The Top 10 Birds of 2023
Well 2023 was... a year. Now that it's over and done with and I'm mostly living the quiet life back in DC, I can safely say that it was my craziest year of travel yet (for which there is a LOT of competition), and certainly the birdiest. In fact, I spent probably 75% of the year on the road in some form or another- between a couple of dedicated birding trips, multiple extended work trips, and a long, slow move from the Philippines to Washington DC.
The year actually started off with Nikki and I in Thailand, where we got to do some birding up in the mountains above Chiang Mai before returning to the Philippines. In January I did some casual birding in southeastern Luzon, including some fun waterbird censuses and surprise Philippines lifers, but soon got interesting when I was sent to Indonesia for a week and got to spent some time exploring Jakarta. Things properly picked up in February when Doug and Andrew joined me for a month of birding around the Philippines- fruit doves in Infanta and malkohas in Subic, then down to Samar for some typically hellish birding in rain and mud. In Cebu and Negros we got rained on some more, but still got to see some fantastic birds. The Mindanao segment was one for the record books, starting with Apo Myna and Philippine Eagle up on Mount Kitanglad, a clean-up of the specialty birds on Mount Tagubud, and then more fun with hornbills and lorikeets in west Mindanao. We finished the Philippines odyssey with an epic hike up Mount Victoria and then some more relaxed birding around Palawan to clean up more endemic birds.
After saying goodbye to Doug and Andrew I had only a couple weeks at home with Nikki before returning to Indonesia for another work trip. That meant a chance to spend a weekend in Bali cleaning up on target birds I'd missed on my previous visit a few years ago. Next was some work in Cambodia where I had a chance to spend a weekend on the Mekong River, then a few days in Bangkok where I did some more casual birding. I then returned to Indonesia for some more meetings, and was able to spend a weekend in East Java seeing some very special chickens. The chicken searching continued as I spent Holy Week in Borneo with Nikki- up on Mount Trus Madi looking for Bulwer's Pheasant, then down to the Kinabatangan River for a spectacular selection of hornbills, and then up to Mount Kinabalu for the famous Whitehead's Trio.
I returned to the Philippines with Nikki and had some much-needed time at home catching up on work and family time. There was still some traveling though- a belated twitch in Manila, a fun weekend in Bacolod with good birding friends, and then some exploration in the southern Sierra Madre of Aurora with more good friends. Back in Sorsogon, I managed a surprisingly successful Big Day, but my time at home was much shorter than expected as my employer unceremoniously transferred me back to Washington D.C. I had one last birding outing in Manila with friends, then a nice layover in Tokyo on the way to the US.
I've technically been based in DC since May, but in reality I had only a couple of weeks there before once more returning to Asia for work. I had a couple of weeks in Indonesia, and on my first weekend headed to Central Java for a critically endangered kingfisher and a few other bonus birds. The next weekend I made an epic hike up Mount Ciremai where I was able to nearly clean up on my Javan endemic birds, despite an annoying catfishing magpie. I was then able to telework from the Philippines for a while, and squeezed in a long weekend in Panay to connect with some more West Visayas endemic birds. I spent some time at home in Sorsogon, but eventually had to return to the US to check in at the office. I did so by way of Jakarta where I was finally able to catch up with Christmas Frigatebird and some other goodies, though sadly dipping once again on Javan Coucal.
My next period of time in the US was a bit longer than the last one, and included a weekend visit to Idaho for a (belated) funeral and a trip to Arizona for a birding festival. I took a week off in August for an incredibly fun road trip down to northern Mexico with birding friends Mollee and Cedar, starting in Bahía de Kino and then down to the mountains around Álamos (see blogs part 1 and part 2).
After a couple more weeks in DC, I somehow managed to finagle my way onto yet another extended work trip in Southeast Asia (in all honesty it's a bit annoying to be based in Washington DC considering how much easier my job would be if I could remain in the Philippines). This work trip took me to Lombok in Indonesia where I got to spend a weekend of relaxed birding with Phil Chaon, then to Yogyakarta in southern Java where I birded with Panji and Angus and finally managed to see a damn Javan Coucal. The next week Angus and I undertook an incredibly silly expedition to the island of Selayar to find its undescribed leaf warbler, then had a few more mishaps enjoying the few birds that South Sulawesi could offer us. I returned to the Philippines, then immediately left again for a week in Japan with Nikki and her family- mostly in Tokyo but with a rainy but fun trip up to the mountains. Later in October I somehow also managed to convince Nikki to spend a weekend in Zamboanga City where I saw my last currently-recognized Mindanao endemic bird as well as a few more surprises.
