a blog about philippine biodiversity

makiling in august

2008-08-14T22:01:00.001+08:00

UP Los Banos College of Forestry
TREES and nearby areas only
August 10, 2008
5:30am to 10:30am
Cloud: 1/8; 2/8
Observer: Mads Bajarias

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Sometime last week I met a veterinarian who used to work for a famous exotic bird trader. He has relatives in the community near the foot of Mt. Makiling and mentioned that his cousins have been seeing a group of "kalaw" in the area recently.

Although JC Gonzalez has Rufous Hornbill in his pictorial guide (2000), no one has reported Rufous Hornbills in Makiling in recent memory so I thought it was a good lead to check.

The birds were said to be seen at the foot of Makiling across the stream from TREES. I waited for a bit and about 6am I saw a group of about 10 tarictics making their way to TREES from across the stream. They perched on a fruiting tree behind TREES and made a lot of trumpety noises. They were the largest tarictics I've ever seen (which may have led to the confusion with RH). In a few minutes smaller groups of threes and twos joined the larger group in the tree, where they fed on its reddish marble-sized fruits.

I noticed that one of the larger males tended to jump around and shake the branches twice followed by a loud call. This seemed to momentarily drive off the other males in the group. A female sometimes joined him and together they'd shake the branch they were on twice and then they'd call loudly. I waited if the pair varied the number of shakes but they seemed to always stop at the second shake. They'd move to another part of the branch or a different branch, shake it twice and call. They repeated this for a few minutes. It was interesting to watch.

But one can't help fearing that all the courtship(?) noises will attract predators. As Ned pointed out a few months ago, the stream that runs below TREES (part of which joins "Flatrocks and the Botanical Garden) is used as a trail for people who, for various reasons, want to avoid passing through the gate.

If anyone wants to see the tarictics up close, just wait for them at the parking area at the back of TREES over the stream. One hopes the presence of birders might stop potential hunters here.

Also spent some time walking along the stream and exploring the foot trail there. The path was well-worn and led up to Flatrocks bypassing the gate. A pair of malkohas calling to each other led me to a serpent-eagle feeding on earthworms on the ground; it wasn't alarmed at all by my presence (maybe the malkohas were alerting the raptor about me!).

Where the stream meets the Botanical Garden I spotted Indigo-banded and a few meters above it, a White-throated Kingfisher, an unexpected pairing.

1. Crested Serpent-Eagle [Spilornis cheela] - 1 adult. Feeding on earthworms on the ground. Viewed at close range for more than 10 minutes on the ground and then it perched on a branch. Seemed to be habituated to humans; no leg-bands.

2. Philippine Falconet [Microhierax erythrogenys] - 3.
3. Common Emerald Dove [Chalcophaps indica] - 1 perched on branch.
4. Guaiabero [Bolbopsittacus lunulatus] - 2 perched.
5. Cuckoo sp. - 1
6. Scale-feathered Malkoha [Phaenicophaeus cumingi] - 3. Two were calling to each other. Between them, on the ground was the serpent-eagle.
7. Red-crested Malkoha [Phaenicophaeus superciliosus] - 1. Also in vicinity of serpent-eagle.
8. Indigo-banded Kingfisher [Alcodeo cyanopecta] - 1. Perched on rocks on stream.
9. White-throated Kingfisher [Halcyon smyrnensis] - 1. Calling over stream.
10. Tarictic Hornbill [Penelopides manillae] - 17. Feeding on reddish fruits (photo of fruit taken).
11. Coppersmith Barbet [Megalaima haemacephala] - 3 seen, more heard.
12. Philippine Pygmy Woodpecker [Dendrocopos maculatus] - HO
13. Bar-bellied Cuckoo-shrike [Coracina striata] - 2 perched, possibly more in flight.
14. Blackish Cuckoo-shrike [Coracina coerulescens] - 6. Vocal.
15. Black-and-white Triller [Lalage melanoleuca] - 4
16. Yellow-vented Bulbul [Pycnonotus goaivier] - 6
17. Philippine Bulbul [Hypsipetes philippinus] - 10
18. Balicassiao [Dicrurus balicassius] - 3, more heard.
19. Stripe-headed Rhabdornis [Rhabdornis mystacalis] - 2
20. Warbler sp. - 1 (possibly Lemon-throated Leaf-warbler; silent)
21. Grey-backed Tailorbird [Orthotomus derbianus] - HO
22. Striped Flowerpecker [Dicaeum aeruginosum] - 1. ID'ed mainly from size, streaked underparts and flicking tail.
23. Red-keeled Flowerpecker [Dicaeum australe] - 6.
24. Flowerpecker sp. - 10

Fruits eaten by hornbills.

Crested Serpent-Eagle (yellowish facial skin visible in this bad photo).

Makiling in July

2008-07-24T06:15:00.001+08:00

Brown Shrike in Dalaguete

2008-07-24T06:03:00.001+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | my only decent bird photo. nice of the shrike to cooperate.

Mag-alambak birding path

2008-07-24T06:00:00.000+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Mag-alambak is a barangay seven kilometers from Dalaguete poblacion in Cebu. Mag-alambak is roughly halfway between Dalaguete town and Mantalongon, the so-called "vegetable basket" of Cebu. The right side falls to a stream while the left side is a wall of limestone. The riverbank side has been cleared, houses built and vegetables planted extensively. The left side is steep limestone which has protected the few trees clinging there.

Crimson sunbird very conspicuous on the trees and shrubs in the right which may mean they have well-hidden nests there.

Encroaching vegetable farms threaten this neat, shaded trail. in the seventies, monkeys were plentiful here until deforestation and hunting pressure made them very hard to find.

Makiling in November

2008-07-24T05:59:00.000+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | this was the entrance to the disused "picnic area" created by imelda marcos for an international jamboree of scouts in makiling. no one goes there anymore. rumor has it that imelda, concerned about possible snakes in the area ordered the streams to be filled with a substance poisonous to snakes. the next day, creeks were full of the dead bodies of frogs, and no snakes.

today, we got a male indigo-banded kingfisher at the mudsprings area. we also observed 2 usually hard-to-see species: white-browed shama and grey-backed tailorbird.

sorrowless tree saraca indica.

tough figs.

the naked-faced spiderhunter was a no-show, but a brilliant male flaming sunbird obliged us in this grove.

someday, a sci-fi show will be filmed here.

more like "makiling rainforest parking lot."

stomping ground of the local red-bellied pitta.

here's lu-ann, on her third year of looking for the pitta in makiling. the previous week, a group of birders stumbled on a pitta on their first try. c'est la vie.

the recent "super-typhoon" opened the canopy and let sunlight reach further into the forest floor.

main trail looks brighter and wider after the typhoon.

why do i find fungi interesting?

branch of a huge tree felled by the typhoon was covered in epiphytes.

pleasant day in the forest.

Makiling in May

2008-07-24T03:11:00.001+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | got a beautiful male spotted wood-kingfisher by trailside. finally observed that barbets make their calls using their throat muscles. an amazing sight: a female flaming sunbird perched on a slight branch, held out its long curved bill, into which a male sunbird neatly placed an insect it had caught a moment before. then off they flew together.

elegant tits seem to be courting: in one tree, males sang while vibrating their wings rapidly, in full view of what i assume to be females. got yellow-bellied whistler and yellow-wattled bulbul. the wild figs have dried out and nothing for the few frugivores around.

have to try and go off-trail next time. also, try to get a recorder to lure out those blasted shamas who like to drive me bonkers.

still have not sighted the pitta again. nor the ground-thrush. that's about 4 years now and counting. felix the cat II among the stores looks fitter.

The Parrots of Subic

2008-07-24T03:03:00.001+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Out in the open: an adult blue-naped parrot feeding a juvenile as two other adults stood guard. Our attention was drawn to the scene by the cries of the young one which was making a sound distinct from the harsh calls of the adults. After patiently feeding the youngster, the adult rubbed its bill on the young one's lores, forecrown, bill, etc. When the feeding and what looks like grooming were done, all four flew away in that peculiarly noisy-and-fun way of all wild parrots.

A pair of crows was busy making a nest somewhere near the old brahminy kite's nest site. Below the crow's nest is a thicket which is known to be the territory of a pack of rufous coucals, a species whose behavior as a group never fails to amuse: when crossing open space, they always travel in the same line that the leader traverses. Very rarely do the followers deviate from this path. Their true habitat, of course, is the understorey where they navigate expertly. It is open space, it seems, that confounds them.

We previously saw the kite preparing its nest last December. Today, the kite's nest looks disused. Maybe it'll be refurbished once the next breeding cycle comes in? We'll go and see later in the year.

Somewhere, a koel was calling, perhaps sending alarm signals to the crows whose nests koels are known to sneak into and deposit their own eggs for the poor unsuspecting crows to watch over. I'm not sure though if the koels actually kick the crows' eggs off.

Guaiaberos were constantly zooming over us in raucous packs of up to 5 individuals. The green imperials seem to be fatter this time of year. The coletos were all showy and in great numbers. The big woodpeckers didn't disappoint, especially the flamebacks whose mantles blaze when the sun hits them at certain angles. This is probably the only site where Luzon's three big woodpeckers can be easily seen (sometimes, in the same tree). It is the pygmy that one usually misses here.

A racquet-tail made a hasty and noisy flyby. I kept hoping it would show itself later but it never came out again. Getting a glimpse of its racquet silhouetted in the sun makes one wonder, once more, what are its beautiful racquets for?

Once, we saw a flameback hitch up a branch until it was perched side by side with a plump green imperial-pigeon. There, the two species sat for some time, enjoying the peace on a nice summer day. Maybe we all can learn something from that.

Makiling off-trails

2008-07-23T17:12:00.000+08:00

Mt. Makiling (off-trails only)
August 4, 2007
7am to 2:30pm
Conditions: Drizzle; intermittent rain
Observer: Mads Bajarias

BY MADS BAJARIAS | The trails in Mt. Makiling are damp and muddy due to the intermittent rains. No sign here of the prolonged dry spell that has hit parts of northeastern Luzon and which has prompted Church officials to unleash a so-called special prayer—the Oracion Imperatur (or something like it that sounds suspiciously like it came from the pen of JK Rowling).

After arriving in TREES, I checked on the flowerpecker nest and found that the parents are still busy going to-and-fro the nest in the kaimito tree. The Trillers were a no-show this morning but a trio of Guaiaberos sunning themselves on a leafless branch was a welcome sight—two of them were almost cheek to cheek.

Just like in the previous two visits last month, the Red-bellied Pitta was calling from somewhere below TREES so for the heck of it, I tried to look for a way down to the stream and have a look-see. I found a disused trail down the road, although later on, I saw that there is another trail closer to TREES right in front of the nearby dorm. It seems that some students use this trail to go down the stream to get drunk as the trail-end is littered with bottles and plastic bags.

In the semi-dry stream bed, I slowly made my way upstream towards the direction of TREES but it was slow-going as the drizzle made the boulders slick and my contact lenses screwy. The sound of moving water made hearing birdcalls—and other sounds—difficult. At one point, I almost suffered a heart attack when I turned around and saw a young boy staring at me from the opposite bank. An adult man later joined him. They seemed to be locals judging from their bolos and worn-out flip-flops and were going out to collect something—fruits, maybe. Or river shrimps? They disappeared silently into the undergrowth, following a faint trail.

After an hour of scrambling over boulders, I got an Indigo-banded Kingfisher perched on top of a huge boulder. Then a beautiful scale-feathered malkoha perched overhead.

I flushed an unidentified bird which had been hidden from view by large boulders in the middle of the channel. I was walking over a portion of exposed stream bed and only got a glimpse as the bird flew from among the boulders into the right bank (facing downstream) where I lost it in the leaf litter. It had fluttering wing-beats, rufous upperparts, stubby tail, and was about 10 inches long (this estimate is based on mentally comparing it with the Indigo-banded which I has just seen moments before).

I never got to spot the pitta this time, but I was lucky to get an excellent view of a calling male shama which flew up an exposed branch just as the rain started again. Further on I spotted by pure chance a perched trogon with its back to me—a bird I haven’t seen for quite some time. An old friend.

At one point, about 20 red-crested malkohas glided silently over me and as I tried to see if there were other species traveling with them, an agitated male Black-naped Monarch flew in and perched over me. Looking around, I found its cup-shaped nest about a meter off the ground. I backed off.

I still have not encountered any sign of the coletos for the last two months and am disappointed on inability to pinpoint the location of the pitta that has been calling for at least the last three weeks, but the sight of the trogon and the monarch nest balanced things out.

At about 2:30, heavy rain started again so I had to cut short the trip. Till next time.

See below for a few (not-so-good) photos of the stream bed where bird I couldn’t ID was flushed and a few bad photos of a gorgeous Green Vine Snake I almost brushed against off-trail. Lovely lovely animal!

1. White-eared Brown-Dove [Phapitreron leucotis] – 6 (5 perched in a single tree)
2. Black-chinned Fruit-Dove [Ptilinopus leclancheri] – HO
3. Guaiabero [Bolbopsittacus lunulatus] – 3 (2 perched on same branch)
4. Scale-feathered Malkoha [Phaenicophaeus cumingi] – 1
5. Red-crested Malkoha [Phaenicophaeus superciliosus] – 20
6. Glossy Swiftlet [Collocalia esculenta] – 4
7. Philippine Trogon [Harpactes ardens] – 1 fem
8. Indigo-banded Kingfisher [Alcedo cyanopecta] – 1
9. Luzon Tarictic [Penelopides manillae] – 1
10. Coppersmith Barbet [Megalaima haemacephala] – 6
11. Red-bellied Pitta [Pitta erythrogaster] – HO
12. Bar-bellied Cuckoo-shrike [Coracina striata] – 5
13. Black-and-white Triller [Lalage melanoleuca] – HO
14. Philippine Bulbul [Hypsipetes philippinus] – 20
15. Balicassiao [Dicrurus balicassius] – 10
16. Stripe-headed Rhabdornis [Rhabdornis mystacalis] – 5
17. White-browed Shama [Copsychus luzoniensis] – 1 male
18. Grey-backed Tailorbird [Orthotomus derbianus] – HO
19. Black-naped Monarch [Hypothymis azurea] – 3 (1 male guarding nest)
20. Yellow-bellied Whistler [Pachycephala philippinensis] – 1
21. Red-keeled Flowerpecker [Dicaeum australe] – 3 males (1 nesting)
22. Flowerpecker sp. - 1
23. Sunbird sp. – 1 female
24. Unidentified – 1. Flushed from stream below TREES. Rufous upperparts. Fluttering wingbeats. Short tail. About 10 inches length. Seen in good light.

Ingmar Bergman and the Cebu Flowerpecker

2008-07-23T17:02:00.002+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Two disparate events last month made me think of extinction: One concerned Ingmar Bergman and the other—the Cebu Flowerpecker.

