SNA At Last

 

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 chainsaws in the background all day, every day. While it's still somewhat off the usual birding circuit, I'm doing my best to tempt birders who don't want the usual PICOP experience to visit it. 

Joining me on my SNA trip was my frequent birding partner Cheta, who flew into General Santos from Manila. SNA was the destination of the weekend, but since we wouldn't be able to leave until the evening, it didn't make sense to attempt the 3-hour drive on dodgy roads on Thursday night. The obvious choice, then, was to pass through Lake Holon once more; I'd loved it so much on my earlier visit I was itching to return, and Cheta had never been at high elevation in Mindanao so it was going to be chock-full of lifers for him. 

I returned to GenSan the evening of Thursday, July 15 and picked up my rental car after dinner. I had been stupidly behind the ball in looking for rental cars, so the only option available to me that would give me a chance at the steep, bumpy roads of the Mindanao frontier was an enormous Nissan pickup truck that cost way more than it should. I consoled myself with the knowledge that I was at least getting a 4-wheel-drive car in case I needed to do some driving on the tricky roads of SNA. Of course, when I picked up the truck, the owner told me in no uncertain terms not to take it off road, as it was not a 4x4 vehicle. I have no idea why anyone would buy an enormous, gas-guzzling pickup truck like that only to have it be 2-wheel-drive (ok, well, I have some ideas), but I figured it was too late now, so I promised him I would only be driving it on normal roads. 

I picked Cheta up at the GenSan airport that evening after much more of a delay than I was expecting (sorry Cheta!), and from there we made the drive to our hotel near Lake Holon. On Saturday morning, we left bright and early and headed back to the Simedo Trail, my new favorite birding spot. Our first stop along the trail was "Lorikeet Valley". This site is much better in the late afternoon, but since we were only there for a morning, it made sense to stop to try for lorikeets. It was difficult seeing anything in the pre-dawn light, but eventually we had a Mindanao Lorikeet perched out in the open, letting us get some crappy pictures. We also spotted a pair of Cheta's lifer Buff-spotted Flameback hopping up and down the dead trees.

Mindanao Lorikeet!

Female Buff-spotted Flameback

We continued further up the Simedo Trail until we arrived at the usual sunrise starting point, right in time for sunrise. Things started surprisingly quiet for the site, with lots of flybys from the usual suspects (Stripe-breasted Rhabdornis, Cobbersmith Barbet, and one million Warbling White-eyes) but not much interesting. I heard the song of a Tboli Sunbird, but when we rushed over to where I'd heard it there were no sunbirds to be found. Our fortunes changed when we ran into a flock of Cinnamon Ibons perched unusually low in the roadside foliage. Shortly after that we had amazing looks at the local endemic form of Buzzing Flowerpecker and a confiding Olive-capped Flowerpecker. 

Cinnamon Ibon- currently considered an Old World Sparrow which seems bonkers to me; at some point they'll hopefully be promoted to their own monotypic family.

Some authorities split the Buzzing Flowerpeckers in Mindanao as Southern Buzzing Flowerpecker, but the problem is that the Buzzing Flowerpeckers in southwestern Mindanao look nothing like the ones in the rest of Mindanao, and also nothing like the subspecies that's supposed to be there. Another candidate for a split I suppose...

Olive-backed Flowerpeckers in western Mindanao are the nigriloris subspecies, which is distinct from the birds in the rest of Mindanao because of the big black line beneath its eye

Some kind of cool longhorn beetle (Glenea sp.)

We decided to try one of the side trails I'd been up the previous weekend, and almost immediately had some success: I spotted a female Tboli Sunbird feeding on a flowering vine, and was able to get Cheta on it, and get my only decent sunbird pictures over two weekends at Holon. A little further up we had an Amethyst Brown Dove feeding on a fruiting pandanus vine, and a pair of McGregor's Cuckooshrikes. We arrived at the same spot I'd seen ground warblers the last weekend, and I decided to try again there, which was even more successful than expected: after a minute of silence we suddenly had a singing male Long-tailed Ground Warbler explode into view, giving us the best views I'd ever had of that species- and quite possibly just about the best views any birder has ever had of one at all!