I returned once more to the US in November, which I expected to be final. Unfortunately, family business sent me back to the Philippines (on my own dime this time) so that I could be with Nikki. Unexpectedly, that ended up including a last-minute work trip to Fiji- not that I'm complaining about that part too hard. I ended up seeing some of my favorite birds of the year there, on a single dedicated day of birding and a few other quick morning outings, while a layover in Sydney on the way there was fun too. Back in the Philippines, I spent a fun few days up in Ilocos Norte with Nikki and her mom, and then finished up the year with a failed twitch, rainy weather in Sorsogon, and an unexpected milestone bird for the Philippines.
If my 2023 seems absolutely exhausting reading through that summary, well, that's because it absolutely was. I spent most of the year living out of a suitcase in some form or another, and the travel totaled out to about one flight every three days. I'm not complaining of course, and yes I am acutely aware of the extreme privilege I have that allows me to be able to do things like this. I'm now back in DC more or less permanently, and I don't expect to have a year like this again for a long time. And if my employer is going to insist on sending me back and forth across the world then I'm damn well going to take advantage of that to see some birds.
With 1,286 species to choose from, it's obviously somewhat of a challenge to decide on top birds from the year. Then I started listing them down I struggled to keep it below 25, and cutting things from the list became increasingly painful. I debated cheating but ultimately decided to go for brevity. With all that in mind, the top birds of the year, in no particular ranking or order are...
1. Azure-breasted Pitta
Now I should be clear that, as a Real Birder, I appreciate a nice, skulking brown bird especially if I manage to find one after a great deal of effort and get nice views- there's a reason Striated Wren-Babbler is one of my favorite birds. That said, my tastes in birds are decidedly basic. Give me a nice, flashy one any day of the week- the more colorful and shiny the better. Obviously, pittas will always be among my favorites and likely to end up in my top 10 any year that I see one. Is Azure-breasted Pitta my favorite? No (that's Whiskered Pitta). Is it my #1 of the year? Probably not, but it was the first one of these chronologically and lord help me if I'm going to try and rank birds within this list.
All that said, seeing Azure-breasted Pitta in Samar with Doug and Andrew in February of this year is one of those birding moments I'm never going to forget. It helps that it was at the very end of a grueling, practically birdless day of trudging up and down muddy paths getting drenched by rain, and it definitely helps that we were able to watch it sitting practically within arm's reach for a solid 10 minutes. It doesn't hurt that it was nice to pop up right in front of us less than 5 seconds after I said "hey, maybe there's a pitta around here". It's one of the reasons I expect I'll return to Samar someday soon, despite it being the site of some of the most unpleasant birding I've ever done.
2. Apo Myna
Up until 2023, Apo Myna was somewhat of a nemesis bird for me- something I've written about here many, many times. After multiple treks into the right habitat with nary a peep of a myna, I'd started to suspect it just plain doesn't exist. Thankfully I was proven wrong (or perhaps was just bought off by Big Starling), and can now happily report that they do, in fact, exist and are pretty darn spectacular at that. With their silly crests, bright yellow faces, and surprisingly long and spectacular tails they've got to be up there in the list of the Philippines' best and weirdest endemics. It helps that I got to see them on an incredible hike up Mount Kitanglad with Doug, Andrew and the local guide Marlon that also netted us birds like Goodfellow's Jungle Flycatcher (another nemesis), White-cheeked Bullfinch, and Apo Sunbird, plus Philippine Eagle a couple days later. The mountains of Mindanao are really built different when it comes to birding.
3. Palawan Striped Babbler
I've spent quite a bit of time birding in Palawan, and before this year I was missing just one endemic: Palawan Striped Babbler. That's because the striped babblers require an arduous hike up to the proper elevation in the central mountain range, which I just hadn't had the time to do until recently. Thankfully this was something Doug and Andrew were more than happy to join me for, and while the hiking was indeed fairly strenuous, the babblers themselves ended up being far cooler than I had expected: noisy, colorful, and surprisingly huge, not to mention nicely common once we got into their range. I've done some tough hikes for birds that I barely saw or even missed, so putting all that work into something and then getting great views of it, well, that's pretty special. It doesn't hurt that it was one of just a couple dozen records on eBird, and the pictures and recordings we got are some of the only ones of that species anywhere online.
4. Red-headed Vulture
I didn't get to spend nearly as much time in Cambodia this year as I did in 2022, and I only had time for one proper birding expedition. This one was to the Koh Samseb community-based ecotourism site on the Mekong River, where I got to spent a fun weekend of boating up and down the river channels looking for specialty birds like Mekong Wagtail, River Lapwing, River Tern, White-shouldered Ibis, and Green Peafowl. The biggest surprise and best bird of the trip, however, was an out of the blue sighting of a Red-headed Vulture perched on a dead snag as we drove out- one of only a handful of recent sightings of this critically endangered bird outside of the famous (and famously expensive) "vulture restaurants" several hundred kilometers away. A closer runner-up for this spot goes to my Cambodia nemesis White-rumped Falcon seen later that day- another testament to my guide Choam being very good at his job.