Ingmar Bergman is the Swedish director who died in July 30, 2007 at age 89. The Cebu Flowerpecker is a Cebu-endemic bird that clings to life in a patch of disturbed forest. Bergman is extinct; the bird is almost sure to follow him to oblivion soon enough.

Bergman’s film that made him famous outside Sweden, Seventh Seal, follows the story of a medieval knight named Antonius Block and his squire, Jöns, as they travel back home to plague-ravaged Sweden after years of serving in the Crusades. The most famous scene in the movie shows Block challenging the Grim Reaper to a chess game. Although this scene has been parodied over and over, Antonius Block’s brave effort to delay the inevitable is the iconic human condition in the face of death.

There’s another—less famous—scene from the movie which speaks volumes about death. In it, the pair travels inland from the beach. Looking for an inn where they can rest, Block commands Jöns to ask directions from a hooded figure who seems to be resting on the ground.

Jöns stirs the man, only to find that the man is dead—a victim of the plague. The squire coolly gets back on his horse and exchanges the following words with his master:

Block: Did he show you the way?
Jöns: Not exactly.
Block: What did he say?
Jöns: Nothing.
Block: Was he mute?
Jöns: No, my lord. He was most eloquent.

Death—in the form of the bubonic plague—nips at their heels.

This terse exchange brings home the point of how eloquent a corpse can be. While life may be formless, an individual’s death presents a clear statement. In death, humans finally fit into a neat narrative—a beginning, a middle and an end.

Death’s eloquence fascinates us and this attraction is reflected in pop culture. As I write this piece, on TV is CSI Supreme Sunday where dedicated law-enforcement officers—paragons of virtue—examine in minute detail the clues found in crime scenes to solve mysterious slayings. This TV show always opens with a death scene and through the course of the episode, the CSIs will piece together the events that lead to the death using clues and evidence pulled from the scene of the crime. Oftentimes, there is an autopsy scene where the medical examiner explains Cause of Death. By the end of each episode, more often than not, justice is served when a complete picture of the death is achieved. The dead, in the world of CSI, tell the most eloquent tales.

CSI is not alone in this. There’s a plethora of shows along the same vein. There’s Air Crash Investigation where various scientists piece together the events that led to fatal airplane crashes. There’s Bones about a team of forensic experts and there’s NCIS about military investigators.

In all of these shows, once a mysterious death is explained, case solved. Everything fits nearly into a narrative—beginning, middle, end.

THE second incident that made me ponder over extinction was a discussion among local birdwatchers about the Critically Endangered Cebu Flowerpecker. This Cebu-endemic bird is infamous in the local bird-watching circle due to its ridiculously low numbers. Every two years, foreign birders see an individual, and that’s all. Many have tried to look for it but very few have seen it.

Discovered in 1877, this species was never described as “common” or “abundant.” Among fifty flowerpeckers collected in Cebu at the beginning of the 20th century, only 5 were Cebu Flowerpecker. It was considered extinct soon after that and it was only in 1992 that it was re-discovered in a patch of forest which “lies on a thin segmented strip on a steep and very uneven, west-facing limestone hillside.”

According to Collar etal. in Threatened Birds of the Philippines:

“Its population now must be extremely low, since only four birds have ever been seen at once, and the habitat available covers a tiny area (300 ha, i.e. 3 sq. km), of which only 30 ha (inside a continuous tract of 185 ha) may be optimal.”

Some biologists like to point out the plight of this species as a result of the denudation of Cebu’s natural forests. However, doesn’t its re-discovery in 1992 weaken the argument that Cebu is an environmental basket case? Could it be that not enough people looked for it in the intervening years? Some researchers hypothesize that contrary to those who like to point at Cebu as an environmental disaster, they posit that Cebu never had any substantial closed-canopy forests to begin with—which could account for the fact that there are no historical records of forest specialists like hornbills and bleeding-hearts on the island.

The discussion about the Cebu Flowerpecker in the bird club was spurred by the impending bird festival to be held in Cebu next month. One birder expressed the opinion that the “Cebu Flowerpecker deserve to go extinct because of its timidity in the face of competition by the more aggressive Red-keeled Flowerpecker. It’s a cowardly animal.”

Ignoring the silly soap opera language, the above opinion inferred that an intrinsic quality in this rare species is dooming it to extinction. Barring the blatant anthropomorphism, this opinion is nothing new. Going back to Collar etal. “It has been suggested that interspecific competition with the Red-keeled Flowerpecker, which is highly aggressive, may also have contributed to the decline of the species, although this must presumably be a significant problem only in contexts where habitat modification has begun to favour the latter species.”

In other words, the competition between species heated up only when and where they had to compete for less and less resources in a shrinking range of habitats.

But the truth is no one really knows why the Cebu Flowerpecker is on the verge of extinction. We do not know, for instance, the population trend of the Red-keeled Flowerpecker–this soap opera’s purported villain. Who can say for certain if their own numbers are healthy? Its easy to say that it is more aggressive than the Cebu Flowerpecker but does that actually result in a rise in its own numbers in Cebu?

Except in rare cases where a rapacious invasive species takes its toll on island-bound species, extinction on a species level is much tougher to dissect. While individual deaths are “eloquent,” species extinctions are more mysterious and the secrets to their doom more difficult to unearth.

Perhaps the most famous avian extinction in the modern era was that of the Passenger Pigeon. It had been one of the most abundant birds on Earth, and yet it was snuffed out completely. The last nesting birds were reported in the 1890s. The last individual, named Martha, died alone at about 1:00 pm on September 1, 1914 inside a zoo.

Various reasons have been put forth on the causes of the Passenger Pigeon’s demise: Large-scale commercial hunting, clearance of forests for agriculture, disease, and inability to reproduce when the flock is below a threshold number. It could all be a combination of different factors. The mystery of its extinction will perhaps remain with us. What is telling is that a species that numbered millions plummeted drastically until it was wiped out in a matter of decades.

This brings out another point. The extinction of the Passenger Pigeon has no observable detrimental effect on the quality of life in the US. The US economy surged as the Passenger Pigeon dwindled. Therefore, why should we care when these animals die out?

To be blunt, why should we care when the Cebu Flowerpecker die out?

Like the dead man in Seventh Seal, the deaths of fellow humans affect us directly, but the extinction of another species, how does that affect us, really? When an obscure bird in the island of Cebu dies out, who cares? Isn’t extinction natural?

These questions open a host of issues that are too broad to tackle for a small essay like this or for an amateur birdwatcher like me, but let me scratch at the surface anyway.

The word “extinction” is from the Latin “extinctus,” a variant of “extinguere.” It referred originally to extinguishing fires. It conjures the image of a candle's fluttering flame. Every time a species dies out, a light is extinguished in the cosmos. Each extinction leaves the natural world a bit darker, duller and lonelier.

“We watched the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.” These are the haunting words of proto-ecologist Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac, describing the life ebbing away from a wolf he had shot. A fierce green fire dying in her eyes.

The extinction of the Cebu Flowerpecker ushers us closer to a world where only aggressive and weedy species—the animals that reflect human propensity for rapacity and self-interest—thrive. Each extinction leaves us closer to a noisier and dirtier world where animals and plants that reflect our own aggressive traits dominate while the rest crowd and fight over rapidly diminishing resources and habitats. We are headed to a world shorn of mystique. It’s a dreadful prospect, as one writer once put it. Unfortunately, we’re heading there.

makiling

2008-07-23T16:46:00.002+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | nice tree at the foot of TREES dorm. greater flameback has been known to visit it. regulars are falconets who sun themselves and groom each other on the bare branches and barbets who perch with their bills slightly open like panting dogs.

beginning of trail: except for the lumbering jeepneys and noisy scooters, this would be pleasant. ashy thrush have been regularly spotted on certain times of the year at the bend before the right turn.

shade-loving peacock moss coat boulders near the mudspring.

trail to flatrocks where i got scaly ground-thrush years ago. area is steep-sloped and dominated by rattans. vine tangles good for spotted wood-kingfishers calling in the pre-dawn.

scale-feathered malkoha used to be very easy in makiling. but there seems to be months when no reports come in. same with tarictics.

entrance fee is P2 for those with UP IDs. i think P4 for those without. not bad, as this is the only national park easily accessible from manila.

if the trail is deserted for a long time and you're lucky, you could get forest wagtail and pechora pipit.

if you're extremely lucky, persistent and well-prepared, you'll probably succeed in life, and luzon bleeding-heart is possible for you. shama and tailorbird are vocal, but difficult to see without playback.

among the many species listed in juan carlos gonzalez' pictorial guide to the forest birds of mt. makiling are green-faced parrotfinch, pink-bellied imperial pigeon, short-crested monarch and rufous hornbill. no one has reported these in the last decade. extirpated on makiling?

good for scops-owl in pre-dawn. dogs in the nearby houses very vocal, though, and irritating.

mixed vegetation in the mudsprings trail.

the side-trails were nicely muddied. on certain times of the year, these areas are parched and the soil cracked.

paucity of large mature fruiting trees mean the larger birds are few and far between. more conspicuous are smaller species like flowerpeckers and hardy ones like philippine bulbuls and balicassiaos. rhabdornises, tits, nuthatches, warblers and pygmy woodpeckers travel in birdwaves.

due to extensive habitat conversion, makiling is one of the hardest birding areas in the country. the large mammals are all gone, too.

strangler fig.

makiling would be pleasant if less people used motorized vehicles up the main trail. twice, i've seen hunters on vehicles looking for fruit-doves and tarictics. rifles and dead birds easier to conceal in trucks.

dipterocarp thrive along the main trail but the areas away from the trail are heavily disturbed. as the forest patch gets smaller and smaller, diversity dwindles.

up the trail. area beyond the last hut is good for fairy-bluebird, blue-headed fantail, and drongo cuckoo. scale-feathered malkoha retreats up here as well, where human disturbance is far less.

figs over limestone.

tramping among the wild ginger.

Philippine Eagle: On the Verge of Extinction

2008-06-27T16:34:00.004+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from wildlife illustrator Oscar Figuracion Jr. saying that he had just finished an oil painting of a Philippine Eagle and was looking for buyers. I came to know Oscar a few years ago when his illustrations had graced a series of NGO-produced species-identification guides meant for DENR personnel. Someone somewhere, it seems, had noticed that aside from a few exceptions, DENR personnel could not confidently identify rare animal species in the field (and were too proud to say so). The idea of illustrated field-guides was a great project whose time had come.

However, as with most NGO projects with foreign funding, the field guide series petered out and when the interminable NGO-style project assessments came to an end, Oscar was told that his talents were great but no longer needed. Alas, such is the life of an environmental NGO hired hand.

When the projects dried out, Oscar left Quezon City and settled back to his native Mindanao, where, as a young student, he was hired by the leading wildlife biologist of the time, Dr. Dioscoro Rabor, to be an expedition artist. Oscar’s job, during Dr. Rabor’s fieldworks, was to accurately draw the fresh specimens collected by the hunters before they lost forever their colors. No one does that anymore. The advent of megapixel digital cameras has rendered the expedition-artist extinct.

Somehow I've always linked the Philippine Eagle with sad stories. Of mis-chances. Ruin and extinction. I am sure there are upbeat voices out there from people who are in touch with the latest schemes and programs to keep the Eagle alive. Once or twice I’ve come across the works of people like Dennis Salvador and Jayson Ibañez who seem to be doing tremendous work for the Eagle and its habitats. I just wished my experiences were as rosy or filled with hope.

The memory that Oscar's painting stirred from the muddy depths of my brain was the sight of the birds languishing in the Raptor Center in Mt. Makiling. The center was set up in the ‘80s to attempt a well-intentioned captive-breeding program. It has failed. The Raptor Center in Makiling is rundown, moldy, and the large enclosures slowly succumbing to the vegetation, although cheery droves of school-children still regularly troop there to see the forlorn eagles and other captive birds too sick or too habituated with humans to ever be released in the wild. The kids don’t care because being kids they'll have fun anyway and the teachers are content to give the little kids their exercise away from the confines of the classrooms. The Center earns from these excursions, but barely enough to cover maintenance, I imagine.

The last time I went to the Raptor Center, the unused cages were dilapidated and a caretaker grumbled how their meager allowances were slow in coming, and how they had to feed the Eagles by farming rabbits in the vicinity. Lack of funds, inadequate support and other, familiar, gloomy travails were aired out. I never visited again.

More on the subject of sad stories: Let’s go back to the man who discovered the Eagle in 1896 for science—the naturalist John Whitehead. “Disease and ‘slow starvation’” hounded Whitehead throughout his stay in the Philippines, in the words of ornithologist and author Nigel J. Collar, “[Whitehead] often fell victim to gross misfortune; yet his most celebrated moment resulted from one the cruellest pieces of luck he endured. In 1895 an entire consignment of skins, the result of several months’ concentrated collecting on Samar and containing many anticipated new species, was lost when its carrier, the German ship, Weiland, caught fire and had to be scuttled off Singapore. Whitehead was therefore forced to go back to the island in May 1896 and try again.”

What a blow that news must have been for the young man! But return he did and it was on his return trip that he collected the first specimens of the Philippine Eagle, a species that will forever be linked to his name. But within three years of that great discovery, Whitehead would succumb to fever at age 38.

The scarcity of the Eagle and its constantly shrinking habitat is not a new observation or problem, for Whitehead himself wrote: “The forests that are left in Samar are still very vast, especially on the Pacific Coast, but for miles inland those of the western coast have been destroyed, leaving ranges of low undulating clay hills chiefly covered with lalang grass. When this country has been passed, the traveler finds himself at an elevation of nearly 1,000 feet and meets with the true virgin forest of Samar. This forest is becoming annually smaller owing to the cultivation of hemp. . . .”

Fast-forward to 1977, when Robert S. Kennedy, the man who has done the most to save the Philippine Eagle, published in the March 1977 issue of The Wilson Bulletin the results of his studying a pair of Eagles at Tudaya Falls in Mt. Apo National Park on Mindanao.

Part of the article goes over now-familiar terrain, “As land has been cleared for agriculture and for lumber, the lower edges of the forests inhabited by the eagles have been retreating up the sides of mountains. The birds have partially adapted to this change by hunting over cleared land and living in second growth forest.” It seems that the Philippine Eagle has been teetering on the brink of extinction since its discovery!

Kennedy’s findings was enlivened by a quaint illustration by John P. O’Neill of a perched Eagle serene and safe while the silvery cataract of Tudaya Falls gracefully pours in the background. It is green everywhere.

When I last went to Tudaya Falls in the early 90s, the hills were bare and planted over with crops. I have no knowledge of any Eagle sighting in Tudaya Falls for the last two decades. Perhaps they are there for all I know. I have never been back since, afraid of what I might find out for sure.

