Whiskered Pitta and Bicol Ground Warbler

October 2018: Another Quick Trip to the Philippines and More Endemics on Luzon

Friday, October 19 - Jariel's Peak

I'd managed to escape from a business trip in Hong Kong on Thursday night, hopped a quick flight, and once again found myself staying near Manila airport, exhausted but ready for more Philippines birding adventures.  This was going to be another super quick trip as I had to be back in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon to catch a flight to New York, but hopefully I was going to get a chance to see a few more of Luzon's endemic birds before then.  This time I was with famous Robert Hutchinson, one of the owners of Birdtour Asia and a long time Philippines resident.  We set off very early on Friday morning missing most of Manila's legendary traffic and arriving at our destination well before first light.  Jariel's Peak is a apparently local beauty spot and we planned to spend a day and a half birding there but as we'd arrived in the pitch darkness the views were going to have to wait.  Besides, I was more interested in owls.

We had a specific target in mind so started stopping and listening for owls, hoping for a Luzon Scops-Owl.  We heard Philippine Scops-Owl and several Philippine Nightjars but for a time our target eluded us until Rob heard one calling and was able to use his fancy night-scope to see where the bird was.  Even though we knew which tree it was in, and it's location stood out in the green glow if the night scope, the bird was hidden from me and it took a while before I caught some movement, fired off a volley of shots into the darkness and got a photo .... it may be out of focus, but it was a life bird nevertheless!

Luzon Scops-Owl

With the owl in the bag, we could relax and as the sun came up we settled in for a very pleasant morning of birding.  The targets here were many and there were some very special birds that I very much wanted to see.  While the day was young we focussed on tracking down two colorful fruit-doves, the gaudy Flame-breasted Fruit-Dove and the subtly beautiful Cream-breasted Fruit-Dove, both Philippine endemics and both of course life birds for me.  We also started to rack up a decent species count and more of more of the local birds slowly revealed themselves and I hit a milestone of sorts when a Blue-headed Fantail became my 4,500th species.

Cream-breasted Fruit-Dove

With the more common birds joining the list, we broke away from the roadside birding to work on some of the harder to see endemics.  The WHISKERED PITTA is a jewel of a bird and like all pittas can be very difficult to see as they hop around on the forest floor, seemingly always finding a way to stay out of sight.  We heard a bird calling and scrambled into the forest along the course of a small stream working our way up through the rocky ravine to a place closer to the bird and away from the road.  Once there we found a place to sit quietly and watch while Rob played the tape hoping to make the pitta a little curious and entice it to come in closer.  After thirty minutes of waiting silently in the forest, the pitta simply popped up on a rock very close to us and stayed in view, seemingly indifferent to our presence, for the next ten minutes while it searched among the boulders along the stream for the intruder it had heard.  A very special audience with a very special bird.

It's hard to imagine that birds this colorful can be hard to see but they are
very good at hiding.  Whiskered Pitta.

The other 'hard to see' target bird was the local, endemic, BICOL GROUND-WARBLER and this bird did require some serious effort to see.  This species is a mouse of a bird, tiny, dark brown, and very fond of getting down amongst tangled weedy vegetation so dense that you might be feet from one and still never see it.  We heard a number of the ground-warblers calling in the morning but seeing one required a little more staging.  In order to get a glimpse of the bird, some gardening was involved, with Rob cutting a small break in the roadside weeds so that, if we were able to entice the bird close, we might get at least a glimpse of it as it crossed our artificial micro-clearing.  Even with the preparation it still required the bird to cooperate and we had several non-cooperative birds before one made a fatal mistake and allowed itself to be briefly seen.  There are no good photographs of this bird and I was hoping to get a few but, even though I managed to get the bird in the view finder briefly, there were always some pieces of vegetation in the way that ruined the focus.  Still, a very good bird to add to the life list.

Green-backed Tailorbird, a lifer but not a Ground-Warbler.

As the day wore on and we moved further up the road, the bird activity quietened down a little which gave us a chance to have some lunch and to watch for raptors.    We then birded our way back down the road, adding more species, getting better views of others and generally enjoying a great day of birding.

Rufous-bellied Eagle and Philippine Serpent-Eagle 

Finally, as the light started to fade, we had one more target which was a bird I had dreamed about and not expected to see.  After a long dusk vigil that stretched well past darkness though I had to accept that the Bukidnon Woodcock was going to have to stay in my dreams and not join my list (my luck with Asian Woodcock is not great and I added this miss to my missing Javan Woodcock the year before).

Saturday, October 20 - Jariel's Peak

Up well before dawn again and more time with the nightjars and scops-owls before it got light.  We had the morning to bird the same road again for birds that we hadn't seen the day before.  There weren't that many birds we hadn't seen though so we were able to relax and just enjoy the birds that came to us.

Rufous Hornbill

The highlight for me was Philippine Trogon, a bird I had hoped we'd see and were able to track one down and see it well in the understory.  We also tracked down the Philippine form of White-browed Shortwing, a species due to be split in the near future and one where I have been lucky enough now to see several of the island forms giving me several "banked" lifers when the split happens.

Philippine Trogon

All too soon it was time to leave and start making our way back to Manila.  There were two more birding stops to make though, and hopefully a few special birds to add.