Tboli Sunbird

Amethyst Brown Dove

Male McGregor's Cuckooshrike

Long-tailed Ground Warbler

Eilema vestigiata, an endemic moth

Hestinalis waterstradti, a rare endemic butterfly

Therates fasciatus, an endemic tiger beetle

Dendrobium rhombium, a cool endemic orchid

Further along the trail, we came across a very large mixed flock with lots of birds that were difficult to photograph, including Yellow-bellied Whistler, Turquoise Flycatcher, McGregor's Cuckooshrike, the weird "T'boli" Mountain Leaf Warbler, Rufous-headed Tailorbird, and Flame-crowned Flowerpeckers. We did finally get great looks at a couple of Black-and-Cinnamon Fantails, one of my favorite Mindanao mountain endemics.

Black-and-Cinnamon Fantail

These Coptorhynchus weevils are surprisingly common at Lake Holon

As we started walking back toward the trailhead, we started to hear the explosive calls of Mindanao Lorikeets, usually only seen as bullet-fast flyovers outside their roosting spot. These, however, I realized were a little too frequent for just flyovers, and after a little bit I was able to locate a few of the golf ball-shaped flowers that are their favorite food. We advanced slowly toward them, and soon had amazing looks at a pair of feeding Mindanao Lorikeets, licking the nectar off of the flowers. It was the perfect way to end a quick but very successful morning up on Holon, and a sight that would have been considered an impossible dream for birders up until a few years ago.

Mindanao Lorikeet

We returned to the trailhead and got back into the truck, and began the long drive to SNA. The route to Senator Ninoy Aquino town (or Kulaman, as it is sometimes referred to by the locals), started off easy, on the wide, straight roads of the Allah Valley as we drove northward into Sultan Kudarat province. We were delayed along the way by a washed-out bridge over the Allah River, which meant we had to take an hour-long detour north to the town of Esperanza, where the proper national highway crossed the river. In the town of Bagumbayan, the road suddenly went from straight and flat to steep and twisty, winding its way up a precipitous fault-block escarpment to the plateau where SNA is located. The drive became a bit worrying as we drove through several torrential rainstorms, watching the rivers crossing under the road growing higher and stronger and picking our way around the remains of recent landslides. Things were a bit easier on the plateau, but nonetheless involved driving carefully around large sections of road that had slumped or fallen away completely due to the unstable limestone geology of the area.

Still, we made it into SNA town in time to make it to the municipal office, where I said hello to my old friends Mary Jane the tourism officer, and Roy who had been my guide on my previous visit and was guiding us again this time. We still had an hour before sunset and our rooms at the local inn were already reserved, so we decided to head even further westwards to explore the newly-constructed highway crossing the Daguma Mountains to the town of Kalimansig on the west coast of Mindanao. Parts of that road went through some nice-looking forest at about 1,000 meters above sea level, so I was curious to check it out and see what birds it held.

West of SNA town we climbed upwards once more, though thankfully on much better roads. Most of the area has been completely deforested thanks to logging and multiple waves of settlers from Luzon and the Visayas over the past 50 years, leaving it a bleak landscape of scrubby cornfields and denuded hillsides. Once we got high enough, however, the road began cutting through some bits of beautiful old-growth forest. This is, of course, a bad thing: the signs of new deforestation were all around as farmers- both settlers and indigenous- were taking advantage of the new accessibility to clear-cut forest and attempt to plant corn in the meager soil, which of course will erode away within a couple years in the absence of forest cover and lead to them cutting even more trees down. It's the sort of thing that worked fine when the area was inhabited only by a few thousand indigenous people, but these days is an environmental catastrophe that's destroying the few remaining forests of the Philippines, and it's aided and abetted by the indiscriminate construction of highways the government is in love with these days. In the short term, however, it means we can drive right up to some amazing habitat.

The roadside forests of western Sultan Kudarat- beautiful if you can ignore the rampant deforestation.