At about the same time that I received Oscar’s e-mail, I got an e-mail from a new UP graduate. She had responded to a mass e-mail I had sent out to a writers’ group looking for contributing writers for a small magazine that I was editing. The new grad said she was in Bukidnon and so would I have a topic in mind for her to write while she was there. I responded excitedly, writing that Dalwangan, in Bukidnon, was perhaps the only place left in the entire world to have a reliable sighting of the Philippine Eagle in the wild. Can she write about the situation in Dalwangan? She never wrote back.

"Do you see a lot of colorful birds in the forest"?

2008-06-27T16:30:00.002+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Social gatherings can be minefields of awkwardness for a Filipino birder because such occasions give rise to queries like “So what do you do on your spare time?” The trapped Filipino birder throws caution to the wind when he opts to respond: “That’s nice of you to ask. I look for forest birds.” To this, the inevitable response from a non-birding crowd is: “Oh.” Puzzled silence ensues.

Compare that to the reception an open-water diver gets when she says that she looks for sharks, sea turtles and the like: an awe-struck, “Oh, how exciting!” Sharks? Gasps from the audience. Sea turtles? The crowd goes wild.

I’ve since come to grips with the facts: scuba is just way more glamorous than birdwatching. It must be those body-hugging wetsuits. There’s no comparison. A generation of kids grew up dreaming to be Jacques-Yves Cousteau and get to explore the mysterious depths of the oceans. No one grew up wanting to be a famous birdwatcher like…like… My point exactly.

Sometimes, I get a reply to the effect of: “My neighbor has a talking myna. It’s hysterical. It knows all the swear words! You should see it.” If the person I am talking to is amiable enough, I try to steer the topic of conversation towards something that doesn’t involve bird cages and life-long captivity.

Once or twice, though, I get something along the likes of: “You’re a birdwatcher, do you see a lot of colorful birds?”

The question always makes me hem and haw. If I say “yes,” I fear I may be giving the impression that colorful Philippine birds are easy to find—and they aren’t. If I say “no,” then I’m no good at what I do, am I? It’s a darn good question and it deserves careful consideration because it touches on one of the most common misconceptions about forest life that I find prevalent among urbanized Filipinos: that a forest is a picturesque place decorated with brightly colored birds and other wildlife that flit about for the enjoyment of humans.

How I wish our forests were like a kind of Disney-fied glen where cute Bambi-like creatures gambol—but it’s not. To search for a colorful bird in the forest is to work hard. Sure, there are conspicuous forest birds, but more often than not, these noisy ones are plain-colored, drab, and derided by old-time birders as “common”—unworthy of serious pursuit. While tourism-related brochures promote the Philippines with images of the Philippine Eagle and the tarsier, chances are that nine in 10 tourists will never see these animals in the wild during their stay in-country.

The tropical bird expert and author, Steven Hilty, writes about this idyllic image of the tropics peddled by tourist brochures which feature brilliantly-colored parrots and other cuddly creatures.

“A menagerie of colorful birds peering down from the verdant exuberance of a rainforest—it’s an image we all secretly harbor, even when we know better. The famous nineteenth-century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace clearly knew better when he commented on colorfulness in tropical birds in his now classic Malay Archipelago writing, ‘Although the number of brilliantly colored birds in almost every part of the tropics is very great… they are by no means conspicuous, and as a rule they can hardly be said to add much to the general effect of the equatorial scenery.’”

I once helped a teacher-friend guide her young students to look for birds in the lower slopes of Mt. Makiling. After a few minutes of strenuous walking with nothing to show for our efforts, the inevitable question arises from one of youngsters: “Where are the birds?”

Where indeed.

The other weekend I was back in Mt. Makiling with my birding buddy, Lu-Ann. One of our objectives was the Red-bellied Pitta (Pitta erythrogaster), a jewel of a bird that spends most of its time feeding on the forest floor. Experts say there are about 30 different species of pittas in the world (taxonomists are still figuring it out) and most of them are found in Southeast Asia, Australia and Borneo. Their habitat, the rainforest, is under severe threat and many species are therefore endangered.

The adult male Red-bellied Pitta’s description, as lifted from Kennedy et al. (Oxford Press, 2000) is the following:

"Stripe from lores to above each eye dark brown; forecrown and cheeks cinnamon; hindcrown and nape chestnut; collar blue; upper back green; rump, upper tail, wing coverts, and edges of secondaries blue; under tail black; primaries black with dark blue tips and small white wing patch; chin brown, leading to black throat often with white band in center; broad breast band green on sides becoming blue in center; rest of underparts scarlet."

It is this last bit about the scarlet that grabs the attention of anyone looking at an illustration of the pitta. There is an excellent photo of the species online, taken by György Szimuly in Indonesia, with the diagnostic scarlet belly in full view. It’s an arresting bird.

So now, this can’t be difficult to spot in the forest is it? Doesn’t the bright red belly stick out among all that greenery? The answer is an emphatic No. The pitta, despite its colorful plumage that pops out against a white background, is bloody difficult to see in the forest understorey unless the bird obliges by hopping on to the middle of the trail and displays its belly under full sunlight.

Again, the excellent Steven Hilty:

“Concealing color does not have to be dull and drab. Colorful birds, reptiles and insects may appear conspicuous when taken from their environment, but these colors often closely match the reflective properties of the vegetation where they live. Large patches of bright and dark colors mimic the harsh, high-contrast lighting of the forest. The plumages of [colorful tropical birds], with dark green backs and bright yellow, red or rufous underparts, are evidence of the effectiveness of this coloration. It might seem difficult to believe that such colors would help conceal a bird, but anyone who has squinted into a sunlit rainforest canopy in search of a trogon or jacamar will appreciate how bright colors can disrupt a bird’s shape.”

Going back to Mt. Makiling, Lu-Ann and I were in a gully where a rivulet burbled underfoot. Water has pooled in places making the ground soft and mushy. The understorey was damp and moist. Parts of the gully were in shadow although shafts of light did illumine certain patches here and there. As we rounded a bend, we stumbled on an adult Red-bellied Pitta hopping on the edge of the trickling water. The bird was on a sunlit spot and my pulse quickened as I caught a glimpse of the fiery-red belly. But just as quickly, it turned ever-so-slightly and hopped on to the shade and was gone. As if swallowed by the jungle.

In my recollection, I figure it must’ve turned its body a mere centimeters and yet—what a difference that made! In one slight movement, it shielded its bright red underparts from us and presented its upperparts: a disruptive camouflage of chestnut, cinnamon, blue, green, and black that blended perfectly with the high-contrast lighting in the gully. A double hop snatched it from the sunlight and into the darkness where we lost sight of it. Amazing experience. One second we were looking at a brilliantly-hued creature and in a split-second it was gone.

What happened? Hilty offers an explanation:

“In such cases, our eyes do not react to the sudden change in light quickly enough to follow the movement. When the pupils of our eyes open to receive more light, we lose visual acuity, making the image of the [bird] even more difficult to follow. Additionally, our retinas do not immediately respond to the dramatic change in light intensity when we look from bright light into darkness, so for a moment, our retinas remain stimulated, even after the light has changed. These extreme variations in brightness that occur when the birds dart from sun to shade and back again make it difficult for predators to accurately track their location.”

So, going back to the “bird-less” school trip with the youngsters up Mt. Makiling, I had to tell the impatient one that the birds are there but we have to work a little harder to find them. Looking for wildlife in the forest isn’t like going to the mall where one is instantly gratified. Nature does not reveal its secrets so cheaply; one must work hard, and sometimes, that’s not even enough. I don’t know if I made a difference with the kids that day because the only good looks we had was of the Philippine Bulbul (Hypsipetes philippinus) and the word “bulbul” was hardly out of my mouth when a few snickered and giggled at the word. Yes, we dipped on the colorful ones, but at least I made a few of the kids giggle and laugh so the day wasn’t quite a waste.

I wanted to explain that “bulbul” comes from the ancient Persian or Turkish word that is associated with “nightingale” and has nothing to do with the Tagalog denotation of the word meaning “pubic hair” but they were enjoying themselves so much I decided to let them be, in the hopes that the fun they had about the bird with the colorful name is what they’ll take with them home from the trip.

How many Philippine Eagles are there in the wild?

2008-06-27T14:00:00.003+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | As an ordinary bloke with no formal training in biology, I’ve always wanted—perhaps unreasonably—a clear answer to this question.

But it seems that no one knows—or at least, no one is reckless enough to hazard an answer. Why is this? I figured the history of the struggle to conserve the Philippine Eagle has its fair share of acrimonious debates. There is just too much at stake in this matter which has led people to be very circumspect.

On the few occasions that I’ve managed to buttonhole a conservationist to ask him about the number of eagles in the wild, the reception I invariably got was a look of patient concern, like that of a long-suffering parent to a rash, impertinent child.

Am I being unreasonable?

On more than one occasion, I was lectured on how the exact number doesn’t matter. The important think is that everyone agrees on the Eagle falling under the category of Critically Endangered in the IUCN Red List. This List is a criteria used to determine extinction risk and set numerical thresholds for qualification for the three globally threatened categories. These are based on factors including rate of decline, population size, area of geographic distribution, and degree of population and distribution fragmentation. But at this point my eyes had glazed over.

Turning to books, I encounter the usual hesitation to pin a number. In “Threatened Birds of the Philippines” (1999, Bookmark) by Nigel G. Collar etal, the section on Population begins with these grave words:

“Attempts at articulating a fully reasoned estimate of population size in the Philippine Eagle have persistently been compromised by the absence of solid data on its density and the extent of its habitat, and by an understandable but perhaps over-cautious reluctance to accept or even attempt extrapolations using data that appear to overturn the traditional view of its great rarity based on field encounter rates.”

After this caveat, the authors (God bless them!) proceed—in herculean proportions—to detail the history of population studies and assessments done on the Philippine Eagle. From early estimates of Mindanao populations which varied between 600-1,900 pairs in 1910, to 225-450 pairs in 1992, these make for fascinating reading, especially for the Philippine Eagle enthusiast.

No doubt about it, this book is a very important document in Philippine bidoversity! But I must admit that the onslaught of numbers and figures leave me bewildered and feeling hopeless.

Among the 65 species in the book, the discussion on the Philippine Eagle is the most exhaustive, and I remember, while he was with Haribon Foundation, Neil Aldrin D. Mallari, one of the co-authors, say that for editorial purposes, they had to trim the Eagle discussion. This attests to the fact that so much documentation is available about Philippine Eagle studies, and yet, so much vital information remains to be uncovered.

Looking for more answers, I turned to the website of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines to get a look at their country bird records—since its inception the club has collated first-hand reports of local and visiting birdwatchers. The online records of the WBCP go back only to 2003 and accepted Philippine Eagle observations total only ten (2006 and 2007 records have not yet been uploaded).

Of the ten reports, nine are from Mindanao and four are from the same locality, Mt. Kitanglad Range Natural Park. The only one recorded outside of Mindanao was of a rescued Eagle in General Nakar, Quezon, that suffered from a gunshot wound.

Ten records in three years! Encountering such low numbers made me yearn for the rigorously derived estimates listed in Collar etal. I’m starting to understand this Critically Endangered tag.

Finally, after trawling cyberspace for information and considering the various answers, I hit upon BirdLife International’s (2007) Species factsheet: Pithecophaga jefferyi which indicates population estimate as 226, with population trend as decreasing.

I have to write that again to keep it in mind: 226. Decreasing.

As an antidote perhaps to all the mention of extrapolations and variances, I visit the website of birder Don Roberson where he listed the Philippine Eagle as the Best Bird of The World (outpointing such outlandish beauties as the Wilson’s Bird-of-Paradise and the Horned Guan). In his site, Roberson recounts his journey to Dalwangan, Bukidnon, in 1990 along with guide Tim Fisher. It’s a fascinating account that brings to focus all the facts and figures that scientists and conservationists have so painstakingly collected so that we can get a better understanding of the Eagle’s condition in the wild.

Only to have impertinent laymen like me childishly demand a number.

Under Verde's Spell

2008-06-27T13:28:00.004+08:00

The Verde Island Passage is known as the epicenter of
global marine biodiversity. But it is also the world’s most vulnerable.

BY LU-ANN G. FUENTES | With a back roll, our world was transformed as we descended into Verde Island’s waters.

Trevallies (talakitok), fusiliers (dalagang bukid), groupers (lapu-lapu) and snappers (manutsot) at Pulong Bato showed with crystal-clear splendor how protected sites could help enhance fish stock. A banded sea snake glided along the coral bottom searching for burrowed gobies, while waves of fairy basslets—which thrive best in clear water and running current—colonized upper slopes adorned with reddish sea fans. A hawksbill turtle—listed as endangered—swam by, suggesting the recovery of their habitat and promising even better return-dives.

This was an unusual gathering of divers, which included First Gen Corp. president and chief operating officer Federico R. Lopez, Conservation International-Philippines (CI-Philippines) country director Romeo B. Trono, First Philippine Conservation Inc. (FPCI) executive director Atty. Rodolfo Ferdinand N. Quicho Jr., and World Conservation Union global marine species assessment coordinator Kent E. Carpenter.

And Verde Island’s waters, pinpointed by Carpenter as the extreme center of global marine biodiversity, warranted this special attention and alliance.

That weekend’s dive sites—the marine protected areas (MPAs) of Pulong Bato in San Agapito and Nalayag in San Agustin Kanluran (better known to divers as the “Verde Wall” and the “Washing Machine”)—consist of rock outcrops that appear to have been eroded from the main island off the northwestern and southeastern shores, respectively.

Both sites extend seaward from land, intersecting the general flow of water, resulting in eddies. This whirlpool pattern—accounting for divers’ “washing machine” reference—concentrates larvae and plankton that attract commercially important species such as surgeon fish, trigger fish, wrass, rainbow runner, bat fish, sweetlips and parrot fish, as well as nontarget fishes like butterfly fish, Moorish idol, anemonefish and damselfish.

Soft corals such as Xenia (hand coral), Sinularia (finger coral), Dendronephthya (tree coral) and Sarcophyton (leather coral) take over Pulong Bato, while Tubastrea (tube coral) and encrusting Montipora (pore coral), along with sponges, hydroids, and tunicates (sea squirts), dominate Nalayag reef.

Major marine habitat
The Indo-Malay-Philippines Archipelago (Impa) has long been considered an area of high marine biodiversity, according to Carpenter, a biological sciences professor at the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

To examine the pattern of richness within the Impa in finer detail, Carpenter and coauthor Victor Springer of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History, used a geographical information system overlay of 2,983 generalized distribution maps of marine species.

With these maps digitized and analyzed in 10 km by 10 km cell-sized sets, the typical bull’s-eye pattern of species’ richness, increasing from east to west, came into more detailed focus—identifying a peak of marine biodiversity on the central Philippine islands.

“I was expecting that the Sulawesi Moluccan area would come up with the highest diversity,” Carpenter admitted, “but up to 1,736 species, or nearly 60 percent of all species, are located in the Verde Island passage between Mindoro and Luzon.”

