Turns out El Nido has good birds too

 

After the whirlwind week of our wedding, we had the chance to do some traveling with our families who had come for the wedding, including Nikki's sister, my parents, sister, uncles Rusty and Kevin, and friend Clayton coming all the way from the US. These weren't the only people who traveled a long way–in fact our wedding involved a fair amount of travel for nearly all the guests–but they were the ones we traveled with.

This was actually the second time in the Philippines for most of my family- my parents and sister had visited me in Sorsogon way back in the day when I first got here (Morgan ended up getting caught in a massive typhoon on her visit), and Kevin had come in 2017 for a mega birding trip through the country. However, we wanted to make sure they got to see more than just Sorsogon for this visit, as lovely as Sorsogon is. Unfortunately, this meant (briefly) parting ways: Nikki stayed in Sorsogon for a few days to spend time with her sister, Kevin jetted off to Samar in an effort to see Blue-backed Parrot, and I headed to El Nido, Palawan with my parents, Morgan, Clayton, and my remaining uncle. 

Despite the fact that El Nido is one of the best-known vacation spots in the Philippines, I'd never been before and wasn't previously all that interested in going. Honestly that's mostly because it was lacking in birds I hadn't seen before, although some of our friends had visited in the past year and found it underwhelming- mostly due to being overcrowded and having an unreliable water supply and sanitation system. In the end, however, it turned out to be far nicer than I expected, and worth all the hype that it gets in the international tourism scene.

We arrived in the El Nido airport in the afternoon of Sunday, October 16, and it started raining not long after that. We got a van to our respective hotels (we had booked at different times, and it turns out that hotels in El Nido fill up pretty quickly), and could do little but take shelter from the downpour inside. As it turns out we were getting the outer bands of a typhoon passing north of us, and we were pretty much trapped inside the rest of the day, marveling at the strangeness of El Nido from our hotel rooms.

Located on the far northern coast of Palawan, El Nido is famous for its otherworldly karst landscape, similar to Ha Long Bay or those mountains in China they showed in the Avatar movie. While this leads to some truly breathtaking natural sights, it also means that flat land is hard to come by. The town center of El Nido is nestled in a tiny valley between two limestone cliffs, while the main touristy area is a bit south of that, with several hundred hotels and little else crammed along a narrow strip of land along the coast. It's not my favorite vibe to be honest (there's a reason I usually avoid big tourist traps), but the infrastructure is good and it's relatively easy to get around to various spots and find things to do. 

That Monday our original plan had been to do the island-hopping tour El Nido is famous for, but the bad weather meant that all tours were cancelled. The rest of my family decided to spend a quiet day on the beach, and with heavy heart I decided there was nothing for it but to go birding all morning. While El Nido isn't really known for its birding scene, it is part of Palawan, which meant that birding there was going to be a very different experience. Unlike the rest of the Philippines, which originated as oceanic island chains, El Nido has been part of the Asian mainland for most of its geological history, and is only just now colliding with the Philippine archipelago. This means that it shares way more biological affinities with Borneo than it does with Mindoro or Palawan, the nearest islands. There are about 25 Palawan endemics, and most of the resident birds are different from those in the rest of the Philippines. Birds are also much more numerous and less afraid of humans than the rest of the country, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me.

After some inquiring with my birding friends I learned that the Lio area north of the town center was the best for birding, so early in the morning I hopped in a tricycle there along with Clayton, who wanted some time exploring the outdoors and maybe seeing some wildlife on the side. We arrived a little before 7AM in Lio, which turned out to be  fancy tourist area, with the local Sheridan hotel, a nice stretch of beach, some upscale souvenir shops, and a lot of restaurants. More importantly for us, it also had lots of quiet, well-maintained roads and trails through the coastal forest. The platonic idea of a birding site is a nice road you can walk along with no cars driving by, so I was happy.

The Lio backroads

As soon as we got out of the tricycle, there were birds all around- such is the Palawan birding experience. Unfortunately photography was hampered at first by my fogged-up lens, so we had to just look at the Ashy-fronted Bulbuls perched on the wires by the road, the Common Ioras feeding above us, and the Lovely Sunbird that came down to eye level, feeding. As the lens unfogged and we stretched our legs, we found a fruiting fig tree just off the road that was absolutely crawling with fruit-eating birds: Pink-necked Green Pigeons, Thick-billed Green Pigeons, Plain Flowerpeckers, Palawan Flowerpeckers, Black-headed Bulbuls, Palawan Bulbuls, Ashy-fronted Bulbuls, a single Sulphur-bellied Bulbul (Palawan has altogether too many bulbuls), White-vented Shamas, and Pin-striped Tit-babblers. It was a scene you can truly only get in Palawan.