We only had a half hour or so of daylight, so we got out of the car and started walking around at the first bit of good forest we found. It was about 900 meters above sea level, high enough that some mountain birds theoretically should have been there, but everything we got was also found at lower elevations: many Philippine Swiftlets, a calling Philippine Leafbird and (surprisingly) a Spotted Imperial Pigeon, and a pair of screaming Buff-spotted Flamebacks. It was too dark for me to try getting pictures, but we did happen across a distant flock of Southern Rufous Hornbills, their thunderous calls echoing through the forest. The whole thing was made somewhat less enjoyable by happening across a group of local youths toting airguns I'm sure they were using to try and shoot hornbills, pigeons, and other wild birds. 

Mountain forest with Rufous Hornbills

Since it was already getting dark, we decided we might as well stay and try for some owls. It was sort of a success: we had a Giant Scops Owl calling quite close to the road and responding to my tape, but it remained completely hidden, invisible even to my thermal scope. I did manage to find a Philippine Flying Lemur, a cool endemic mammal (and the favorite food of Philippine Eagles), but not much besides that. Just to make things more fun, I managed to fall into a drainage canal in the dark, giving me some nice bloody scrapes and bruises for my trouble. 

A bit disappointed but happy to be in, we returned to Princess Dannah's Inn in SNA town to check in. Sultan Kudarat, and Mindanao as a whole, seems to have been hit badly by the pandemic and its economic effects, particularly the loss of tourism. SNA was no exception, and the inn was noticeably more run-down than it had been in my previous visits. Still, the beds were nice and comfortable and the air conditioning (and the shower!) were nice and cold, so it was all we needed. The bonus of staying at Dannah's is that it's oddly good at attracting moths, which obviously I was happy to go through and photograph. Someday I'll have my act together enough to run a proper moth sheet in SNA, but it's a decent substitute.

Cricula mindanensis

Hamodes sp.

Bolebotiinae sp.

Scopariinae sp.

Erebus clavifera

The next morning we arose before dawn to head to Barangay Kuden, where the remaining lowland forests of SNA can be found. We met Roy at the barangay hall, then headed to the forest area in my rented truck. Originally my plan was to keep my word to the car rental guy and take a habal-habal (motorcycle) into the forest. However, Roy assured me that I would be able to make it in my truck even if it wasn't a 4x4. This was... mostly the case.

In my previous visits to SNA, the road through the forest had been occasionally bumpy but overall a well-maintained gravel road. However, in the intervening time the local government decided to end its relationship with the logging conglomerate that previously owned the forest area. That, to be clear, is a very good thing as it means that the forest is not going to be clear-cut, at least not in the near future. The only downside is that it means that the logging company is also not maintaining the roads, which in the past few years have become notably scarier: a mess of deep mud, enormous potholes, and slippery sand and gravel. I have just enough off-road experience, and the truck was just high enough clearance, that I was able to navigate the roads in the dark without major incidence, but I spent the rest of the day terrified I wasn't going to be able to make it back up the hill to the town, and would have to explain to the rental folks why their truck was currently being towed out of a mud pit 20 kilometers from the nearest paved road.

We met our local guide in Tamangan, the indigenous village adjacent to the forest edge, and continued on another 2 kilometers before we parked at one of my usual spots and started birding. It was, like most early mornings in Kuden, nice and foggy, which limited visibility. The usual Yellow-breasted Fruit Doves and Green Imperial Pigeons were calling, and we could hear Mindanao Blue Fantails and Yellow-bellied Whistlers calling from the undergrowth beside the road. On a whim I decided to troll some playback of one of our long-shot targets and it worked like a charm: within 10 seconds we had a brilliant male Blue-capped Wood Kingfisher perched right in front of us! It was my best-ever view of this extremely uncommon and shy Mindanao endemic, a lifer for Cheta, and an amazing way to start off our birding in SNA.

Blue-capped Kingfisher! This time with a photobombing Orange-bellied Flowerpecker

Our starting spot proved to be good for lots of birds: right after the kingfisher flew off we had a group fo noisily singing Rufous Paradise-flycatchers, and a mixed flock with blue fantails, whistlers, and Mindanao Pygmy Babblers. We also heard a singing Little Slaty Flycatcher, which was a new bird for SNA, and a calling Azure-breasted Pitta, which I rather regret not going to try and photograph.A little down the road, we saw a gorgeous male Philippine Trogon and had a number of endemic sunbirds and other small birds, including Orange-lined Sunbird, Metallic-winged Sunbird, Elegant Tit, and Philippine Leaf Warbler. 

