Pajareo sin fronteras

  The end of April found Nikki and I in Manila for a couple of weeks, and with no plans for our weekend. Obviously we weren't going to let a perfectly good weekend go unused, so we decided to do a quick trip to Bacolod City on Negros island so we could visit Gawahon Ecopark. I had visited there in February with Doug and Andrew and had a great (albeit extremely) morning of birding, but both Nikki and I were interested in visiting again. For Nikki, it was a chance to finally see Flame-templed Babbler, which she hadn't seen yet, and for me it meant another try for Negros Jungle Flycatcher and Southern Indigo-banded Kingfisher, which I'd missed in February. It would be silly to visit the West Visayas without getting in touch with Bam and Olympus, who had joined me last time, and thankfully they were free and excited for another visit to Gawahon. Ricky the local guide at Gawahon was unfortunately busy guiding for others, but by that point we knew the way around the park and whe...

  After an eventful few days in Samar, we flew to Cebu on the afternoon of February 10. The plan was to spend a morning birding in Cebu looking for the extant endemics before Doug and Andrew headed to Panay and I returned to Bicol for a few days. I'd been to Cebu twice already, and gone birding both times; first in the Nug-As forest of southern Cebu with Nikki, and next in the Tabunan Forest nearby Cebu City. However, it had been a while and I had never managed good photos of the Cebu endemics so I was looking forward to returning. Cebu City is the second-largest city in the Philippines, and really the only other proper big city in the country besides Manila. It's actually quite a nice city, with great food, interesting culture, an unusually good airport, and a fascinating cultural heritage. Playing host to a major, prosperous city has been great for the economy of Cebu island, and for Cebuanos in general but it hasn't been so good for Cebu's ecosystem; almost 100% of ...