Pajareo sin fronteras

August 15 was my very last day in the Philippines, after my epic trip to SNA had gone just about as well as I could have hoped . I flew out in the early evening, meaning I had one morning in Manila to spend as I wished. Naturally, I wished to spend it looking at birds, so my frequent birding companion  Irene  and I headed to La Mesa Ecopark, a public park on the outskirts of Manila with surprisingly good birds. Birding is difficult in most public areas of the Philippines thanks to feral cats and bored children with slingshots, but for whatever reason there are a number of birds in La Mesa that are still around, despite seeming like easy cat-bait.  It only took about 10 minutes of looking around in the forest before we spotted a Hooded Pitta hopping around on the ground nearby us. We sat on the ground to observe it, and noticed it was gathering earthworms, presumably to feed to its chicks.  Hooded Pitta It soon gathered a beakful of worms, but for whateve...

One of the perks of living in a place where you're one of very, very few birders around is that it's easier to build up a reputation as the "bird person" to go to. In the case of fellow Davao-based birder  Pete , the reputation is well-deserved, but in my case it probably led to being viewed as a far better birder than I really am. Whatever the truth of the matter, it does occasionally lead to some cool opportunities, even beyond our fun  Philippine Eagle Center  outings. One of these was at the end of last June, when we were invited to check out the birds at the  Hijo Resort , a coastal getaway in Davao del Norte, just north of Davao City.  Located in the middle of the sprawling Cavendish banana plantations that provide the backbone of much of that region's economy (and funding for many of its politicians), the Hijo Resort consists of a beach area, some fishponds, and, surprisingly, a small area of forest that the property owners managed to protect from cl...