The pattern of diversity is repeated in most data subsets based on distribution, habitat, invertebrate taxa and shore fishes.

“Indonesia, because of its greater area, may eventually be shown to have a greater overall marine biodiversity than the Philippines,” he conceded. “However, there is a higher concentration of species per unit area in the Philippines than anywhere in Indonesia.”

But Carpenter warned that this major marine habitat is also listed as the most threatened in the world.

Explained Carpenter, who spent over 30 years studying marine environments in the Philippines alongside local scientists and conservationists: “The concentration of limited-range endemics in the Philippines poses a danger of mass extinctions on a marine scale similar to endangered Brazilian rain forests.”

As of February 2006, an estimated 2,824 marine fish species are listed for the Philippines at the FishBase web site—including 33 endemic, 1,729 reef-associated, 169 pelagic and 336 deepwater species. Five of the seven sea-turtle species known to exist in the world today reside in Philippine waters.

But habitat degradation—or accidents like the Guimaras Island oil spill that damaged marine resources in the Visayas—can wipe out a variety of unique biotic communities.

In particular, Carpenter cited the rare red fin wrasse found only in Verde Passage.

“There is ample justification to prioritize the Philippines for conservation,” Carpenter stressed. “A marine biodiversity epicenter represents a national heritage and a global obligation. Conserving these habitats and diversity can help us understand the processes that govern marine biodiversity.”

Alliance building
The Verde Passage Marine Corridor that is spotlighted in Carpenter’s study is comprised of the coasts, islands and waters of Southern Luzon’s five provinces: Batangas, Mindoro Occidental, Mindoro Oriental, Marinduque and Romblon.

“The area harbors some of the country’s richest fishing grounds like Batangas Coast, Balayan Bay, and Tayabas Bay; outstanding diving destinations like Anilao, Verde Island, and Puerto Galera; a major port and transportation facility; and several energy industries like oil, gas and geothermal,” FPCI’s Quicho said.

Sadly, these same socioeconomic activities can also pose threats to the area.

In 2004, even before Carpenter named Verde Island Passage the “center of the center” of global marine biodiversity, the Verde Island Passage Integrated Conservation and Development Program was initiated through the partnership of First Gen Corp., FPCI, CI-Philippines and the City of Batangas.

“The twin goals are to protect the marine ecosystem so that species and ecological process are sustained, and to improve the well-being of people in terms of income, participation and basic services,” Quicho explained.

Gerry Reyes, FPCI director for field operations and Verde Island project coordinator, added that the stakeholders themselves identified the issues surrounding the lack of awareness on conservation measures—from ecological (coral reef damage, siltation, garbage from ships and households) to lack of enforcement (cyanide fishing, compressor fishers and nonresident fishers).

The slightest environmental change affects coral reefs.

“Storm surges and earthquakes naturally ‘weed’ some species to make room for new ones, resulting in a highly diverse ecosystem,” said Lopez, who has been diving for over a decade.

“Pulong Bato’s reefs, for example, show soft corals colonizing a once luxuriant growth of stag horn corals. The coral rubble littering the island’s fore slopes hint that Verde was once dominantly fringed by branching types of hard coral. But Pulong Bato’s current conditions—current and water clarity, for example—favor the takeover of soft corals,” Lopez said.

Nature certainly keeps its own rhythm and checks.

“Strong currents bring larvae to the reefs, clear water promotes coral growth, and seasonal winds that mean rough seas prevent harvest of resources at certain times of year,” Lopez said. “But human activities like the use of dynamite and cyanide prevent the ecosystem from just revitalizing itself.”

Depending on the extent of coral damage, recovery ranges from five to 40 years.
Marine management
However, nature’s capacity to renew itself must be reinforced with management measures.

“The business sector, like First Gen, has to participate in sustaining programs that connect biodiversity conservation with human well-being,” Lopez explained. “This way, stakeholders, from as young as schoolchildren, are made more aware of how their lives are linked to the marine ecosystem—in Verde Island’s case, through FPCI-developed coastal resources education modules.”

Lopez added that working with groups in Tingloy and Apo Reef Natural Park would widen the scope of enforcement and help sustain the efforts to protect Verde Passage.

Setting up additional sanctuaries—where high coral cover has been observed and where fish populations are known to concentrate and spawn—will also enable residents of the island’s six barangays to better monitor, evaluate and regulate activities in the area.

“Preventing the destruction of habitats, which are niches for many reef organisms, maintains the area’s biodiversity and helps damaged reefs and fish stock to recover,” Trono of CI-Philippines stressed. “Protecting a portion of the spawning stock enhances fishery production. These give communities the experience and pride in managing their own resources.”

Pulong Bato and Nalayag, with its luxuriant coral growth, have shown the benefits of protection. Of the eight sites surrounding Verde Island earlier assessed for coral and reef fish communities, these two MPAs showed the highest fish densities and biomass estimates, Trono reported.

“Locals and divers indicated that before the MPA declaration, these records were not at these same levels,” he said. “The change can be attributed to good management and greater awareness resulting from the program.”

Tranquilino Mariano of barangay San Andres, a deputized Bantay Dagat, confirmed this. “Local aquarium fishers, like me, have been trained in the use of nets, and we have all become vigilant in going after blast fishers,” he said.

The program’s next phase involves field testing of abalone culture, as well as skills training—on, say, weaving, welding, or reflexology—to offer alternative livelihood for fisher folks.

That Sunday’s final dive at Nalayag yielded a second hawksbill turtle sighting, which boded more than just exciting dives in the future.

Waters hospitable to the pawikan—and its rare kind, at that—indicated an ecosystem that’s holding up well, suggesting a fighting chance for the planet’s richest concentration of marine life and—in the larger interconnected scheme of things—for us as well.

Looking for the Whiskered Pitta in Mt. Polis

2008-06-27T12:29:00.005+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | It’s been more than an hour into our birding group’s foray into Mt. Polis. We had clambered past the crumbly soil of the potato fields, to enter the ever-receding tree-line. Every year, the tree-line feels more distant as the vegetable patchwork creep up the mountain. Once past the vegetable patches, we followed the narrow hunter’s trail, where we looked on despondently around us as patches of scorched earth showed where “gardeners” burnt the forest. Such a waste, and all for a measly few pesos worth since the forest soil isn’t very suitable for cultivation once the thin topsoil has been washed away by rains. Below us in the valley, the chainsaws have begun their remorseless work. Along the trail, we counted at least four active snares. We proceeded uphill wordlessly, trying to put the scenes of desecration and waste out of our minds and focus on the object of our quest: an encounter with the Whiskered Pitta (Pitta kochi), the country’s largest pitta.

The group leader and Rockjumper tour guide, 27-year-old David Shackelford, had been careful to prep the birders prior to our hike to Mt. Polis. “Due to the ongoing human disturbances on the mountain,” he had intoned to the group the night before, “our chances of seeing the pitta is very low.” But we’ll try anyway. Hoping against hope. What else can we do as birders?

I myself had been very pessimistic about the pitta given the numerous snares that I had encountered on the mountain trail over the years. In fact, Mt. Polis must be one of the most depressing places to bird in Luzon, and if it weren’t the most accessible spot on Earth to try for the Whiskered Pitta, I wouldn’t go near the place.

I had been lost in reverie when Shackelford whispers that he hears the Whiskered Pitta calling farther up the mountain. A surge of energy goes through everyone! Excitement and electric possibility hung in the air. Less than 200 birders have ever seen the Whiskered Pitta in its natural habitat. Everyone knows how tough it is to see the pitta so the rewards are very high. To be able to say that one has seen the elusive Whiskered Pitta is comparable to having seen the Philippine Eagle in Mindanao.

“I think I know where it is,” said Shackelford, cupping his ears to better focus his hearing on the faint call. “It’s near the trapper’s shed.” He bounded upward and forward.

With Shackelford hearing the call, the chances of our seeing the pitta grows. It’s a delightful prospect given that so few birders have managed to get a glimpse of this mysterious species. The group, composed of six American birders in their 70s and 80s, plus Shackelford and me, scrambled uphill, our shirts sticking to our bodies in the muggy air. Within minutes, out of breath, we reached the grubby hunter’s lean-to—and to my surprise, the area around it has been cleared despite it on a rather steep slope. The scorched earth has been planted with yams, obliterating the old trail that moved up and to the right of the shed. I had been on this trail before but the presence of the yam patch this high up the mountain threw me off my bearings.

Shackelford raced up the slope, all senses tuned to the pitta. This was a great chance—our only chance—and he knew it. Less than half the birders who travel to Mt. Polis successfully tick off the pitta.

The rest of the group thrashed uphill, and in the process, trampling on one or two of the delicately-limbed yams. This is going to be trouble, I told myself, surveying the trodden-on patch. But everyone was totally focused on the bird, which I could hear very clearly calling from behind and under a heavy tangle of tree-falls, ferns and leaf-litter.

After crossing the yam patch, we re-connected with a remnant of the old trail and collapsed in a heap among the litter. We positioned ourselves in a gully trail-side and, holding our breaths, waited for the bird to somehow step into view and say “Ta-dah!” Fat chance. It had stopped calling. “It must be moving that’s why its silent,” someone whispered. Then nothing. Eight pairs of eyes peeled. All I could see was moss-draped branches and leaf-litter. No movement. Silence except for the chainsaw in the distance.

“Give me the tape,” barked Shackelford. Everyone hunkered down in the rut as Shackelford played Tim Fisher’s recording of the Whiskered Pitta in an attempt to draw it out in the open. After a single try, the bird called back much closer to us this time, but no one had noticed any movement. Where is it! At this point, I estimated the bird to be within 20 meters from where we hugged the ground breathlessly, gobbling the area with our wide-open eyes.

About the Whiskered Pitta call: According to “A Guide to the Birds of the Philippines” by Kennedy et al. (Oxford Press, 2000), the bird calls most often in April and June. The call itself is described as a series of deep whistles (or in others, "booming calls"): haaaawww haaawww haawww haw, the first note longer and higher and each succeeding note descending. According to Collar et al. (Haribon Foundation, 1999) calling birds have been reported in late April to mid-May. Although they are quick to note that singing pittas have also been reported in February and March which leads to the possibility that singing intensity may have to do with other factors aside from territoriality.

Going back: after what seemed like an eternity, the pitta called again. This time downhill from us! During the long silent interval, the bird had somehow traveled from 20 meters uphill of us to about 50 meters downhill of us. And none of us noticed. Shackelford hit the play-button again and after a couple of minutes he yelped, “I see it!”

Eight guys huffed and puffed, shimmying for position in the forest floor. Heads bobbed this way and that. Shackelford drew out his laser pointer to pinpoint the well-hid pitta in the undergrowth, flatly stating, “guys, I don’t have time to screw around–the bird is moving about! Focus!” But its everyone for himself as the pitta wouldn’t sit still for an unobstructed view. In a final attempt, Shackelford hustled the six birders further up the slope while I stayed behind and in an attempt to decoy the bird with the recording. We hoped that the bird would move back up the slope and, if we were lucky, it would travel in the space between us. So after getting the group into position, I played the tape and we watched the forest between us for any movement. After a few minutes, the pitta called again in another location up the hill but no one in the group had seen it between us—it had moved up the hill on a roundabout route and had escaped our “trap.” Or maybe it had slipped out while we were re-positioning. My heart sank as the call grew fainter and finally stopped.

In the end, only two birders, aside from Shackelford, had seen glimpses of the pitta in the understorey. I wasn’t one of them. But all in all, it was an excellent chance and we were all in high spirits.

Here’s the description from Kennedy et al. of the male of the species:

Forehead, cheeks and sides of throat dark brown; hind crown orange rufous; back, rump, and lesser wing coverts brownish olive; uppertail coverts, greater coverts, and broad breast band gray blue; flight feathers brownish black, secondaries with blue outer edges, primaries with medial white spots and dusky tips; malar stripe or ‘whisker’ pinkish tan; center of throat pinkish brown becoming redder toward gray blue breast band; belly and undertail coverts scarlet.

It is the pinkish-tan malar stripe or “whiskers” that give the bird its name, although the field marks are the large size (nine inches tall) and the scarlet belly and undertail coverts.

The Whiskered Pitta is endemic to Luzon and confined to forest in the Cordillera Central and the Sierra Madre and Bicol region. According to Collar et al., this species’ habitat varies considerably:

1) Primary lowland evergreen forest with steep slopes, boulders and large areas of open litter-rich understorey; 2) primary montane oak-dominated forest on steep slopes, canopy cover 75-100%; 3) degraded montane forest (<70%).

The description of Mt. Polis’s upper slopes matches the Number 3 habitat described above with special emphasis on “degraded.” In fact, days after my trip, Jon Hornbuckle, a keen British birder and frequent visitor to the Philippines, expressed surprise that I went up Mt. Polis to look for the Whiskered Pitta. It seems that Ben King, the U.S.-based birding tour operator and old Philippine hand had told Hornbuckle that the “pitta has been trapped out of Mt. Polis for many years now.”

When I told Hornbuckle that the Rockjumper group heard and saw the pitta calling on the upper slopes of Mt. Polis, he was pleasantly surprised and immediately made plans to fly in to the Philippines to try his hand at the pitta and other montane specialists like the even more rarely-seen Luzon Jungle-Flycatcher (Rhinomyias insignis).

More notes about Mt. Polis: after a 10-hour drive from Manila, one reaches the foot of the trail of Mt. Polis and comes face-to-face with a 30-foot statue of the Virgin Mary.

The facility was set up during the days when restive insurgents were much more active in this part of the Mountain Province—a police detachment that keeps watch over the facility is another relict from those turbulent times. The icon was erected in front of a telecom tower facility to provide divine intercession, to dissuade rebels and other muckrakers from lobbing grenades at the facility. The tactic is working perfectly—the tower still stands and no rebel attack has ever been recorded against the facility. With the Virgin Mary literally shielding the tower with its body, no rebel group conscious of its media-image will risk damaging the religious statue.

This is the type of ingenuity that people—when they put their heads together—are capable of. Unluckily, all the apparent ingenuity has not extended towards protecting the environment. On the contrary, nary a thought seems to have been given to the ongoing destruction of Mt. Polis’s natural habitats. One of the most frustrating aspects of traveling from Manila to Banaue and Mt. Polis is to see the rapidly-dwindling natural forest. The denuded areas—where the slope is such that logging is impractical—are being slowly colonized by stands of Benguet Pine (Pinus kesiga=P. insularis), which many visitors are fond of due to aesthetic reasons. Unfortunately, pine trees don’t hold in soil and water too well, so they’re practically useless to prevents erosion and landslides—of which, the area is prone to. The ecological functions of the original forest will not be magically taken up by the pine forest, no matter how pretty the pines are to look at. The pine forest is mainly a result of human disturbance because pine seeds germinate only in full light and in contact with bare soil. No matter how many pine trees colonize the denuded slopes in and around Mt. Polis, they will never supplant or replace the key functions of the original montane forest.

