twin Lakes Natural Park, a beautiful set of crater lakes in the Mount Talinis volcanic complex above Dumaguete City. I hired local guide Rico Meir to show me around, as I'd been birding with him on my previous visit and he's a nice guy who knows his local birds rather well. We met at the gate to the park at dawn, with Visayan Hornbills flying over our heads and Visayan Flowerpeckers calling from the trees near to the welcome center.

Visayan Hornbill

The Twin Lakes from above

We first climbed a small hill to an abandoned fire tower in an unsuccessful search for Visayan Rhabdornis, a bird I annoyingly still haven't seen, then descended to the viewdeck and canteen. That's one of the more popular birding spots in Twin Lakes, since it has a garden full of flowers that are favored by some of the smaller local endemic birds, that can nearly always be seen in the area. That day was no exception, and I managed to see about a dozen species of endemic birds just sitting at the deck and looking around: Maroon-naped Sunbird, Magnificent Sunbird, Chestnut-crowned Tailorbird, Balicassiao, Visayan Bulbul, Elegant Tit, White-winged Cuckooshrike, Lemon-throated Leaf Warbler, Yellowish White-eye... the list went on. Twin Lakes really is a fantastic place for birding, and it's a shame there's nowhere else like it in the rest of the Philippines. Luzon and Mindanao have much more forest left than Negros does, but they're not nearly as good at making their national parks accessible for birders and other tourists. 

Yellowish White-eye- this is the nigrorum subspecies endemic to the Western Visayas

Female Maroon-naped Sunbird

Male Maroon-naped Sunbird, endemic to the western Visayas

Female Maroon-naped Sunbird

Slightly ratty but still magnificent Magnificent Sunbird, another Western Visayas endemic. 

Visayan Bulbul (formerly a subspecies of Philippine Bulbul)

Visayan Balicassiao, currently a subspecies of the normal Balicassiao but a possible distinct species as the ones in Luzon don't have white bellies...

Chestnut-crowned Tailorbird, known as Philippine Tailorbird before it was split to become a Visayas endemic.

Elegant Tit

Commander (Moduza jumaloni), a Visayan-endemic butterfly

We took a short path down to the lakes themselves, hoping to get a better look at the White-winged Cuckooshrike. There were no Cuckooshrikes, but I did see a Spotted Wood-kingfisher and a pair of Visayan Fantails. I also heard a Grey-breasted Brown Dove (formerly a subspecies of Amethyst Brown Dove), nicely rounding out my morning and giving me a total of nine Visayan endemics (and 19 Philippine endemics) in the space of a couple hours- not bad at all. There was also some good insect life to distract from the lack of good bird photography options. 

Rhinocypha colorata, a damselfly endemic to the Philippines

Archduke (Lexias satrapes), an endemic butterfly

Some sort of beautiful ichneumon wasp

On our way out of the park, Rico and I stopped by the gate once more to see if the pair of Yellow-faced Flamebacks (an endangered endemic woodpecker) that occasionally used that area were around. They weren't, but I did hear the call of a dove, and after a bit of searching found a stonking Yellow-breasted Fruit Dove hanging out on a branch looking down on me, giving me an amazingly open view of a usually shy dove. 

Yellow-breasted Fruit Dove

Point-headed Sphenomorphus, a lizard that I think is endemic to the Philippines...

We stopped once more by Rico's house, as his garden often has good sunbirds and flowerpeckers in it. The Magnificent Sunbirds weren't showing off as well as they usually were, but I was able to get my first semi-decent picture of a Visayan Flowerpecker. They were recently split from the Red-keeled Flowerpecker, which is the most common flowerpecker in the Philippines, but are actually rather uncommon and difficult to photograph. It was the perfect way to cap off an incredibly successful trip- one of the best birding trips I've had overall. I flew back to Davao that afternoon with a memory card full of pictures and a schedule chock-full of work to catch up on. 

Visayan Flowerpecker

Psyche (Leptosia nina)