Kingfishers on Island Paradise
One of my favorite travel destinations in the Philippines has to be Camiguin , a tiny volcanic island just north of Mindanao. Despite having a land area of less than 100 square miles, it holds a huge amount of geographic diversity, with white beaches, pristine rainforests, and multiple active volcanoes that give a skyline more akin to Hawaii than the Philippines. Picture of the island from a previous visit in 2017 Bird-wise it's no slouch either; despite the fact that it's a tiny island and that the northern coast of Mindanao is only about 6 miles away, the water separating them is so deep that they were never joined in the past ice age, giving some of the birds there enough time to diverge into separate species. It's the second-smallest island in the Philippines to hold endemic birds (after Calayan Island north of Luzon), with two to three endemic species: the Camiguin Bulbul, Camiguin Hawk-owl, and Camiguin Hanging-parrot (the hanging-parrot is considered as ...