The main road is pocked with haphazardly-made shoulders, dikes and other concatenations meant to protect traffic from erosion or being swept away during intense rainfall. One can imagine the millions and millions of pesos spent to maintain the roads and gird it from the constant threat of landslides—and yet the deforestation and habitat destruction goes on with impunity on the hillsides and roadsides. This is what happens when engineers are left to solve a problem.

Another unintended consequence of solving everything by engineering: the big fog lights that illumine the Virgin Mary cause dozens of bird deaths—primarily of the beautiful and endemic Flame-breasted Fruit-dove (Ptilinopus marchei)—a creature found only in Luzon. When our birding group was on its way to Mt. Polis, our driver related that up to six Fruit-doves died after hitting the fog lamps the previous days. Given that this is a hazard that bedevils large pigeons anywhere around the world, we’ll just have to hope that the population is robust enough to absorb such high mortalities. Chalk it up to experience and hope against hope that somehow, the birds will learn. It’s heart-breaking how no one cares enough to preserve these creatures that can only be found in these parts—the level of ignorance and indifference is astounding. Meanwhile, a ballooning population exerts more and more pressure on the environment.

Given the dire situation in Mt. Polis, why do birders continue to go there? Why expose oneself needlessly to so much thoughtlessness, so much heartbreak. The Whiskered Pitta is why–a bird that holds so much cache because of its elusive, secretive nature. Tim Fisher, the Philippines’ premier bird expert estimates that, despite the bird’s large size—nine inches—less than 200 birders have ever laid eyes on this beautiful forest jewel. That makes it so attractive to birdwatchers who want to test their skills and patience.

So they go to Mt. Polis to try their luck. Other alternatives are not so palatable: Camp Hamut in the Sierra Madre requires a mid-sized expedition just to reach the camp; Mt. Pulog has no available lodging and one has to bring all the food with him, besides, the park authorities on Mt. Pulog restrict movements of visitors to the approved trails; Mt. Isarog is iffy in the sense that no one has gone up and looked for the Whiskered Pitta there for years now.

So for practical sense, Mt. Polis—despite the 10-hour drive from Manila—remains the most accessible choice given the options.

While the pitta was a bust for me—I didn’t feel the trip was a total loss. My view has always been that the act of searching is far more rewarding than finding. It would have been excellent if I had seen the Whiskered Pitta but it would have also meant an end to a special quest.

There is so little that we know about this endemic species. In a study done in Mt. Pulog by a group of Danish ornithologists, the movements of Whiskered Pittas seem to be associated with wild pigs, whose own foraging probably makes its easier for the pittas to uncover bits of food from the forest floor. On Mt. Polis, the seasonal movements of the pittas are as mysterious as the rest of their life cycle, although Tim Fisher hypothesizes that there is a post-breeding movement to lowland areas during the rainy season. It is during these dispersals that the pitta is very vulnerable to snares and traps.

So much to know, and yet we may lose this magnificent creature before we could gather enough data to help it survive.

Birding in Magarao, Camarines Sur

2008-06-27T12:21:00.001+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Nypa fruticans along the banks of Magarao estero leading to Magarao River.

Mode of transport. Environment-friendly. Later on, we learned that our rowers were the reigning local rowing champions.

Along one of the tributaries to the Maragao River. The banks are well-vegetated with nipa and other low-growing marsh plants.

River opens up. With Governor LRay's staff and the blazing heat. We passed some fruiting balete trees which should be good for pigeons.

Shack surrounded by wide field dominated by grasses, sedges and other salt-tolerant plants. Among the vegetation are pockets of water where ducks and other waterfowl hide. Our guide, Jun Benavidez, said this used to be a popular duck-hunting area. Hunting is now banned. I imagine the marsh must sound spectacular at dawn with all the hidden birds calling in unison.

Would be exciting to look for the Streaked Reed-Warbler here.

Magarao marshy area near where we observed two kinds of harriers and a pair of hunting Grey-faced Buzzards. Tall grass and sedge mask ponds.

Mixed vegetation along the banks of the Magarao River. Herbs, low-growing marsh plants, pines, semi-aquatic plants and others make for a neat place for skulking rails.

Growing on brackish water, these attractive marsh plants, locally called "anonokot," are where coucals and other birds perch to sun themselves early mornings. Among these plants are pools of water which are good for ducks and other wetland species.

The footpath to the shack.

Birding in Barceloneta, Camarines Sur

2008-06-27T12:15:00.005+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Beautiful large mud flats fronting San Miguel Bay. Only birders crazy for rare shorebirds would find such places beautiful, I suppose. And people who've spent long hours inside cubicles probably would appreciate this sight.

A meadow behind the beach is an increasingly rare sight in the Philippines where such areas are usually converted to fishponds and/or settlements. The bird club's Arne says this is how Navotas must have looked like before the fishponds mangled the landscape and wreaked havoc on the water levels. Nowadays, when one hears of Navotas, flooding is one image that comes to mind.

Pockets of water in the meadows should be good for herons and waders. They're pleasing to the eye, too. Sometimes, I think we're too used to the sight of fishponds and prawn farms behind beaches that we forget how ugly they really are.

The large meadow behind the beach. I observed pigeons using the stretch of mangroves as a corridor to move around. We got an excellent sight of a Brahminy Kite tearing apart what seemed to be a snake among the branches of the mangrove trees in the distance.

Mature mangrove trees are natural barriers between the beach and the meadows.

Three-year-old Rhizophora mangrove saplings nearer the water.

Joseph, our local guide, talked about seeing what may have been spoonbills in the mud flat. This pebbly portion of the vast beach was where we got hundreds of pratincoles and a few early migrants still in their breeding plumage. Should be interesting to monitor this beach in the winter for the arrival of rare migrants.

Medium-sized tree growing on hard mud in the high tide level. The fruit is a cluster of three-lobed pods. From Primavera's "Handbook of Mangroves in the Philppines," it looks to be Excoecaria agallocha, but I didn't jot down more details to be certain. Our main guide, Jun Benavidez, said when the pods burst open, the seeds fall on the ground to be eaten by doves and other birds.

Newly-plowed rice fields like this attract sandpipers, stints, and other waders. The fields with deeper water are where the black-winged stilts gather.

Arne and Anna from the bird club along with staff from the governor's office looking at Philippine Ducks and Wandering Whistling-Ducks in the Pandan wetland area. The ducks and their chicks were in a small pond surrounded by tall grass and sedge. Some of the chicks were splashing in the water like playing kids. The rare Streaked Reed-Warbler might be possible in this area.

Rough-roading our way in to the Pandan wetland area to look for ducks.

Pandan wetland area dominated by grass, sedge and other plants that can tolerate salty water.

Navotas Birding Report

2008-06-27T12:02:00.005+08:00

Navotas (Shoreline and fishponds behind shore)
Date: August 25, 2007
Time: 7:51 am to 2:45pm
Cloud Cover: 6/8, 7/8
Conditions: Cloudy, Shower
Observers: Tina Alejandro, Mads Bajarias, Carmela Espanola, Debbie McGuinn, Felix Servita Jr.

BY DEBBIE MCGUINN | You never know what you’ll find or be up against when you set out for a pleasurable day of birding. But whatever lies ahead, you go out to embrace the adventure. This Saturday at Navotas was no exception. And you could say it was beyond expectations. We experienced so many things!

Just driving to the site where we ended up parking was an adventure in itself. Some streets in Navotas were still flooded, one week after Typhoon Sepat passed by the Philippines, dropping lots of rain and causing flooding in many places in Luzon. Then the elementary school gate was not open, so we had to drive around more and were able to park along a road near some construction work. After parking and before getting to the coast, you have to walk along the dikes of the fish agricultural ponds, and through a small informal settlement by the ponds and at the coast. Felix commented that each time he comes to the area, there are more people living there.

The entire coastline was inundated with garbage. It was an unbelievable site. It seemed like it was household garbage (flip flops, balls, plastic, styrofoam, plastic bottles, food wrappers, plastic, flip flops, old tires, plastic). Medical waste was not evident, which was good. We wove our way around and among mounds of garbage atop mounds of shells.

Of course we were birding all along the way. Then we came to the mud bogs. Oh my!

The mud bogs were intermixed with small mangrove trees, and garbage, and we tried to get a view of the shoreline and birds as we walked through the area. Lala and Mads were more successful with getting through the mud and viewing birds.

After a couple of hours of slogging through the mud bogs, trying to stay on top by flattening down the ground cover plants but sinking in the mud much of the time anyway, I felt that it was taking all my energy just to take one step after another. A lot of the time I had to keep pulling my feet, with boots, out of the mud. I felt that I was missing the birding. One time Tina sunk a foot so low that she had to just step out of her boot. She had to then step in the mud with her nice white sock. Felix dug her boot out of the mud, and she casually put it back on, with the muddy sock on of course.

Dealing with these mud bogs added more time to our outing compared to past outings to this area. Looking at the list that Mads prepared, I was happy to learn that I saw most of the species of birds. So I thought I didn’t do too bad. Then I looked more closely at the numbers of each species, and realized that I indeed spent most of my time plodding through the mud and missed most of the birds.

Lala unfurled her wings, as Tina said, and whisked through the area with Mads. I was so thankful to have Felix and Tina with me. Tina and I were tested that day, and Felix kept us going, and made us rest, and looked after us.

When the end of trudging through the mud bog was near, I had to just keep going, even though I wanted to keep stopping and catching my breath, otherwise I didn’t think I was going to make it out of there! I’ve trekked across some difficult terrain before, in hot conditions sometimes with humidity but mostly without it, but this was the toughest outing I’ve experienced. From Tina’s recollection, Felix said "sometimes you have to experience these things".

I was exhausted by the time we got to the dike. We had trekked quite a distance to get there, but we still had to get back. At the dike we ate, hydrated and rested for a while, and birded. On the way back to our beginning point, we walked along a dike and canal by the ponds.

Shortly we were able, and happy, to hire a small banca to take us back to the town. Then with a short motor-trike ride and a short walk, we made it back to the cars mid-afternoon.

I asked Lala if the mud bog conditions were normal, what she usually experiences, and she said “NO, this was completely unexpected”.

The thought is that the rains and flooding that occurred from the typhoon the week before had caused the coastal area to be inundated by water and to cause the boggy conditions we encountered. I was thankful now thinking that this, hopefully, was the worse it could get, and I felt I could try this census again.

It was a day that tested you; it tested your endurance, determination, and attitude. We were all still smiling after the mud bog experience and at the end of the day. What a great group of people!

1. Purple Heron [Ardea purpurea] – 1
2. Great Egret [Egretta alba] – 1
3. Intermediate Egret [Egretta intermedia] – 2
4. Chinese Egret [Egretta eulophotes] – 2
5. Little Egret [Egretta garzetta] – 2
6. Egret sp. – 5
7. Striated Heron [Butorides striatus] – 41
8. Black-crowned Night-Heron [Nycticorax nyctirorax] – 19
9. Yellow Bittern [Ixobrychus sinensis] – 9
10. Barred Rail [Gallirallus torquatus] – HO
11. Asian Golden-Plover [Pluvialis fulva] – 11
12. Lesser Sand-Plover [Charadrius mongolus] – 1
13. Greater Sand-Plover [Charadrius leschenaultii] – 11
14. Whimbrel [Numenius phaeopus] – 12
15. Common Redshank [Tringa totanus] – 9
16. Common Greenshank [Tringa nebularia] – 5
17. Common Sandpiper [Actitis hypoleucos] – 13
18. Terek Sandpiper – [Xenus cinereus] – 1 (red-orange legs)
19. Black-winged Stilt [Himantopus himantopus] – 35
20. White-winged Tern [Chlidonias leucopterus] – 16 (In molt: some with black heads; some with black upperparts and white collars; some with black patches in underparts)
21. Whiskered Tern [Chlidonias hybridus] – 96
22. Tern sp. – 1 [Notes by M. Bajarias]
23. Zebra Dove [Geopelia striata] – 6
24. White-collared Kingfisher [Halcyon chloris] – 31
25. Bee- eater sp. – 4
26. Pacific Swallow [Hirundo tahitica] - 1
27. Pied Triller [Lalage nigra] – 12
28. Golden-bellied Flyeater [Gerygone sulphurea] – 12
29. Pied Fantail [Rhipidura javanica] – 6
30. Long-tailed Shrike [Lanius schach] – 5
31. Crested Myna [Acridotheres cristatellus] - 6
32. Eurasian Tree Sparrow [Passer montanus] – 60
33. Chestnut Munia [Lonchura malacca] – 4

Notes:
Tern sp. [by M. Bajarias]
Individual seen morning of August 24 at Navotas with White-winged and Whiskered Terns in general vicinity.
First impression: very white appearance. It stood out among the White-wingeds which were in molt with varying degrees of black on upperparts, underparts and head. It stood out from among the Whiskered in that the latter had smoke grey upperparts and upper tail coverts. Body of individual was slender with long narrow wings. Entirely white and very light grey plumage (lighter than Whiskered smoke grey) except for a black horizontal oval patch on the ears (different than the more circular ear spots of White-winged Tern). No black on wingtips, tail or crown. Bill black and tiny. Body slightly longer than the Whiskereds. No discernable fork in tail (or very shallow if it had one). No difference between rump, upper tail coverts and lower back colors. Fed by skimming low on the water and snatching prey with bill on surface (similar to White-wingeds} Never plunged head-first into water (as Whiskereds were observed to do). Single.

Notes on Chinese Egret [by C. Espanola]
notes on the Chinese Egret sighting at the dike: typical CE posture of crouching low in mud with wings partially extended then running to stab a mudskipper, legs suspected to be muddy so it appears dark, bicolored bill, facial skin dark (glare prevents accurate color ID) which contrasts with yellow of the bill.

Notes on egrets [by M. Bajarias]
We took extra care and time when scoping and identifying the egrets but the lighting conditions made it difficult to pick out the leg and facial colors except for a short time nearing noon when the sun shone brightly and revealed the green legs of a single Chinese Egret. We left other egrets unidentified at species level due to low sunlight conditions that prevailed for most of the time.
High tide also meant that the muddy part of the beach where the Club had encountered Chinese Egrets numerous times in the past were underwater this time.

Notes on White-winged and Whiskered [by M. Bajarias]
This time of year the White-winged Terns were easier to pick out from the Whiskereds due to the former’s molting plumage. The White-wingeds still had varying degrees of black in heads, underparts and upperparts. Some sported white collars contrasting with black mantles and black streaking on the crowns. It will be far more difficult to tell these two apart in the coming months when the White-wingeds had completely transitioned into winter plumage.
The combination of molt feathers, black “ear muffs” and the observed tendency of picking up food with their bills from the surface made identification of the White-wingeds relatively easy work this time of year at Navotas.
The number of White-wingeds counted this time makes one wonder if they are being undercounted in other months when differentiating them from Whiskereds is a more difficult task.