5. Whitehead's Broadbill
It's hard to pick just one favorite from my trip to Borneo with Nikki last April (and indeed several others will feature later in this post), but Whitehead's Broadbill stands out if nothing else for being a bird that I had dipped on many, many times on previous visits (vanquished nemeses does seem to be a theme for the year). It helps that it was completely self-found, and part of a day where I got to see all three of the famous Whitehead's birds, including unusually good looks at the elusive spiderhunter. I still have more nemeses to look for on Mount Kinabalu so I'm sure I'll be back- but that's fine because as birding destinations go Borneo is very, very hard to beat.
6. Volcano Swiftlet
Among all the big and flashy birds on this list, Volcano Swiftlet is... let's just say a bit of a birder's bird. What it lacks in appearance though it more than makes up for in habitat, being found only in the craters of active volcanoes in western Java. Seeing this was the culmination of an epic multi-day hike up barely-birded Gunung Ciremai, where I managed to see some of Java's rarest endemic birds and get some ridiculous scenery along the way. Getting to the swiftlets required a long, dodgy scramble up steep, scree-filled slopes but watching them wheel over the volcanic crater at eye level made it more than worth it. The less said about the magpies of Ciremai, on the other hand, the better...
7. Golden Dove
My last-minute trip to Fiji, of all places, in December ended up delivering many late-breaking candidates for my favorite bird of the year, between shiny parrots, spectacular doves, and gaudy flycatchers. At the end of the day I have to go with the basic choice- Golden Dove, perhaps one of the weirdest-looking doves in the world. A shining avocado-sized gem of a bird with weird hairy feathers and a little dog-like yelping call, it's an absolute joy to watch and stands out even among the rest of Fiji's eye-popping endemic birds. It's the sort of bird I'd return to Fiji again just for another chance to see.
8. Walden's Hornbill
If I had to pick a single bird taxon as my favorite of all time, that would almost certainly be hornbills. Huge, noisy, colorful, and full of personality and intelligence, they're some of the most entertaining birds to watch, and indeed one of the highlights of this year was spending hours watching Southern Rufous Hornbills doing their thing in Mindanao. I was lucky enough to see 16 species of hornbill this year, including some of the best anywhere in the world. Highlights were a close flyover from a Northern Rufous Hornbill in Aurora, the ridiculous feral hornbills of Cambodia, and a stunning selection of six different species on the Kinabatangan River of Borneo. Top pick though probably goes to the critically endangered Walden's Hornbill in Panay- one of my few endemic lifers in the Philippines this year, and our reward after an all-day trek into the mountains of central Antique. Absolutely gorgeous birds, and a relief to see they're still hanging on in areas with an active and successful conservation program.
9. Luzon Bleeding-Heart
If I hany reasons to be annoyed about being based in the US now is that I'm forced to deal with the New World's dreadfully boring selection of doves and pigeons, unlike the spectacular array of options I'm used to in Southeast Asia. Even with Golden Dove already on the list it's hard to pick a favorite between ridiculous looks at Flame-breasted Fruit Dove in Infanta, possibly the best-ever pictures of Mindanao Brown Dove up on Mount Tagubud, and a surprise encounter with a Luzon Bleeding-Heart in Sorsogon. At the end of the day though I have to go with the sighting closest to home- getting some of the only pictures of this species in the wild, and amazing looks at a calling male perched on a branch at eye level. Sorsogon birding didn't turn out to be as good as I hoped it was, but with a bird like this just an hour's drive from home I can't complain much either.
10. Green Peafowl
2023 was, without a doubt, the Year of the Chicken for me. I saw 20 species of chicken (sensu lato) over the year, from a quick glimpse of Palawan Peacock-Pheasant in the Philippines to a fun set of quail in Mexico. I should probably pick the mythically rare Bulwer's Pheasant as my top one, but in all honesty if I had to pick one I would revisit it would be the Green Peafowl in East Java- enormous, stunningly beautiful, and ridiculously common and confiding within protected areas, their mournful calls echoing through the forest. That particular trip included bonus chickens in the form of Green Junglefowl, Red Junglefowl (the OG chicken!), and Grey-breasted Partridge, plus ridiculously good looks at tough birds like Javan Flameback, Banded Kingfisher, Streaky-breasted Spiderhunter, and Javan Blue Flycatcher. Indonesia birding treated me well this year...
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