Pink-necked Green Pigeon, common throughout the Philippines

Thick-billed Green Pigeon, found throughout Southeast Asia but only in Palawan within the Philippines

Striped Flowerpecker, much more common in Palawan than the rest of the Philippines

Palawan Flowerpecker, endemic to Palawan (duh)

Black-headed Bulbul, the best-looking bulbul in the Philippines though sadly the only one that's not endemic

White-vented Shama, endemic to Palawan

Pin-striped Tit-babbler, another bird Palawan shares with mainland Southeast Asia but not the rest of the Philippines

Further down the road we got to a little pond with a boardwalk I'd heard was good birding. There were a couple of Purple-throated Sunbirds and an Oriental Dollarbird perched by the trail entrance, and next to the pond we got absurd looks at an extremely bold Lovely Sunbird singing right by the boardwalk below eye level. At the other side of the pond we had a Hair-crested Drongo (sometimes split as Palawan Drongo) and a distant Yellow-throated Leafbird. 

Oriental Dollarbird

Lovely Sunbird, certainly one of the best-looking Palawan endemics

At the pond, the local guard (there were guards everywhere in Lio, though it's not entirely clear what they were guarding) mentioned that for birding we might try out the ecotrail that was a little bit further down the road. Of course I'm always happy to check out an "ecotrail", so we made the short walk over to see what it was about. It turned out to be a somewhat muddy and incredibly winding trail going up a small hill to an overlook. Or at least an "overlook" is what was promised; what it turned out to be was a small wooden platform at the top of the hill with a spectacular view of tree trunks and little else, since apparently someone missed the memo that "view" is the operative part of "viewing platform". 

The world's least impressive viewing platform

There were actually some decent views along the way up, which as it turns out we probably should have paid more attention to

Still, there were some decent birds along the path up; lots of singing Rufous-tailed Tailorbirds and White-vented Shamas that never came into view, great looks at a Palawan Blue Flycatcher, lots of Hair-crested Drongos, and a beautiful Chestnut-breasted Malkoha (the third-best malkoha in the Philippines). There was also lots of other wildlife- Northern Palawan Tree Squirrels, a mouse I'm still trying to ID, and lots of new butterflies; just like with birds, the lepidoptera of Palawan is totally different from that of the rest of the Philippines.

Female Palawan Blue Flycatcher- I tried to turn this into a much-rarer Palawan Flycatcher but alas, it is not that

Hair-crested Drongo, a very different subspecies than the birds in Mindanao (vocally at least- they look about the same to me)

Still trying to ID this little mouse- it might just be a House Mouse but I'm hoping for something more interesting given it was found in the middle of the rainforest

Banded Faun

Some kind of cool hammer-headed planarian

Mecodina praecipua

Lebinthus bitaeniatus, a little endemic cricket

Eyed Cyclops, an impressive butterfly lifer

After a reasonably sweaty and mostly-viewless hike, we walked downhill to Lio Beach, where the rest of my family was already hanging out. It was, like most El Nido beaches, lovely, and we enjoyed a little bit of sand and surf before having lunch at a nice little restaurant nearby.

Lio Beach

Pallid Ghost Crab

After lunch I headed back to the fruiting ficus to see if there was anything interesting, but it was somewhat quieter in the midday heat and sea level humidity. There were the usual birds hanging around the fig tree, plus a troupe of Long-tailed Macaques- not my favorite monkeys in the world, but still fund to watch doing their thing.

Palawan Bulbul

Adult Long-tailed Macaque

Young Long-tailed Macaque

Mother and baby macaques

We headed home for a shower, a nap, and some time in the air conditioning away from the afternoon showers. Later in the afternoon, we decided to do the "Via Ferrata", which is basically a set of iron ladders and a short canopy walkway through the precipitous karst hills above El Nido town proper. It was a bit overpriced, and involved some white-knuckle scrambling on slipper iron bars above knife-sharp limestone rocks, but the views were truly spectacular; there's no landscape in the world like a karst landscape. 