Notes on Asian Golden Plover [by M. Bajarias]
The Asian Golden Plovers were all showing remnants of breeding colors with their underparts sporting a splotchy appearance which can be puzzling then they are viewed directly from below. But when perched and scoped, they are unmistakable this time of year at Navotas.

Notes on Whimbrels [by M. Bajarias]
A flock of ten Whimbrels gave us a treat by landing and vigorously washing themselves in the water. Two or three waded into belly-deep water and animatedly washed themselves. After washing, they stood on the muddy beach and moved their long bills on their upperparts. After an unseen signal, they all flew along the shoreline towards the direction of Bulacan and Pampanga.

Note on Terek Sandpiper [by M. Bajarias]
A single Terek Sandpiper was picked out among the beach debris. The individual had red-orange legs.

Notes on Greater and Lesser Sand-Plovers [by M. Bajarias]
The Greater Sand-Plovers were seen either alone or in small groups of three or four in both pebbly and muddy substrates. When seen alongside a Common Sandpiper we were amused to see how large the Sand-Plover really is.
We took great care when identifying the Greater Sand-Plovers, but the method of comparing bill length with head size proved to be key in picking out Lesser from Greater.

Looking for the Chinese Egret in Manila Bay

2008-06-27T11:56:00.001+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | This is a piece of the mudflats in Navotas where Chinese Egrets are regularly seen during their winter migration. This species has never recovered from the times when it was heavily persecuted for the plume trade. The worldwide population is pegged at 2,500, and despite it so close to extinction, very little is known about its wintering areas. Hundreds have been spotted at various times in Palawan and in mudflats around Bohol and Ormoc, but that's it.

The Chinese Egret breeds in a few colonies in China, Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea. Its winter quarters appear to include the Philippines, Sulawesi and Peninsular Malaysia. In Navotas, it seems perverse, to me, that this rare bird forages in the dirty area where plastic rubbish and raw sewage are dumped by squatter families on to Manila Bay. I guess we all have to roll with the punches, or perish.

Hard to believe that years ago, this was a bathing beach for poor families in Navotas. Now, its a smelly garbage heap and the once beautiful sandy beach has been covered by soft mud. One of the DENR personnel I talked to said that something happened which destroyed the sandy beach here. She mentioned the reclamation project may have something to do with the changing wave patterns. Or maybe the culprit is the unregulated building of fishponds up north in Bulacan and Pampanga, and even inside Navotas itself. But no one knows for sure.

Dirt-poor families forced to the edge of the sea. Some of them sell coal for a living. Where do they get the wood?

A thin strip of mangroves facing Manila Bay. Behind this stand are fishponds. I suspect there's an unwritten agreement between the fishpond owners and the charcoal makers regarding this strip. It certainly protects the fishponds by acting as a buffer from strong winds. But the fishpond owners only need enough trees for their simple needs, anything more, probably goes to the kilns.

These kilns burn all day. While people say they don't cut the mangroves, it still makes you wonder where they get the wood. I heard one DENR personnel say that antiquated official maps show that the mangrove cover in this part of Manila Bay is 44 square kilometers. The real figure is closer to 8 square kilometers, and diminishing fast.

Except for the rubbish, how Manila must've looked when the Spanish came into Manila Bay and landed on the marshy areas where the Pasig empties into the bay.

Children playing next to a drainage canal dug to let water out one fishpond. Sluice gates from the fishpond let out water heavy with chemicals into the bay.

Birding in Navotas

2008-06-27T11:54:00.001+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | A very large fishpond carved out of Manila Bay. We are in Tanza, Navotas. The fishpond looks clean but once one explores the areas along Manila Bay beyond this pond towards the direction of Bulacan, things get very very trashy.

People travel by waterways here. One can begin to observe plastic trash everywhere: on the water, underwater, on the mudbanks, caught on mangrove roots. One can even see plastic bags caught on the highest tree branches!

Poorest of the poor who can't find a space to live in the city have to erect their lean-tos on the water's edge. Birders Felix and Debbie do their best not to rock the boat and take a dip in that muck-filled canal water.

Squatter families eke out an existence on the edge of the water. Amazingly, where the canal above meets the sea, among the muck and garbage, is the stretch of mud where the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines has recorded the most number of critically endangered Chinese Egret in Luzon.

The water is foul, garbage everywhere and the effluvia from the fishponds can't be good for the residents' health. In the distance, the last remaining stand of mangroves in Metro Manila. Interestingly, one of the ways by which residents earn money is charcoal-making. When you ask where they get the wood, they'll say driftwood, but in times when there's not enough driftwood for the rising population, where do you think they get the wood from?

The girl sitting on the right guards over her pile of scavenged driftwood.

Birdwatchers Carmela, Tina and Felix trying to find migrating shorebirds on the water's edge.

Metro Manila generates too much garbage for its capacity to effectively dispose of it properly. Where does all our garbage go? To places where the people are too poor to afford the line: Not In Our Backyard.

In the case of Navotas, to this place where fishponds prevent people from seeing the mounds of garbage on the edge of Manila Bay.

The logical conclusion. Since this part of Manila Bay has been a dumping ground for garbage anyway, why not make it a proper dump? So here we go: a large garbage dump on the shores of Manila Bay.

The stretch of "land" on the horizon is pure garbage. Its a perfect site in the sense that it will not ruffle feathers since the large fish ponds act as buffer between the dump and any complaining citizen. The birds and fishes will suffer once they ingest bits of plastic that will lodge in their stomachs--but I don't think they will file the paperwork so no one cares about them. Who has heard of a bird filing an official complaint? There are no high-end condominiums here selling "Manila Bay sunsets" so no complaints from the rich set. Where the garbage barges travel from Manila to Navotas, they pass by the poor folk lean-tos who are only squatting themselves so they feel they have no right to complain if some garbage falls off the barge and gets carried to their houses. Another thing: Perhaps when the wood for the charcoal and the fish for the market runs out, maybe the poor folks here are thinking that the garbage dump will give them a means to go on living as trash scavengers.

The sign reads: The Navotas Sanitary Landfill Project. Phil. Ecology Systems Corp. has been issued an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC-NCR-2006-EMB-058-213) by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Bureau-National Capital Region on April 11, 2006.

The neighboring fishponds have tilapia, which is something to think about the next time you order that fried tilapia in Manila restaurants.

Another thing to think about when ordering that tilapia. On the left is an outhouse on stilts where the fishpond caretakers and their families do their business. Waste drops directly to the fishes below. Something to think about. I like my tilapia deep-fried.

Looking for the Philippine Eagle in Bislig

2008-06-27T11:49:00.005+08:00

When: September 3-5 2007
Where: Road 1-4, Road 4, Road 42, Bislig airport, Road 84-A, Bagnan water reservoir, PICOP Compound
Observers: Mads Bajarias, Lu-Ann Fuentes, Zardo Goring (Sept. 4-5 only)
Trip Report and Bird List by Lu-Ann Fuentes and Mads Bajarias

BY LU-ANN G. FUENTES | On Road 42: That Zardo, Mads and I observed the male and female Rufous Paradise-Flycatchers in the same spot and time as the Celestial Monarch pair (and even managed to flush a Steere's Pitta while walking back) says something about Road 42.

We got 3 out of our 5 target birds (just as we were about to call it a day), so it was quite a satisfying result to a long day of hard work.

Road 42's steeply sloping limestone terrain makes it inhospitable to illegal settlers and too much work for smugglers (in contrast to, say, Road 1-4). A birds' haven is what happens when a previously logged area is left alone (a concession's design) to recover.

As with Roads 1-4 and 4, we heard Rufous Hornbills calling but were too distant to see.

On the Philippine Eagle sighting: From the Philippine Eagle Foundation's camp (an hour's vehicle ride and two hours birding-pace walk from Bislig town center), we hiked past bird hide 1 and walked another half-hour to bird hide 2 on Road 84-A.

Squeezed on a slightly-swaying platform 20 meters up a tree with PEF's field specialists Perfecto "Peks" Balicao, Neri "Junix" Baron Jr. and Jo Cruz, we surveyed the canopy below for an hour before a Barred Honeybuzzard's intimidation display gave away the location of a perched Philippine Eagle (there all along) at a far distance.

The PEF field team assigned there for the past six days recorded daily sightings at around the same time - 10 a.m.

For nearly an hour, we alternately peered through PEF's scopes as the eagle stretched and preened its wings.

Even at a distance, we couldn't help but be impressed by the size of the perched Eagle compared to the thermalling Honeybuzzard.

On the forest trail to PEF camp: The foot trail to the PEF camp could be very interesting bird-wise at the right time of day.

Our target bird for the day was only the Eagle so we passed through this nice bit of forest at mid-day when the birds were silent and the humidity intense.

Despite these, Zardo was still able to hear and lure out a Streaked Ground-Babbler just a few meters from the PEF camp.

And in our river crossing, we flushed a Silvery Kingfisher.

As in all our forays, we also heard the Rufous Hornbill calling near the PEF camp but didn't get to see any.

Our target birds for the trip had been the Eagle, Celestial Monarch, Rufous Paradise Flycatcher, Steere's Pitta and Wattled Broadbill. Once again, we missed out on the broadbill, but not for lack of trying. The presence of the Eagle in PICOP is immensely good news and we hope it will continue to survive in the area.

PICOP concession
When: September 4, 2007
Where: Road 1-4, Road 4, Road 42
Time: 4:57am to 4:30pm
Cloud Cover: 2/8, 1/8, 3/8
Conditions: Sunny
Observers: Mads Bajarias, Lu-Ann Fuentes, Zardo Goring (guide)
1. Pompadour Green-Pigeon [Treron pompadora] – 1
2. White-eared Brown-Dove [Phapitreron leucotis] – 7
3. Amethyst Brown-Dove [Phapitreron amethystine] – 1, perched
4. Yellow-breasted Fruit-Dove [Ptilinopus leclancheri] – 2, perched
5. Green Imperial-Pigeon [Ducula aenea] – 3
6. Spotted Dove [Streptopelia chinensis] – 5
7. Zebra Dove [Geopelia striata] – 10
8. Common Emerald-Dove [Chalcophaps indica] – 1
9. Guaiabero [Bolbopsittacus lunulatus] – 5, in flight
10. Common Koel [Eudynamys scolopacea] - HO
11. Philippine Coucal [Centropus viridis] – HO
12. Black-faced Coucal [Centropus melanops] – 1
13. Philippine Frogmouth [Batrachostomus septimus] – 1, flushed, spotlit
14. Nightjar sp. – 2
15. Island Swiftlet [Collocalia vanikorensis] – 20
16. Glossy Swiftlet [Collocalia esculenta] – 10
17. Pygmy Swiftlet [Collocalia troglodytes] – 10
18. Philippine Needletail [Mearnsia picina] – 3
19. White-throated Kingfisher [Halcyon smyrnensis] – 2
20. Rufous-lored Kingfisher [Halcyon winchelli] – HO
21. Mindanao Tarictic [Penelopides affinis] – 4, more heard
22. Writhed Hornbill [Aceros leucocephalus] – HO
23. Rufous Hornbill [Buceros hydrocorax] – HO
24. Coppersmith Barbet [Megalaima haemacephala] – HO
25. White-bellied Woodpecker [Dryocopus javensis] – 1
26. Greater Flameback [Chrysocolaptes lucidus] – 1
27. Steere’s Pitta [Pitta steerii] – 1, flushed on Rd. 42
28. Scarlet Minivet [Pericrocotus flammeus] – 1, perched on Rd. 42
29. Philippine Leafbird [Chloropsis flavipennis] – 4
30. Yellow-vented Bulbul [Pycnonotus goiavier] – 10
31. Yellow-wattled Bulbul [Pycnonotus urostictus] – 1
32. Philippine Bulbul [Hypsipetes philippinus] – 20
33. Yellowish Bulbul [Hypsipetes everetti] – 3
34. Hair-crested Drongo [Dicrurus hottentottus] – 15
35. Philippine Oriole [Oriolus steerii] – HO
36. Black-naped Oriole [Oriolus chinensis] – HO
37. Large-billed Crow [Corvuis macrorhynchos] – 2
38. White-fronted Tit [Parus semilarvatus] – 1 seen clearly only by Z. Goring
39. Rusty-crowned Babbler [Stachyris capitalis] – 4
40. Brown Tit-Babbler [Macronous striaticeps] – 2, more heard
41. Philippine Leaf-Warbler [Phylloscopus olivaceus] – 1
42. Striated Grassbird [Megalurus palustris] – 1
43. Philippine Tailorbird [Orthotomus castaneiceps] – 2, more heard
44. Black-headed Tailorbird [Orthotomus nigriceps] – 1, more heard
45. Blue Fantail [Rhipidura supercialiaris] – 2
46. Rufous Paradise-Flycatcher [Terpsiphone cinnamomea] – 3 (male and fem observed together in same spot and time as Celestial Monarch pair; Rd. 42)
47. Black-naped Monarch [Hypothymis azurea] – 3
48. Celestial Monarch [Hypothymis coelestis] – 2 (male and fem observed together in same spot and time as Rufous Paradise Flycatcher pair; Rd. 42)
49. Yellow-bellied Whistler [Pachycephala philippinensis] – 6
50. White-breasted Wood-swallow [Artamus leucorynchus] – 8
51. Asian Glossy Starling [Aplonis panayensis] – 20
52. Coleto [Sarcops calvus] – 1, more heard
53. Olive-backed Sunbird [Nectarinia jugularis] – 2
54. Purple-throated Sunbird [Nectarinia sperata] – 1 male
55. Metallic-winged Sunbird [Aethopyga pulcherrima] – 1 male seen only by Z. Goring
56. Naked-faced Spiderhunter [Arachnothera clarae] – 1
57. Little Spiderhunter [Arachnothera longirostra] – 4
58. Olive-backed Flowerpecker [Prionochilus olivaceus] – 1
59. Bicolored Flowerpecker [Dicaeum bicolor] – 1 male
60. Red-keeled Flowerpecker [Dicaeum australe] – 5
61. Orange-bellied Flowerpecker [Dicaeum trigonostigma] – 2
62. Eurasian Tree Sparrow [Passer montanus] – 20
63. Chestnut Munia [Lonchura malacca] – 6