Rufous Paradise-flycatcher

Annoyingly enough my only picture of Mindanao Pygmy Babbler

Philippine Trogon

Philippine Falconet

Cosmoscarta semimaculata, a beautiful endemic froghopper

Activity slowed down as the sun got higher and the temperature rose with it, but the birds were still around: calling Philippine Leafbirds and Black-bibbed Cuckooshrikes, screaming Blue-crowned Racket-tails, and the usual Coletos and Bar-bellied Cuckooshrikes. A soaring immature Philippine Serpent-eagle was our only large raptor of the day. Walking back to the car to drive to the next site, we had a surprise Handsome Sunbird, another first record for SNA, and a small flock of Scarlet Minivets, of the bright-yellow western Mindanao subspecies. 

Female Scarlet Minivet

Philippine Serpent Eagle

My crappy record shot of Handsome Sunbird

Common Mapwing (Cyrestis maenalis)

Lacewing (Cethosia luzonica)

The Kuden birding road

We got back in the truck and continued down the road for another kilometer or so, a drive that was thankfully less scary than what it had been going in. We stopped at a little house by the edge of the road, where the local indigenous leader Pastor Egew and some other folks from the Dulangan Manobo tribe were hanging out. It was starting to rain a little bit, so we took shelter inside and had fun talking with the tribal elders about the local birds and showing them the pictures we had been taking. When the rain paused we headed out to try and get a look at the White-eared Tailorbird that had been singing nearby us. With a bit of work we were able to get great looks (and bad pictures) of this range-restricted Mindanao endemic, one of the emblematic birds of the forests of SNA. A little mixed flock came through, including more Rufous Paradise-flycatchers and a surprise Philippine Tree Squirrel, and a pair of Blue-crowned Racket-tails perched in a distant tree.

White-eared Tailorbird- another awful record shot

Blue-crowned Racket-tails- also a crappy record shot

Everett's White-eye

Philippine Tree Squirrel

Caleta argola

Orange Skimmer

Some kind of pill millipede

The rain seemed to be letting up, so we decided to continue walking down the road, even though in my experience this bit of forest had never been particularly good. Indeed, it was pretty quiet to begin with, without much except for an oddly large flock of noisy Coletos. Just as we were about to turn around and head back, we heard a strange call coming from the undergrowth next to us. We both recognized it must be something good, but Cheta was the first one to see the bird- Mindanao Wattled Broadbill! One of the most sought-after endemics in the Philippines and a major target for anyone visiting SNA or PICOP, it was thrilling to finally connect with one after many years- a reminder that SNA really does have some of the best birding in the country. The bird stayed around just long enough for me to get a record shot, but it was still enough to be one of the best birds of the year for both of us.

Mindanao Wattled Broadbill

As we walked back toward the car, the weather began to take a turn for the worse. It had been partly cloudy with a few showers in the morning, but now the downpours started, leaving us sprinting back along the road looking for cover (and me without my umbrella). This had me worried about if the road back uphill to the town would even be drivable for my disappointing 2-wheel-drive truck, so we decided to start heading back. 

We stopped for lunch back at Tamangan courtesy of Pastor Egew's wife, and watched the rain falling and the roads getting even muddier. We debated staying in the area for a nap and doing some afternoon birding, which is my usual plan in SNA, or heading back to our hotel. I was nervous enough about the drive back that I ultimately decided that we should go back now before the roads got even worse. This proved to be the correct choice, as it never stopped raining the rest of the day. The ride home was indeed a scary one, with my silly truck barely able to make it up several of the steeper hills. It didn't help that the Department of Public Works was engaged in "road improvement", which for some reason involved dumping vast amounts of sand on the road which immediately becomes a driving hazard. 

Back at the hotel, we took a nap and then loafed around waiting in vain for the rain to stop. Eventually we gave up waiting and decided to head back up the mountain to the area we had been the previous day in hopes that the weather would improve and we could look for some high-elevation birds. We got to a parking spot at 1200 meters above sea level with a nice overlook over a recently-deforested valley, already flooding thanks to the lack of tree cover. It probably would have been a nice spot to see birds, but the rain simply never stopped and we saw nothing except for a few Ridgetop Swiftlets. After an hour of waiting we eventually gave up and headed back downhill once again.

