Pajareo sin fronteras

  As has become somewhat of a tradition at this point, I found myself in Sorsogon for eBird's 2023 Global Big Day on May 13, and once again I put a plan into motion to try and get myself the biggest totals I could. I'd done this twice before, in May and October of 2022, so I'd learned a few lessons on how best to do it. First, I learned the hard way that it's best to rent a car so that I wasn't torturing myself with hours on the motorcycle driving across the province. Second, I learned that May is an awful time of year for a proper big day, with virtually no migratory birds. Thus, I decided to not stress myself out trying to break records I had no chance of breaking, and instead focus on the endemic birds and other residents and just have fun birding.  We were only recently back from Aurora at this point, so Nikki decided to sleep in that morning while I woke up at 3AM to make my way out to Mount Bulusan. As always, I was joined by kuya Noel, the national park gu

  One of the joys of living in a woefully under-birded country like the Philippines is the unparalleled opportunity for exploration. I've spent countless hours scrolling through the satellite view on Google Maps looking for patches of undisturbed forest, or better yet newly-constructed roads that make that forest accessible. I've even been able to visit many of them, and more often than not they've turned out to be excellent birding sites- among them SNA , San Remigio , and the Solsona-Apayao road . I'm not the only one who does this, of course, and sometimes timing and schedules work out so that a group of like-minded birders can go on an expedition together to explore a little-birded area and see what treasures it might hide.  That's exactly what happened at the end of April this year, when me, Nikki and some other birding friends of ours found ourselves free for a holiday weekend to explore a newly-built road through the Sierra Madre mountains in far eastern Luzo