When: September 4, 2007
Where: Bislig Airport
Time: 5:30pm to 6:00pm
Cloud Cover: 4/8
Conditions: Twilight
Observers: Mads Bajarias, Lu-Ann Fuentes, Zardo Goring (guide)
1. Purple Heron [Ardea purpurea] - 2
2. Black-crowned Night-Heron [Nycticorax nycticorax] –1 imm
3. Cinnamon Bittern [Ixobrychus cinnamomeus] – 1
4. Little Ringed-Plover [Charadrius dubius] – 15
5. Snipe sp – 2
6. Spotted Dove [Streptopelia chinensis] – 12
7. Zebra Dove [Geopelia striata] – 4
8. Island Swiftlet [Collocalia vanikorensis] – 20
9. Pygmy Swiftlet [Collocalia troglodytes] – 8
10. White-collared Kingfisher [Halcyon chloris] – 3
11. Pacific Swallow [Hirundo tahitica] – 10
12. Yellow-vented Bulbul [Pycnonotus goiavier] – 10
13. Pied Bushchat [Saxicola caprata] – 1, adult male
14. Striated Grassbird [Megalurus palustris] – 1
15. Zitting Cisticola [Cisticola juncidis] - 1
16. White-breasted Wood-swallow [Artamus leucorynchus] - 2
17. Asian Glossy Starling [Aplonis panayensis] – 40
18. Crested Myna [Acridotheres cristatellus] - 1
19. Eurasian Tree Sparrow [Passer montanus] – 15
20. Chestnut Munia [Lonchura malacca] – 10

PICOP concession
When: September 5, 2007
Where: Road 84-A
Time: 5:30am to 3:00pm
Cloud Cover: 1/8, 2/8
Conditions: Sunny
Observers: Mads Bajarias, Lu-Ann Fuentes, Zardo Goring (guide)
With Philippine Eagle Foundation field specialists led by Perfecto “Peks” Balicao, Neri “Junix” Baron Jr. and Jo Cruz
1. Oriental Honeybuzzard [Pernis ptilorhynchus] – 2
2. Barred Honeybuzzard [Pernis celebensis] – 1
3. Philippine Eagle [Pithecophaga jefferyi] – 1, perched, preening
4. White-eared Brown-Dove [Phapitreron leucotis] – 1, more heard
5. Spotted Dove [Streptopelia chinensis] – 20
6. Zebra Dove [Geopelia striata] 2
7. Common Emerald-Dove [Chalcophaps indica] – 1
8. Lesser Coucal [Centropus bengalensis] - HO
9. Philippine Coucal [Centropus viridis] – HO
10. Glossy Swiftlet [Collocalia esculenta] – 5
11. Pygmy Swiftlet [Collocalia troglodytes] – 2
12. Silvery Kingfisher [Alcedo argentata] – 1, flushed while we were crossing Burboanan River
13. White-throated Kingfisher [Halcyon smyrnensis] - 1
14. Mindanao Tarictic [Penelopides affinis] – HO
15. Rufous Hornbill [Buceros hydrocorax] – HO
16. Coppersmith Barbet [Megalaima haemacephala] – 1, more heard
17. White-bellied Woodpecker [Dryocopus javensis] – 1
18. Yellow-vented Bulbul [Pycnonotus goiavier] - 30
19. Yellow-wattled Bulbul [Pycnonotus goiavier] – 4
20. Hair-crested Drongo [Dicrurus hottentottus] – 5
21. Black-naped Oriole [Oriolus chinensis] – HO
22. Streaked Ground-Babbler [Ptilocichla mindanensis] – 1
23. Little Slaty Flycatcher [Ficedula basilanica] - HO by Z. Goring
24. Yellow-bellied Whistler [Pachycephala philippinensis] – 1
25. Red-keeled Flowerpecker [Dicaeum australe] - 2
26. Pygmy Flowerpecker [Dicaeum pygmaeum] – 1
27. Eurasian Tree Sparrow [Passer montanus] – 20
28. White-bellied Munia [Lonchura leucogastra] – 7

PICOP concession
When: September 5, 2007
Where: Bagnan water reservoir
Time: 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Cloud Cover: 3/8, 4/8
Conditions: Sunny
Observers: Mads Bajarias, Lu-Ann Fuentes, Zardo Goring (guide)
1. Purple Heron [Ardea purpurea] – 2
2. Little Heron [Butorides striatus] – 1
3. Black-crowned Night-Heron – 2
4. Rufous Night-Heron [Nycticorax caledonicus] – 1 imm
5. Cinnamon Bittern [Ixobrychus sinensis] – 1
6. Crake/Rail sp. – 1 hidden in water plants
7. Spotted Dove [Streptopelia chinensis] – 15
8. Zebra Dove [Geopelia striata] – 4
9. Glossy Swiftlet [Collocalia esculenta] – 10
10. White-collared Kingfisher [Halcyon chloris] - 4
11. Blue-tailed Bee-eater [Merops philippinus] – 1
12. Pacific Swallow [Hirundo tahitica] – 30
13. Yellow-vented Bulbul [Pycnonotus goiavier] - 10
14. Large-billed Crow [Corvus macrorhynchos] – 2
15. Tawny Grassbird [Megalurus timoriensis] – 1
16. White-breasted Wood-swallow [Artamus leucorynchus] – 3
17. Brown Shrike [Lanius cristatus] – 1 male
18. Asian Glossy Starling [Aplonis panayensis] – 25
19. Eurasian Tree Sparrow [Passer montanus] – 10
20. Chestnut Munia [Lonchura malacca] – 8

PICOP compound
When: September 3, 2007
Time: 6:00am to 8:00am
Cloud Cover: 1/8, 3/8
Conditions: Sunny
Observers: Mads Bajarias, Lu-Ann Fuentes
1. Purple Heron [Ardea purpurea] – 1
2. Peregrine Falcon [Falco peregrinus] – 1, race ernesti
3. Barred Rail [Gallirallus torquatus] – 1
4. Spotted Dove [Streptopelia chinensis] – 5
5. Zebra Dove [Geopelia striata] – 2
6. White-collared Kingfisher [Halcyon chloris] – 8
7. Black-naped Oriole [Oriolus chinensis] - 2
8. Large-billed Crow [Corvus macrorhynchos] – 2
9. White-breasted Wood-swallow [Artamus leucorynchus] – 8
10. Asian Glossy Starling [Aplonis panayensis] – 50
11. Olive-backed Sunbird [Nectarinia jugularis] – 2
12. Purple-throated Sunbird [Nectarinia sperata] – 1
13. Red-keeled Flowerpecker [Dicaeum australe] – 4
14. Everett’s White-eye [Zosterops everetti] - 6

Birding in Bislig with Zardo Goring

2008-06-26T21:26:00.002+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Zardo Goring in his natural habitat. Hopefully, with the local tourism board's expressing interest in his work, more Filipinos will get to see and appreciate Mindanao's endemic birds.

Zardo trying to lure out a super-skulker while Lu-ann looks at a family of Writhed Hornbills near the canopy.

Searching for our near-mythical three: Steere's Pitta, Wattled Broadbill, and Celestial Monarch. Lu-ann pleads guilty to violating the club's cardinal rule: no red hats!

Maybe I'm too used to seeing people take wild orchids home with them that to see one unmolested in the wild startles me. We also observed the endemic jade vine among the tangle of lianas.

Searching for signs of bird life.

Epiphytes catch water and leaf litter creating microhabitats for frogs and other critters. The reptilian and mammalian fauna in Bislig is virtually unknown.

Forest over limestone: one of the last patches of forest left on Road 4.

Trusty jeepney "Ka Archie" in its element. Silent Delfin is the driver.

The patch behind Lu-ann was near the spot where we got Celestial Monarch. That red hat again!

Woodpecker condo: In less than an hour of observation, we got coletos, racquet-tails and falconets emerge from this single woodpecker condo. I just pray that the settler who cleared the adjacent area to plant corn will spare this one. Who knows what else depends on this tree?

Although they are critical indicators of a forest's vitality, so little is documented about the country's hundreds of moss species. I'm convinced there is a person out there who is nuts about moss and lichen. Wouldn't the world be a sadder place if no such person exists? But what would dinner-talk with him be like?

Skulkers skulking for skulkers.

In the places I've been to, people cut down all the trees inside the area they want to claim as their own, and then just let the trees lie where they fall. Instead of building a fence around an area, the felled trees serve as boundaries. I'm not sure if this is a universal unwritten rule of land ownership: "If I lay waste to it, then I own it."

Zardo with nerd.

View of PICOP (Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines). It may not look much from this angle but this is first newsprint plant in Asia. A fact that never fails to make Filipinos wince about how much we've lost in the "race" among Asian countries. In its heyday, the company had its own airstrip (separate from the Bislig airport which is now also shuttered) and natural deep-water bay for container ships. Nowadays, the deserted airstrip is good for Sand-Plovers and rails.

We got a Frigatebird here two years ago. No such luck this time.

Can you spot the Silvery Kingfisher? Amazingly consistent, this kingfisher seems to never leave this small pond. We got it in the same place two years ago.

Another interesting-looking road inside PICOP compound. Another one to add in the list of places to explore in the Philippines.

Tubbataha Dreaming

2008-06-26T20:14:00.007+08:00

Seabird sanctuary, turtle nesting ground,
divers’ dream destination—
it takes the law to keep this place wild.

BY LU-ANN FUENTES | My initiation to Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park started with a back-roll, one day in May, into Jessie Beazley Reef. The first sharks of the trip were close enough to make out the white on their tips. Grey reef sharks were on active patrol, too, and we spotted no less than three pregnant sharks, bulging at their sides.

Next day, over at North Tubbataha, Shark Airport lived up to its name. By now, giant Napoleon wrasses and circling jacks were a more interesting sight than staple sharks. Six-foot teeth-baring tunas startled me more than the dozing eight-foot nurse shark. A breathtaking tower of circling chevron barracudas (at mere arm’s length at one point) capped the last dive before twilight. Two hours later, my night dive was blessed with eight turtles.

This is the Tubbataha I know—its horizon viewed from a boat deck, depths peered through a dive mask. It’s a wild place that I dream of returning to.

But Tubbataha is much more than that.

For park manager Angelique M. Songco, it’s all of 96,828 hectares (10,000 of which are coral reefs)—and every bit of it needs guarding. Apart from Jessie Beazley Reef and the surrounding waters, there’s also the uninhabited South Atoll and North Atoll. Tubbataha is a no-take Marine Protected Area (MPA) located in the middle of the Cagayan Ridge in the Sulu Sea. And it falls under the political jurisdiction of the municipality of Cagayancillo, which lies 60 nautical miles to the northeast.

My Tubbataha in May had calm seas and clear skies; Songco’s is exposed to both northeast and southwest monsoons most months of the year. She has the bigger picture: Tubbataha hosts 379 coral species (almost 90 percent of all coral species in the Philippines), 481 fish species, seven species of resident breeding seabirds, 10 cetacean species, 79 algae species, seven seagrass species, and eight shark species. And its value to conservation and the Philippine economy lies in its strategic role as a source of fish and coral larvae, serving to enrich fisheries in surrounding areas.

Conservation International-Philippines (CI-Philippines) country director Romeo B. Trono has his own take on Tubbataha. For him, it’s part of a priority marine biodiversity corridor—the Cagayan Ridge—which, in turn, is part of an even bigger Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape (SSS) Project, which also covers Verde Passage, Balabac Strait, and the “Trinational Sea Turtle Corridor” of Turtle Islands, Sabah and East Kalimantan.

“This park is the only purely marine Unesco World Heritage Site in Southeast Asia,” Trono reminded. “Its inclusion on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance demonstrates its global role in the conservation of congregating seabird species. And the islets on the two large atolls where seabirds feed and breed are the nesting grounds of sea turtles, too.”

Cost of protection
Songco pointed out that Tubbataha’s isolation saved it from fishing pressure in the 1970s, when near-shore fisheries in the Philippines were relatively productive.

“But by the mid-1980s, fishers from various parts of the country and Asia begun to harvest its marine resources, mostly using destructive means,” she noted. “Tubbataha was declared a national marine park in 1988 yet fishers still entered it—even during bad weather to elude detection and arrest. By 1989, coral cover in Tubbataha had decreased by 52 percent compared to 1982 levels.”

Today, the sole policymaking body for the park is the 17-member multisectoral Tubbataha Protected Area Management Board (TPAMB). Its executive arm, the Tubbataha Management Office (TMO), is charged with the park’s day-to-day administration.

Detailed to the reefs all-year-round on three-month rotations are seven marine park rangers—four from the Philippine Navy, one from the Philippine Coast Guard, and two from the TMO. They are housed at the ranger station, located in a sand bar at the North Atoll.

According to Songco, through the help of various supporting agencies, they now have a radar, two patrol boats and a dinghy, radios, GPS, binoculars, bullhorns, spotlights, camera and firearms. “World Wildlife Fund-Philippines donated a patrol boat while CI-Philippines contributed an outboard motor as well as support for bird-banding work,” she cited.

A park ranger’s Tubbataha is a wild place—in a different sense of the word. He’s an engine-and-electronics troubleshooter, a seaman and scuba diver all rolled into one. Most of all, he’s a law enforcer. Used to fishers claiming to have accidentally entered the park, he boards their boats to verify illegal activity. Poaching cases in 2006 alone tallied at 33.

The most publicized case was of the Chinese poachers caught red-handed with 800 live fish—including over 200 Napoleon wrasses—inside the park last December.

“Poachers do not care about sustainable fisheries, conservation efforts, or MPA rules and boundaries,” Trono said. “They care about the demands of the Chinese aphrodisiac market. They care about making money from sea turtles, shark meat, sea cucumbers and giant clams.”

They care enough to get crafty at it. Trono gave an example: “Illegal fishers who are after topshells [Trochus niloticus], locally known as samong, arrive in the cover of night. They shut off the motor of their outrigger boats just outside park waters. They use paddle boats, with their lights-off, to silently enter the park. They stack the shells in certain areas as they go along. Before sun-up, these are collected and loaded to the motorized boat.”

Taking samong—considered rare, threatened and endangered under Convention of Internationally Trade Endangered Species—or any other rare or endangered species is punishable by a 12- to 20-year imprisonment or a P120,000 fine, forfeiture of catch and fishing permit cancellation.

But these risks are taken anyway because businessmen in Roxas town reportedly buy topshells for between P140 and P160 a kilo to be sold at P400 a kilo in Cebu. Mainly because rangers endure rough weather during stakeouts and stakeholders outside the park report illegal activity, they made some headway since 2006. Early this year, for example, five people were caught carrying 16 boxes of 700 topshells.

“Considering the park’s law-enforcement budget of P8 million a year against its threefold increase in total area to 96,828, the cost of protection is virtually P83 per hectare per year. That’s obviously not enough,” Songco said.

Back to the basics
CI-Philippines is a member of the TPAMB. It also engages local stakeholders and collaborators for its SSS Project in the Cagayan Ridge Marine Biodiversity Conservation Corridor.

“We met with stakeholders—from fishers and fish vendors to teachers and priests—to draw their thoughts on conservation, needs and expectations, and possibilities for project participation,” said William Azucena, CI-Philippines information, education and communication specialist.

Stakeholders reported deployed MPA markers that had been destroyed, the lack of MPA guard outposts, and fisheries law-enforcement teams that needed organizing. They identified areas for collaboration: from the strategic (monitoring and improving local MPAs) to the nitty-gritty (equipping the Bantay Dagat with radios, searchlights, flashlights, raincoats, uniforms and training).