Our valley lookout- a few years ago this was probably all forest.

The silly 2-wheel-drive truck

The next morning, we left at 4AM so that we could get back to Kuden in time for owling. Roy met us at our inn, and we drove back into Kuden, picking up Pastor Egew along the way so that he could join us for birding. I was willing to give the roads another try, but they were even scarier than they had been the day before: 12 hours of rain and heavy "road improvement" machinery driving across them had turned them into mush, and a bit before the birding site I managed to get the truck stuck in the mud. Thankfully we were able to get it out and found a safe route after a few tries, but it was not really the adrenaline boost that I wanted in the morning. Once I return I'll certainly do it with a proper 4x4, not a vanity gas-guzzler that's good for nothing except mowing down pedestrians on crosswalks. 

Trying to get unstuck in scary roads- video by Cheta

We arrived at our starting point at about 4:45, just enough time to look for some owls before it got light. We had a calling Giant Scops Owl and Everett's Scops-owl, but annoyingly enough the Giant Scops still neglected to show itself. On the other hand, we were easily able to tempt in a Chocolate Boobook that came in for a few pictures before flying off again.

Chocolate Boobook, one of the less-common endemic owls

It was, once again, a foggy morning that limited visibility and made it hard to look for classic early morning birds like hornbills and pigeons. We had a calling Writhed Hornbill and a brief look at a flock of Southern Rufous Hornbills, but most besides that was obscured in the fog. As we walked further on the road, we heard a repetitive cooing call from the valley beside us. We both instantly realized what it was- Mindanao Bleeding-heart! We clambered our way through the undergrowth until we could get to a decent vantage point, but despite getting two different birds responding to playback we never saw them- the typical bleeding-heart experience (with rare exceptions). We also heard Mindanao Wattled Broadbill calling but never saw it.

Sadly my only picture of Southern Rufous Hornbill from this trip

Calling Mindanao Bleeding-heart in the valley- video courtesy of Cheta

Eventually we gave up and kept walking down the road. There were a couple of Mindanao Hornbills perched in the open, and further on we had good looks at a Philippine Drongo-cuckoo and another immature bird that had me thinking it was a Violet Cuckoo but just turned out to be another drongo-cuckoo in weird plumage. We heard a calling Metallic Pigeon that never showed itself, along with lots of more-common birds like Green Imperial Pigeons and Blue-crowned Racket-tails. I tried for Azure-breasted Pitta in a spot I'd had good looks on my last visit in 2019, but apparently that bird had moved on or died since I got no response despite trying fairly hard.

Male Mindanao Hornbill

Philippine Drongo-cuckoo

Immature Philippine Drongo-cuckoo

Hasora mixta, a cool endemic skipper

Roy and Pastor Egew directed us to go down a side road that I knew didn't really have much forest. I had been hoping to head down my usual route, but they were insistent that they had seen lots of birds there recently. We got to the edge of the forest into an recently-deforested area where some local farmers were attempting to plant corn in the meager soil. It's hard to fault the indigenous peoples when they've been doing kaingin (slash-and-burn agriculture) like this for centuries or millennia, but it's the sort of thing that's become unsustainable when there's almost no forest left to regenerate and settlers are grabbing land from the IPs left and right so they can do more clear-cutting.

My hopes of seeing good birds in this bit were very low, so you can imagine my surprise when a small, dark-grey bird perched in a dead tree in the clearing and I realized it was a White-fronted Tit! SNA is, so far as we know, the only place in Mindanao with a remaining population of White-fronted Tits, one of the rarest Philippine endemics. It was a huge lifer for Cheta, and another top-notch bird for the trip list and my year list. It was a female bird, and it flew off before we could get a picture. Playback doesn't seem to work well on the Mindanao birds- I suspect because it's a different subspecies (or plausibly a different species), and has a slightly different song. 