The next day, the weather was finally good enough for us to do the island-hopping boat tour that El Nido is famous for. That wasn't starting until 9AM, so I decided to leave my hotel and sunrise and do one more morning of birding at Lio to look for some of the birds I was missing. It was a very pleasant, bird-filled walk, the sort of thing that's hard to have in most parts of the country. I had most of the same birds as the previous day, but with the addition of a few accommodating Ashy-headed Babblers, a Blue Paradise Flycatcher, a pair of Crested Goshawks, and two Oriental Dwarf Kingfishers. The last of those was actually a Philippines lifer for me (though I've seen it in Borneo and Java), something that's increasingly difficult to find these days. 

Palawan Bulbul

Common Iora

Ashy-fronted Bulbul

Ashy-headed Babbler, maybe the cutest Palawan endemic

Crested Goshawks, the most common accipiter on Palawan

Northern Palawan Tree Squirrel

Purple Bushbrown (Mycalesis orseis)

Grenadier (Agrionoptera insignis)

Short-banded Viscount (Tanaecia aruna)

Mid-morning, I returned to my hotel then headed to my family's hotel along the beach, where we met up for the island-hopping tour. While the coastline of El Nido is beautiful in its own right, what it's really famous for are the hundreds of jagged limestone islands dotting its perimeter, many of them with their own secluded beaches and lagoons for swimming, snorkeling, or sunbathing. This morning the weather was finally calm enough for boat tours to go out, and since it was our last full day there, out we went. 

While the weather was much better than the previous day, it wasn't perfect: we ended up getting drenched in a torrential downpour about 10 minutes after we left the dock. It was an inauspicious start to a day out on the water with little shelter, but thankfully it ended up being the only rain we encountered; otherwise it was pleasantly cloudy and breezy, keeping things a little cooler even at sea level. The tour itself was excellent; well-organized and full of beautiful stops, and with incredibly talented guides who served as tour leaders, cooks, and captains. I'm often a little skeptical of touristy places, but honestly I can say that El Nido deserves the hype.

The gang in some lovely beach weather

The first stop was the famous "Big Lagoon" of Miniloc Island, a spider-shaped island due west of El Nido town. It's essentially what it sounds like: a narrow inlet with turquoise-blue water, rimmed by precipitous limestone cliffs with jungle greenery spilling over their sides. Here we were able to get off our boat and rent kayaks to paddle around the lagoon. The sights were enough, but the highlight was a group of five Palawan Hornbills perched in a tree on the far side of the lagoon, preening and sunning themselves without a care for me and my family gawking at them. Annoyingly enough I had decided not to bring my camera on the kayak, so I had to satisfy myself with some bad digibinned pictures of them. We also had a huge Stork-billed Kingfisher fly by, which was a nice addition to my year list. 

My poorly-digibinned Palawan Hornbill

Begonia elnidoensis- a terrible picture of a rare and range-restricted begonia

Our next stop were a few different beaches, where we mostly just hung out on the sand and did some snorkeling. The corals there were terrible quality but it was still most people's first time seeing coral reefs, so they were blown away. I, jaded and unimpressed, mostly stayed along the beach and looked for birds. I saw a very distant Lesser Frigatebird along the way and a White-bellied Sea Eagle was circling above, both of which were new year birds for me. The best bird of the day was at the so-called "Paradise Beach" (not sure if that's the official name or the guides' name), where we stopped for a while to have lunch. As lunch was being prepared I wandered a little bit into the woods, and happened upon a flock of Palawan Tits! This is one of the more difficult Palawan endemics, and I'd only heard it very distantly before so it was essentially a lifer for me. I ended up getting spectacular views of this fairly elusive species, which might have been my favorite moment of the day.

Palawan Tit

I didn't get to spend quite as long with them as I might have liked, because lunch was ready and apparently they wouldn't let anyone start eating until we got a whole-group picture. Lunch itself was surprisingly tasty and elaborate for being cooked on a boat (like I said, the tour operators on El Nido really know what they're doing), and we were very full and satisfied. There was one more stop on another beach after that, and then it was back to our hotels for much-needed showers and naps. 

Our sumptuous lunch

The scenery from our boat- I seem to have forgotten all my previous knowledge of landscape photography since I started photographing birds, so my pictures of El Nido really don't do it justice.

The next day we bid goodbye to Clayton and then took a nauseating van ride to Puerto Princesa city, which was our next stop. However, that will have to wait for the next blog post.