I left the Philippines on August 15, but I kept working practically up to the last day I was there (yes, despite what it may seem from my blog posts I actually was working full-time). In the end, I only had about 4 days to spare before leaving the country. Obviously I was going to spend that entire time birding, but I wasn't sure yet where. Various plans bounced around my head- there are lots of birding destinations I haven't been to in the country, so I considered places like Panay, Mindoro, northern Luzon, or the Dinagat Islands. Ultimately though, it wasn't a difficult decision to return once more to Senator Ninoy Aquino, my favorite birding spot in Mindanao and in my opinion one of the best places for birding in all of the Philippines.
It was a very, very good decision.
The worst part about SNA was, as always, the arrival. I left Davao around 8 in the morning, and after three different bus rides and a torturous van ride over bad roads arrived into SNA proper around 7 in the evening. It would have been a 6-hour drive by car if I'd had my own car, but that's not how I do things when I'm solo traveling. By the time I got into Kulaman (I prefer using the original name for SNA town- not out of disrespect for the late
martyr for democracy, but because I'd rather indigenous-origin names in general be used for toponyms...), there wasn't much to do except check into my hotel and sleep.
I was on my own for this visit, but I invited my friend Prinz, who works for the Vice Mayor of SNA, to join me for birding on my first morning there. The next morning, she and our motorcycle drivers for the day picked me up at the inn at around 4:30 in the morning, and we departed for Barangay Kuden. It was the usual bone-jarring motorcycle ride to the birding site, and we arrived just before sunrise after doing our usual check-in with the barangay captain.
Dawn birding in the Mindanao jungle is a wonderful and confusing experience; I easily heard 15 species of birds calling within the first 15 minutes, but saw perhaps 2 of them- not ideal for introducing someone to birding- it's one thing to tell somewhat that what they're hearing is a Yellow-breasted Fruit Dove or a Metallic Pigeon, but if you can't see them they're all just various kinds of kalapati (pigeon). As we walked down the road, Prinz and our drivers finally spotted something in the trees, but when they pointed it out I couldn't see the damn thing. It took a couple minutes of pointing and description before we finally all got on the same thing- a beautiful female Philippine Trogon, one of my favorite endemics. Just after that we saw a Philippine Pygmy Squirrel, a lifer for me. Endemic mammals in the Philippines aren't nearly as charismatic as the birds, but they tend to be even rarer thanks to over-hunting, so I'm always happy to see them.
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| Philippine Trogon |
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| Philippine Pygmy Squirrel |
We continued down the road as the sun rose, seeing some more good roadside birds like
Philippine Falconet, Whiskered Treeswift, and
Green Imperial Pigeon. We got to one of my favorite spots- the area where Pete, Irene and I saw White-fronted Tit on my
previous visit. It didn't disappoint, as we ran into a mixed flock of feeding birds- a total of 11 species seen in one tree, including
Elegant Tit, Yellow-bellied Whistler, Hair-crested Drongo, Yellow-wattled Bulbul, Everett's White-eye, Black-bibbed Cuckooshrike and
Rusty-crowned Babbler. Even better, I got my first-ever pictures of
Black-and White Triller and the Mindanao subspecies of
Stripe-headed Rhabdornis. The former is an extremely uncommon and rarely-photographed endemic, while the latter is fairly common in Luzon, but almost never seen in Mindanao.
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| Female Black-and-white Triller |
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| Stripe-headed Rhabdornis, ssp. minor |
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| Hair-crested Drongo- not a good picture, but the first time I've ever seen one with its "horns" erected. |
After our first big flock, the most charismatic residents of the Kulaman jungles appeared: a flock of friendly Rufous Hornbills that provided some nice entertainment. I got distracted by the call of a White-fronted Tit- probably the same individual I'd seen with Pete and Irene on my last visit- but didn't manage to get a look at the darn thing before it stopped singing. Less fun was seeing a few Colasisi perched on a bamboo rod- we were happy to see them until we realized they were tied to the pole, set up to trap any wild birds that decided to come by.
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| Rufous Hornbill |
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| Colasisi in a trap- not my favorite thing to see in a birding site. |
It wasn't all sad- we spotted a pair of Amethyst Brown Doves preening each other deep inside a bush. That's a species that's almost always heard rather than seen, so any view is a good one, and seeing them engaged in mutual preening without noticing our presence was extra special. Even funnier was a single bird nearby them preening itself- no doubt unhappy to be the third wheel. I heard another dove calling from the underbrush, which sounded tantalizingly like a Mindanao Bleeding-heart, one of the "holy grail" birds of Philippine birding, and one I was annoyed never to have seen. Unfortunately the much less exciting Common Emerald Dove has a nearly identical and since the bird didn't seem to respond to playback of either species I had to leave it without an ID.
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| Amethyst Brown Doves preening each other |
By this time it was late in the morning and the sun was getting hot, but we continued down the road to see what else interesting would show up. I had a good view of a Bar-bellied Cuckooshrike, the less-common of the two cuckooshrikes found in the site, and a much worse view of a Black-bibbed Cuckooshrike, which nonetheless gave me the best pictures I've gotten of that uncommon endemic.
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| Bar-bellied Cuckooshrike |
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| Black-bibbed Cuckooshrike |
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| A skimmer of some sort |
With the hot sun beating down on our backs, we decided to venture down a short forest path where I thought I might have seen a Celestial Monarch, one of the birds I most wanted to add to the site list, to see if anything interesting could be seen and to be in the shade for a little while. Bird-wise there wasn't much beyond a Hair-crested Drongo, but it was an absolute goldmine for butterflies and insects of various kinds, which are nearly as much fun to see as birds anyway.
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| Forest Quaker (Pithecops corvus corax) |
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| Hedge Blue (Celarchus archagathos), a Mindanao-endemic Blue |
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| Lorquin's Satyr, one of the more common butterflies in Kuden |
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| Hyblaea sp., a uniquely weird moth |
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| Neurothemys ramburii |
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| Therates fasciatus |
We also passed by an indigenous family returning from their daily bathing in the river below. One of my favorite parts of the Kuden jungle is that it's an inhabited forest- the Manobo people have been living there for centuries. There are certain environmental pressures exerted by slash-and-burn agriculture and occasional hunting, but the fact it's tribal territory is probably the only thing that's prevented big corporations from clear-cutting the entire thing like they've done in most of the rest of Mindanao. Learning more about Kuden's indigenous heritage is top on the list of things I want to do when I return to the Philippines.
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| A local family |
We braved the hot sun for just a bit more, long enough for me to catch a glimpse of another female Philippine Trogon, then finally decided to call it a day and return to a populated area for some lunch. The birding wasn't quite finished, though- I made my driver stop when I saw an endangered Pinsker's Hawk-eagle flying above us calling. At our lunch stop, I was sad to see a captive Blue-crowned Racket-tail tied to a perch. Racket-tails don't make very personable or friendly pets, and this one was clearly distressed to be tied up. An anti-trapping ordinance has been passed for all of Senator Ninoy Aquino, but it's a hard habit to break- probably the only way is to educate people on the unsustainability of hunting and trapping wildlife.
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| Pinsker's Hawk-eagle |
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| Captive Blue-crowned Racket-tail |
To be continued....
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I love the Hornbill and the super cute squirrel, but you saw so many nice birds and interesting insects! It's a pity about seeing the trap :(
ReplyDeleteI know... Seeing the traps is really sad. I guess it's slightly better they're better being trapped as pets rather than eaten (the local tribe doesn't hunt the hornbills, which is why they're so numerous), but it's the reason parrots are so hard to find in the wild throughout much of Asia.
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