A Tale of Two Twitches

Although I tried very hard to get one more new Philippines bird, I ended my trip to Ilocos Norte with exactly 499 birds on my country list. I had a couple more weeks in the Philippines to try and boost that, although given that it was all going to be spent in Sorsogon in the rainiest part of the year, I wasn't particularly optimistic. 

Surprisingly, an opportunity presented itself as we were on our way back to Sorsogon: the morning I was transiting through Manila on the way to Sorsogon, an Ashy-breasted Flycatcher was reported in the Palo Alto subdivision a couple hours out of the city! It had originally been posted on Facebook the day before, but once people realized what it was some birders rushed out that morning to re-find it. I arrived in Manila to amazing pictures from Ens of one of the Philippines' rarest and most elusive (although certainly not most spectacular) endemics. 

I spent far too much time wasted hemming and hawing over what to do,  but I eventually bit the bullet and decided to rent a car and try to twitch the flycatcher on my layover. Even more time was wasted in negotiations with the bloodsuckers at the rental car counter at NAIA, each trying to offer me dodgier deals in worse cars, until I was finally able to find someone willing to rent a decent car to me. It was another bottleneck trying to navigate out of Manila onto the only road heading east to Rizal, where the flycatcher was being seen. It was almost noon by the time I finally arrived at Palo Alto, where fellow birders Gwen and Czarina had been looking for a couple hours already. 

To make a long story short... I dipped on it. The middle of the day in sunny weather is not a good time to look for tiny, elusive flycatchers, especially not in the Philippines, and I only had half an hour or so to look before I needed to jump back in the car and return to the airport. What ensued was another comedy of errors as I once again made my through an entire Manila's worth of traffic jams. After a couple of wrong turns, talking my way out of a traffic ticket, and watching the estimated arrival time on Google Maps get later and later, I finally arrived at the airport 45 minutes before my flight departed. Of course, once I arrived there was no-one there to pick the car up! After several heated exchanges with the rental lade who continuously assured me that her guy was on the way, I had no choice but to leave the car unattended in the "No Waiting" area, since it was either that or miss my flight.

Thankfully I managed to rush onto my flight just as boarding had started and apparently the guy did eventually pick up the car, but it was one of the more stressful travel moments in a year containing a good many stressful travel moments. It's the sort of thing that would have been a great story if I'd actually managed to see the damn flycatcher, but since I dipped it's just something that's a bit painful to type out. 

I had a couple of weeks at home in Sorsogon before I needed to return to the US, which was mostly spent sheltering inside during endless rainstorms. That, of course, gave me lots of time to scroll through all the Ashy-breasted Flycatcher pictures that about 100 other birders went to see in the days after I dipped on it. This is an endemic that's rare and difficult enough that I may never get the chance to see it, so it's going down as one of my most frustrating dips ever, at least until I manage to find one. 

I did make it out birding a few times, mostly to my local fishponds since it was too rainy to be worth going further afield. On one outing I heard an unfamiliar descending raptor call from the mangroves nearby, and was able to catch a distant glimpse of an accipiter being chased by terns. After checking my photos and calls online, I realized that it was a Japanese Sparrowhawk- a rare migrant to the Philippines. After all that effort in Ilocos and Manila, I had actually managed to see my bird #500, less than 10 minutes from my house! I might have preferred it be a rare endemic or at least a better look of a better bird, but 500 is 500. It makes me one of only a couple dozen people to have ever reached that number for the Philippines, and possibly the only person to have managed it without visiting the rarity trap of the Batanes. 

Japanese Sparrowhawk- distinguished from the much more common Chinese Sparrowhawk by the lack of dark wingtips

Aside from the sparrowhawk there was a big flock of Whiskered Terns, some distant Wandering Whistling Ducks and Philippine Ducks with a couple of Tufted Ducks mixed in, and a small flock of Common Greenshanks. Slim pickings as far as migratory waterbirds go, but that's generally about all I can get in Sorsogon. I visited again a few days later and didn't see the sparrowhawk again, although there was a nice female Watercock perched out in the open.

Whiskered Terns

Common Greenshanks

Watercock (with a male Common Moorhen)

Phintella piatensis, a cute little endemic jumping spider

I spent Christmas Eve with my in-laws at a little beach resort in Donsol, which was a nice excuse to enjoy the festivities without worrying about cooking our own food. It was also a nice excuse to check out the Donsol mudflats to see if anything interesting had showed up. I had yet another ordeal finding transportation, but eventually the hotel receptionist was able to find some friend or distant relative with a bike they would rent to me so I could get there. That ended up being an extremely old and creaky manual motorcycle with no helmet included, but beggars can't be choosers. 

Early the next morning I made my way to the mudflat very slowly and carefully, balancing my tripod and scope between my legs while driving a motorcycle. Sadly, the mudflat these days is a shadow of its former self in terms of bird numbers. I'm not sure why as the area itself seems unchanged, but bird numbers and diversity have tanked even just over the past couple of years. I'm not sure if it's because of the destruction of some local bit of their habitat or just a symptom of the catastrophic global decline in water birds, but it's pretty depressing either way. Bird-wise there was very little out of the ordinary, and very low numbers- a small flock of Pacific Golden Plovers, lots of Kentish Plovers, some cute Terek Sandpipers, an endangered Chinese Egret, and some Great Crested Terns that didn't have the decency to turn themselves into Chinese Crested Terns. 

Pacific Golden Plover eating an eel(?) of some sort

Mostly Kentish Plovers

Chinese Egret

The day before I departed Sorsogon I finally made it out to the local mudflats in Sorsogon Bay for low tide. As usual there weren't many birds, but I did make a point of scrutinizing the Siberian Sand Plovers on the off chance one might be a Tibetan Sand Plover (I had never done so before since I thought of them all as Lesser Sand Plover...). I did find one likely-looking individual, with clean white flanks and no breast band, but apparently the pics weren't close enough to confirm ID. Was it my 501st species of Philippine bird? Probably, but I'm not going to call it...

Tibetan Sand Plover?? Quite possibly...

I flew out of the Philippines on December 31, capping off an utterly crazy year of birding and travel. There was one more adventure waiting for me though: a Naked-faced Spiderhunter had showed up on the campus of the University of the Philippines and had been seen the previous day. That wasn't a lifer for me, but I had never seen the extremely uncommon Luzon subspecies, which may end up getting split at some point. I decided to do one last twitch, in hopes that it would turn out better than the last one.

I arrived in Manila in the early afternoon and took a Grab to the UP campus. It took a bit to find the flowering tree it had been hanging out in, and literally as soon as I found it the skies opened up. There wasn't much to do but sit under a nearby shelter and read my book, hoping the weather might improve. It didn't–in fact, it rained nonstop for the next three hours. It was looking like it might be yet another failed twitch in a year full of them. In the end the rain stopped less than 10 minutes before sunset, and I rushed over to the tree to see if any spiderhunters felt like a late afternoon snack. Amazingly, I soon heard the grunting call of a Naked-faced Spiderhunter, and eventually was able to find it silhouetted on a branch above my head! It was practically dark by then and I couldn't get anything besides bad record shots, but it was still a relief, and a nice way to finish off my 2023. 

Naked-faced Spiderhunter

2023 was by far my birdiest year yet, and one of my craziest. I'll come out with a summary post soon (especially since I'm stuck in the DC wintertime with nothing better to do), but in the mean time it was great to be able to finish the year with lots of family time and-unexpectedly-some good birds to boot.