Pajareo sin fronteras

  After a whirlwind two days in the Sierra Madre , the next stop of the mega Philippines trip with Doug and Andrew was another Luzon classic: the rainforests of Subic Bay. While all these spots are theoretically the same habitat (Luzon lowland forest), the suite of birds is surprisingly different, with only a few species being found in both spots. As if there wasn't enough endemism in the Philippines already, there are surprisingly stark differences between the wet, hilly forests of eastern Luzon and the flatter, drier forests of the west. Thus, it made sense to add this to our packed itinerary as the second (and last) stop in Luzon. I'd been to Subic several times before, most recently in December of 2022 , so I was pretty familiar with the area, and how to find the major targets. I also knew the best spots to eat and, even more importantly, where the annoying Subic cops hang out trying to extort bribes from unsuspecting tourists. Between accessible roads, relatively plentiful...

Between a month full of birding in Sorsogon and some end-of-year international travel, Nikki and I had one more birding outing in the Philippines planned for 2022. Nikki had to be in Manila for work at the end of November and there were a few national holidays in early December, so we decided to take the opportunity to do a working vacation for a couple of weeks in northern Luzon, a spot we had been wanting to visit for a while. The ultimate destination of the trip was Ilocos Norte, on the far northern tip of Luzon. It was an area I'd never been before, and one that held a number of potential lifers, both Philippine endemics and uncommon migrants. The first stop, however, was Subic Bay, a well-known birding spot that I'd been to a couple of times before (in fact, it was my first major birding trip with Nikki, way back in 2016!), although not for some years. There were a number of birds at Subic that I hadn't seen since and still needed decent pictures of, and the remote ch...