Pajareo sin fronteras

So far I've never been in a position to fly on fancy airlines, but fate happened to work out in such a way that the cheapest way for me to fly from DC to Ethiopia to the Philippines, then back to DC, was via Emirates Airlines. I still didn't get to try out the famous Emirates first class, but it was still an unusually nice flying experience by my standards. Of course, that also meant that I had three layovers in Dubai over last summer. The first two were relatively short and I didn't get the chance to see much more than tarmac and Rock Doves, but my final layover on the way back from  the Philippines  to DC was a whole 13 hours long, which was long enough for me to get into the city for a little while, and see what all the fuss about Dubai is about. The first thing to know about Dubai is that it's an extremely strange city. It's located in one of the hottest places on the planet, a massive desert that no sane human would decide to establish a permanent settleme

My August trip back to  SNA  was a great success, and after that I took advantage of my remaining few weeks off before returning to school and work to properly relax for a bit. Of course, it was a whole three weeks, so it would be silly to think that I wouldn't get out once more to look for more birds while I wasn't busy eating as much chicken adobo and Bicol express as possible.  Nikki and I took a weekend trip to Baguio on August 24, mostly to enjoy some mountain air and do some food tripping. We did spend an afternoon at Camp John Hay, one of the better birding spots in the city, where we went for a hike and saw some nice endemic birds, including a mixed flock with Elegant Tits, Blue-headed Fantails, Citrine Canary-flycatchers, and Sulphur-billed Nuthatches, the latter one of my favorite Philippine birds. I tried looking for Red Crossbills and Benguet Bush-warblers, but with no luck- the rain we ran into didn't help with that. Elegant Tit Sulphur