Stop number one was the famous Angono Petroglyphs Museum which protected some truly ancient art but also protected some large trees and was a nesting site for the peculiar Philippine Eagle-Owl.  This is a big owl, but somehow looks odd for an eagle-owl, it also apparently eats mostly frogs, so perhaps is more closely related to the fish-owls?  Either way it's an impressive bird and for a huge owl was surprisingly hard to find even though we knew roughly which group of trees the bird was likely to be roosting in.  In the end it was a friendly local security guard who moved us to exactly the right angle to get a view of the bird, I doubt I would have found it otherwise, so very happy for friendly locals.

The huge, and well hidden Philippine Eagle-Owl.

Then finally, one last stop at La Mesa Eco Park in Quezon City, the stakeout for the endemic Ashy Thrush.  We got to the park late in the day and it was of course crowded with people leaving me wondering how a rare, endemic bird gets along in such crowded quarters.  We didn't need to worry about the people though as soon enough the heavens opened unleashing torrential tropical rain on us and leaving us trying to find shelter under trees but getting soaked through nevertheless.  The rain did chase away the crowds though and with the people gone the birding looked up we soon found an Ashy Thrush hopping around near the trails.

So a great trip, something like 35 life birds for me, and a nice addition to my weekend in Subic Bay earlier this year.  The Philippines is truly daunting with so many islands and so many endemics but at least I've started chipping away at it.  So special thanks for Rob for the expert bird guiding and good company.  I can't wait to get back to the Philippines again.

Asian Urban Birding (Part 7) - Subic Bay

A Quick Weekend in the Philippines

Friday, April 13, 2018 - Subic

I'll be honest, the Philippines intimidate me.  7,000+ islands, not all of them terribly accessible given security issues, 230+ (and growing) endemic species, and it's all a very long way from New York.  So I'd never managed to get there before this year and I certainly never had time to do the 2-3 week trips that most birding companies offer.  This year though, I did find myself in an adventurous mood and with a free weekend in Hong Kong.  So I jumped on a Philippine Air flight to Manila, met up with (super talented young) local bird guide Mark Jason Villa and headed out to spend the weekend at Subic Bay.

Subic is an odd city to say the least, a city built around the former U.S. Naval Base at Subic Bay, now converted into a port/enterprise zone for commercial development.  Much of the housing in the city is left over from the base, and many of the commercial buildings were either part of the base or grew up around it.  The former military zones of the base sprawl across a lot of land and are dotted with old structures, half grown-over concrete bunkers and the like.  It did and does contain a fair amount of forest though, and thats what attracts birders.

Concrete bunkers are everywhere in the 'forest'

We had two full days to bird the Subic area and our goals were really to see as many of the endemic species as we could.  We had plenty of time for most of the resident locals and they came quickly to the list so we spent more time focussing on a couple of special and hard to get species with some mixed results.

The fist morning was very, very birdy and I had a slew of life birds.  Among the endemic species on the first morning were Brown-breasted and Spotted Kingfishers, Philippine and Rufous Coucals, Luzon Hornbill, White-bellied, Philippine and Northern Sooty Woodpeckers, Luzon Flameback, Philippine Hanging-Parrot, Green Racket-tail, and many more.  There were also some endemics with hard to remember local names ... Guaiabero, Balicassiao, and Coleto ... which gave the list a decidedly exotic feel.  In all, 25 of the 40 species we saw on the first trail on the first morning were lifers for me.  The up-side of being on an island is that a big percentage of the common species are endemics, the down-side though is that overall diversity tends to be low, and over the next day and three quarters we only added another 13 life birds while birding hard in the habitat.

White-bellied Woodpecker and Blue-naped Parrot

After the Nabassan Trail, we went to a restricted area and birded the Hill 394 Ridge Trail in search of a specific target, the WHITE-LORED ORIOLE which led us a long way into the trail before eventually surrendering and giving us decent views in the canopy.  We also had a bonus Philippine Falconet on the trail and glimpsed an eagle of some sort through the canopy, never to be seen again.

White-lored Oriole and Rufous-crowned Bee-eater

We then made the first of four visits to a site for White-fronted Tit, apparently a bird that is very hard to get in the Philippines and can be easier to see here than elsewhere.  While we spent a lot of time here, and saw good birds ... Amethyst Brown-Dove, Spotted Buttonquail, Stripe-sided Rhabdornis, etc. but despite Mark's hard work we couldn't come up with the tit.  Can't see everything I guess.

Red Junglefowl and Green Racquet-tail 

With two nights in Subic, we did have the opportunity to eat some great local food (including the amazing Adobo and the more challenging Sisig) and to go owling after dinner both nights.  We had lots of Luzon Boobooks, some Chocolate Boobooks, a couple of Philippine Scops-Owls and a Great Eared-Nightjar all with the added bonus of wandering around the abandoned concrete bunkers and military buildings in the dark.  An interesting experience.

Coleto

Sisig ... essentially chopped pig face.  I was doing fine with it until I bit down on a (pig's) canine-tooth ...
the taste was great though, I want to explore more Philippine cuisine ...

So overall, only 71 species for the weekend, but 38 of them were new for me.  More importantly, I finally got to the Philippines and started my Philippine list.  38 endemics down, 200-ish to go.  I'm sure it won't be my last trip there ....