We continued onwards to a nice lookout spot that I'd had hornbills and raptors at before. There were no raptors, but we did get a good look at an Oriental Dollarbird and a surprisingly large flock of male Mindanao Hornbills. A bit further on was a flowering tree with lots of Orange-bellied Flowerpeckers, Pygmy Flowerpeckers, and Bicolored Flowerpeckers, as well as a very confiding male Metallic-winged Sunbird. 

Oriental Dollarbird

Male Metallic-winged Sunbird

Boy's club of male Mindanao Hornbills

SNA is the sort of place I could stay at for a week, exploring new spots and trying for better pictures of difficult birds, but sadly we had to leave by mid-morning to catch our flights out of GenSan that evening. We started heading back toward the truck, birding as we went of course. As we re-entered the good forest, I heard the chirping calls of Southern Black-and-white Triller and after a bit of effort was able to tempt a beautiful male bird into view for the best looks at this species I'd ever had. In the same spot we also had a distant Spotted Imperial Pigeon (SNA is the only spot in Mindanao where this species can reliably be seen) and had a flyover from a surprisingly large group of Oriental Dollarbirds. 

Southern Black-and-white Triller

Barely-visible Spotted Imperial Pigeon- the birds in Mindanao sometimes split as Black-bellied Imperial Pigeon

Oriental Dollarbird

As we were watching the trillers, we met up with the datus (elders or leaders) of the local tribe, who were on their way to Tamangan for a tribal council meeting- apparently to work on plans to preserve the forests of Kuden now that the logging conglomerate was kicked out and the tribe was again in control. It's a thorny issue, as many people would like to continue farming the land and using the resources, which sadly isn't as sustainable now as it used to be. I'm hoping they're able to find a solution so that this forest doesn't go the way of PICOP, the worst birding place in the Philippines. 

The datus were helpful in pointing out some birds to us, like a Philippine Hanging Parrot feeding on a fruiting hagimit vine. Fruiting hagimit is the sort of thing I'd ideally like to stake out for a half hour or so in case any good fruit-eating birds come by, but sadly we had to keep moving. Near the same spot, however, we heard the whistling calls of Philippine Oriole, and I was able to bring a couple of birds in- the first birds of the weekend, and an overdue lifer for Cheta. We also got good looks at Black-bibbed Cuckooshrikes and a flyover from a Philippine Leafbird. I tried to call in a White-browed Shortwing of the undescribed mid-elevation Mindanao form ("Morris's Shortwing"), and as usual with that species we got brief looks but no pictures.

Philippine Hanging-parrot

Female Black-bibbed Cuckooshrike

Philippine Oriole

Wizard (Rhinopalpa polynice)

Diplacina bolivari, I think

Birding with the Dulangan Manobo datus

All too soon, we were back at the truck and it was time to head back, with me once again praying fervently that I would be able to make it back to a paved road without incident. Just to add to the pressure, the datus asked if they could ride with us in the bed of the truck, which obviously I wasn't going to refuse. The extra weight in the truck meant even more careful navigation over slippery, muddy two-tracks trying not to get stuck or damage the vehicle on the huge rocks that liked to suddenly appear in the middle of the road. Thankfully I managed to make it to Tamangan without sending the entire tribal leadership tumbling down a hillside, and hopefully I managed to build up some good karma with the tribe as well. 

The, uh, adventure continued as we headed back to GenSan: the incessant rains of the past week had taken their toll on the mountain roads, turning streams into rushing torrents and sending the unstable hillsides tumbling into the roadway. I was suddenly thankful to have a high-clearance car as we had to drove over thick mud where landslides from that night were only now being cleared, and again as we navigated across rushing rivers where pavement had been just a couple of days ago. I was at least thankful that it gave us an excuse to explain to the rental guy why his truck was coming back covered in mud.

This river was a road just a couple of days ago!

We finally made it back down to the valley after a couple hours of white-knuckle driving, and made it the rest of the way back to GenSan without incident. It was a hugely successful weekend, with 106 species, 74 of which are currently considered Philippine endemics (5-10 more to be split eventually) and 38 of which are endemic to the Mindanao area- there are very few places in the world where those numbers are possible! It was also a great reminder of how much better birding in Mindanao is than just about anywhere else in the Philippines, both due to the numbers of birds and the general high quality of the endemics. I already can't wait to return!