Pajareo sin fronteras

July was a period of hectic and exhausting travel for me: after my epic trip through Mindanao , I returned to Luzon, where I spent a week working in the province of La Union. I had no time to do any proper birding there (sadly- lots of spots that seem as if they'd have potential), but I did have a free morning the following weekend, when Nikki was also going to be in Manila. News in the Philippines birding network travels fast, and soon birding friend Gwen invited us to join her and others on a trip up to the Palo Alto subdivision in Rizal province, an hour or so away from Manila. The word "subdivision" doesn't usually conjure up images of amazing birdwatching sites, but as it turns out Palo Alto is still very much in the beginning stages of construction, which means there's vast amounts of empty land in the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains where houses will eventually be put in, but for now is some decent forest edge and open country bird habitat. Not the ...

  After my amazing weekend in Holon , I had a week of work in Koronadal City, South Cotabato where I did absolutely no birdwatching. All of that finished on Thursday, which meant I had Friday through Sunday off to go birding. Obviously I wasn't going to waste a 3-day weekend in Mindanao, even if I would need to figure out my own transportation as Pete was away in Mindoro. I decided that really, what made sense was to finally get back to my old stomping grounds in Senator Ninoy Aquino, Sultan Kudarat.  SNA has been my favorite birding site in the Philippines ever since I first birded there back in 2018 , and I've been working to put it on the birding map for the country ever since. Though it's not as easy to access as PICOP, the usual lowland birding site in Mindanao, it holds most of the same birds, and most importantly is not in the process of being clear-cut by illegal loggers. It's hard to describe how much more fun birding is when there's not the sound of chains...