To contribute to the funds for park management and law enforcement, the SSS Project determined a penalty of P12,000 per square meter of damaged reef. Azucena explained: “Production and restoration cost estimates put the park’s coral reefs’ annual economic value at about P208 to P211 per square meter.” The TPAMB has since adopted this environmental-crimes fine.

Azucena added: “We drill down to the basics for our basis. MPA networks and corresponding management systems are designed based on what we know about spawning fish stocks within this corridor and their dispersal to others. Test fishing [that monitor catch and by-catch], meanwhile, helps assess the pressures to develop the right policies.”

Big network for a big project
The inhabited islands along the Cagayan Ridge Corridor are Cawili, Arena, Calusa and Cagayancillo. “In Cagayancillo, 6,000 residents gave up their homes in line with the national decision to declare Tubbataha Reefs a no-take zone,” Azucena noted, as tourism, research and conservation are the only activities allowed within the park. “Their attempt to understand why and what for makes them conservation heroes. The challenge for us is to address the question, ‘What’s in it for them?’”

Delivering on conservation outcomes, after all, is about maximizing partnerships. For Cagayan Ridge, CI-Philippines joined hands not only with the TMO, TPAMB and Cagayancillo’s stakeholders and local government unit but also with the UP Marine Science Institute and Ocean Bio Laboratory, Tropical Marine Research for Conservation, and the Pawikan Conservation Project of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau.

A big project needs an even bigger community. “We’re inviting oil and gas corporations, as part of their corporate social responsibility programs, to participate in the development of a conservation strategy for the Cagayan Ridge Marine Biodiversity Conservation Corridor. Together, we can demonstrate sustainable management of protected areas adjacent to exploration areas,” Trono reported.

CI has already partnered with oil and gas companies—like BP, Chevron, Shell and Statoil—before. In Venezuela, CI’s partnership activities included a marine biodiversity survey of habitats near ConocoPhillips’ concession area as well as a threats-and-opportunities assessment in the region, used to develop part of ConocoPhillips’ Environmental Impact Assessment.

CI’s Southampton-based Serpent project had been supported by oil and gas facilities to pursue deep-sea species surveys and research. A number of companies supported research on whale migration. These types of research help prioritize the deeper seascape areas for conservation activities even as they address companies’ environmental risk needs and provide a relatively simple and cost-effective outreach mechanism.

Here at home, First Gen provided over $150,000 to support the development and implementation of a conservation plan for Verde Island.

Dive operators and tourists play their part, too.

The third day found us at Black Rock, South Tubbataha, where I watched a marble ray gliding deeper, an octopus changing colors and textures as it moved, a wrass cleaning the cheek of a green moray, and a sea snake undulating across the sandy bottom.

The last four dives on Day Four at Delsan Wreck were devoted to searching for a manta. It showed itself on the very last dive—sealing it, in my mind, as an official Tubbataha trip.

But one other distinctive thing happened, too: Our dive operator reported the presence of a suspicious-looking vessel. As I watched the rangers’ patrol boat approach, I felt part of the big scheme to protect what we love.

Juan T. Gatbonton on Candaba

2008-06-26T20:02:00.003+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | I just read a book of essays by Juan T. Gatbonton, entitled "Little Reports" (Raya Books, 1986; UP Press, 2003). The pieces I love best are the character sketches, one of which is that of an old astronomer-priest named Father Miguel Selga, who came to Manila in 1915 and worked in the Weather Bureau, becoming Director in 1926. Selga received a recognition from the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg for his observation of an eclipse which dimmed the Visayas on May 9, 1929. A part of Selga's written observation of the eclipse is re-printed by Gatbonton.

Another wonderful piece is "Candaba: a memoir." My knowledge of Candaba is limited to occasional visits there (usually led by Philippine bird-expert Tim Fisher) to look at the migrating birds during the northern winter, and in the summer, the Grass owls and the Pheasant-tailed jacanas.

Gatbonton was editor at the Manila Chronicle (Philippines) in 1954-1958 and Asia Magazine (Hong Kong) in 1965-1969. "Little Reports" is available at the University of the Philippines Press, UP Diliman Campus, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. Email: press@up.edu.ph

Excerpts from Candaba: a memoir
ON THE EVE of All Souls' Day, I travel northeastward from Manila, where I have lived for the most part since I was seven, to my hometown of Candaba in Pampanga—to light a candle at my father's tomb.

Poking about the churchyard, amid the detritus of centuries, my wife and I turn up porcelain shards dating back to the Ming dynasty. Candaba was there before the Spaniards came. The conquistador Loarca listed Candava as among the encomiendas close to Manila. He gave its population in 1582 (together with neighboring Arayat) as two thousand tributes—equivalent to 8,000 men, women, and children.

Candaba lies in a hollow on the right bank of the Rio Grande de Pampanga, near where it meets the Angat River. The other river-towns are typically built on the opposite bank, where an earth dike holds back the seasonal flooding; Candaba alone lives with the floodwaters. The town gives its name to the country’s largest freshwater swamp, which is over 32 kilometers long and covers 494 square kilometers when flooded.

Once the northeast monsoon blows, bringing the rains with it, Candaba folk await the rising of the waters. It is eerie to see the brown flood creeping up to town from the swamp—a few meters a day—even when the sky is clear. The houses closest to the swamp stand on bamboo stilts and every hut has a banca underneath it. Soon the water submerges all but the tips of the bamboo groves. Then it flows past the graves in the old cemetery, inundates the plaza, and maroons the poblacion.

It was a good season. School was out—indeed all routine stopped—and people spent the days promenading in their outriggered bancas. As the water receded, fish collected in canals people had dug beforehand. Fat snails clung to reeds. People gathered succulent herbs sprouting out of the loam and caught crunchy mole-crickets that burrowed in mud flats. In my mother’s kitchen, gray swamp crabs scuttled in buri sacks. The swollen river gave up big-head prawns, eels as big as your thigh, and, occasionally, silver sea-bass—which fishers rushed to the kitchen of Candaba’s richest landowner. A legendary gourmet, when he had milkfish, he ate only their fat bellies—leaving the spiny tails to his servants.

On a rainy night, there was nothing better than Candaba catfish roasted on a bamboo spit. The salt caked on its golden-yellow belly and its fragrant fat sizzled on the coals. We ate catfish with new rice, tearing chunks of the flesh off the spit, and dipping it in fermented rice-fish paste seasoned with bitter mustard leaves or the tenderest shoots of the mango tree.

In the dry season, the swamp was planted to watermelons. Tagalog buyers came to buy the ripe fruit by the cartload. At the riverbank, they tossed the melons from hand to hand, down the steep slope to bancas that would paddle them across the river to where their trucks were—singing out the numbers to keep count. We sat on our haunches waiting for someone to miss a catch—then scampered after the fallen melon before it hit the water. The cool sweet juice dripped down our singlets like blood.

DURING the Siberian winter, migratory waterbirds alighted on our swamp. Gray geese squawked above town, and duck formations flew close to Mount Arayat. People caught brown ducks, mallards, grebes, plovers, snipes, quails, and moorhens with nets or blinded them with lights and harvested them with shotguns. On San Nicolas Tolentino’s feast day, we listened for the first harsh cry of the shrike. By that time, we had set our snares about the berry trees and made slingshots from guava-tree branches. We prowled the ipil-ipil groves that separated town from the ricefields, running only when the church bells tolled the Angelus.

The town church, dedicated to St. Andrew the Apostle, was built by the Agustinians. My father’s house was well under the bells, whose language the whole town knew. When the biggest bell tolled a death, people shouted out who it was, from house to house.

Ash Wednesday brought down the searing heat of summer. The whole earth writhed under the white-hot sky. Dogs lay in the shade of the huts with their tongues out. The warm wind was scented with withered herbs and ripening grain. Villagers came in from the farms for the Holy Week. I awoke to deep strange voices and the exhalations of tethered carabaos. My father’s tenants were from the Tagalog towns across the swamp. We kept a Christ at the Pillar, which the household set on its carriage of beaten silver for the Holy Monday procession. We children were forbidden to play with pointed sticks or other sharp toys. My maiden aunt, washing the fine dust off my feet at dusk, sighed like the sorrowful Christ.

On Saint Andrew’s Feast, in November, traveling merchants set up a fair at the churchyard. Young peasants in their Sunday clothes and slicked-down hair came to gawk at the painted big-town girls tending the shooting galleries. Their pomade mingled with the smell of the carbide lamps. At Christmas, the voices of the choir seemed to me, kneeling among the women, as fragrant as ripening palay on the stalk. The stiffly starched clothes of the town women exhaled scented roots.

THE first English word I learned was “quickly.” A schoolgirl called it out to her friend on the street. I got into primary school before I was old enough to reach my left ear with my right hand from over my head. My father was municipal president, and the Grade One teacher my aunt. Because I was obviously too small to be in school, I had to hide under the building whenever the superintendent came. He was an American with a wooden leg, and I could hear him drag his thick shoes up the stairs to the classrooms.

Once home from school, I took off my starched drawstring trousers and ran out to play with only my singlet on. My friends and I hang around the cockpit, watching the gamblers arm their fighting cocks with bright little scimitars. They poured root beer on the winner’s wounds and stitched together the gaping flesh. The loser was boiled over a slow fire with crushed ginger, green papaya, and chili leaves.

Every family had close friends with whom it exchanged ritual gifts of food. Most often, it was a plate of lechon or a bowl of mung-bean porridge, which a household cooked whenever a new baby first turned on its belly. There were more clandestine liaisons between the meztizo gentry and the dark, flat-faced women of the villages. Sometimes the pale child born out of such couplings ended up a serf in his father’s house.

In time peasant unrest flowed into town from the sugarlands. Socialists marched around the poblacion with clenched fists, stopping under the windows of the men of property to taunt them with revolutionary songs. Now and then, casualties from the land disputes were laid at the town-hall steps—bodies hacked with bolos or torn up with buckshot. Sometimes it would be a carabao moaning, its leg tendons cut.

The sky at dusk became smudged with smoke from canefields set aflame. Bloated bodies floated downriver. Landlords wore guns visiting their farms. Soon after, my father died and my mother packed seven of her eight children away to her blood-relatives in Manila. Twenty-five years earlier, she had come to Candaba, a bride as delicate as eggshell porcelain in her butterfly sleeves. I stayed on ten months more with my maiden aunts—reluctant to migrate among strangers whose language I couldn’t speak.

FIFTY years ago, it took the better part of a day to get from Candaba to Manila. Before daybreak, you took a horse carriage to the trolley station at the next town of Sta. Ana, then changed to the Manila train at San Fernando—making sure you rode backward, so the coal cinders from the steam engine did not get into your eyes.

I liked taking the bus. We sat in rows open on the sides. At every railroad crossing, the conductor got off ceremoniously, to see if there was a train coming. The Pambusco truck barreled through the narrow streets of small towns. Each had its traveler’s delicacies—tamales at Apalit, small pan de sal at Quingua, ensaimadas at Malolos.

Nowadays, Candaba is less than an hour away on the North Expressway. The way is flat and featureless, and you ride enclosed in your glass-and-steel cocoon of cool air. Before the candle at my father’s tomb is guttered, I am well away again. There’s nothing to hold me back—except my duty to the bones.

Search for Streaked Reed Warbler

2008-06-26T19:57:00.003+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Phil Round while searching for possible suitable wintering habitats of the Streaked Reed Warbler in Candaba, Pampanga.

The trip was a joint effort by The Wetland Trust and the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines to conduct a preliminary survey to determine locations of remaining reed beds and other possible suitable wintering habitats of the little-understood Streaked Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus sorghophilus) in Candaba, Pampanga, Philippines.

Irrigation ditch with Mt. Arayat in the background.

A bend in the Pampanga River near our mist-netting area in Barangay Sto. Rosario. The soft sandy banks of the river were dotted with Blue-tailed Bee-eater (Merops philippinus) nests.

A river in Barangay Mangumbali bordered by tall grass and reeds.

Portion of Malisic River in Barangay Mangumbali.

A marshy ditch on the side of the Provincial Road in Barangay Paligue.

Tall grass bordering our mist-net area in Barangay Sto. Rosario, Candaba.

An irrigation ditch doubling as a fishpond amid ricefields in Barangay Mangumbali. The long stretch of dirt road on the left should make for interesting birding in early mornings.

Grass and reeds along the margins of an irrigation ditch.

A stand of Phragmites burnt somewhere in Barangay Mangumbali near the Malisic River.

Phragmites, grass and a hut made of reeds and galvanized iron sheets on the margins of Malisic River.

Middendorff's Grasshopper-Warbler (Locustella ochotensis) caught in Barangay Paligue, Pampanga, April 26, 2008.

A skulker that spends its time within undisturbed reed beds. Note the lightly barred graduated tail with white tips to the outer tail feathers. The central tail feathers are dark-rufous while the outer feathers are dark blue-grey.

Mist net in Barangay Paligue, just a few meters from the Provincial Road that connects Candaba town proper with Barangay Bahay Pare.

Dr. Round examining Middendorff's caught in Barangay Sto. Rosario, Candaba, Pampanga, on April 25, 2008.

A Grey-backed Tailorbird (Orthotomus derbianus) caught in Barangay Sto. Rosario, Candaba, Pampanga on April 25, 2008.

A sub-adult Chestnut Munia (Lonchura malacca) caught in Barangay Visal San Pablo, Candaba on April 27, 2008.

Juvenile male Pied Bushchat (Saxicola caprata) caught in Barangay Paligue, Candaba, Pampanga on April 26, 2008.

Another view of the Pied Bushchat.

The male bushchat undergoes quite a lot of color changes as it grows older.

Female Siberian Rubythroat (Luscinia calliope) caught in Barangay Visal San Pablo, Candaba, Pampanga on April 27, 2008.

Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) caught in Barangay Sto. Rosario, Candaba, Pampanga on April 24, 2008.

Yellow-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus goiavier) caught in Barangay Paligue, Candaba on April 26, 2008.

Oriental Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus orientalis) caught in Barangay Visal San Pablo, Candaba, Pampanga on April 27, 2008.

Clamorous Reed-Warbler (Acrocephalus stentoreus) caught in Barangay Sto. Rosario, Candaba, Pampanga on April 26, 2008. Separating Oriental from Clamorous was not as easy as the Kennedy guide led us to believe. We caught an Oriental Reed Warbler which had virtually no streaking on throat or upper breast. With birds at hand, we separated the two species by wing formula. For Clamorous, the second primary (counted from the outside) is shorter than the fifth. For Clamorous, the notch on the second primary is also approximately level with the middle of the secondaries (I'll have to review this final detail with Dr. Round when he gets back to Bangkok). Kennedy's pointer about how the Oriental has a longer and heavier bill than the Clamorous is not easy to discern in the field or even with bird at hand!

A Striated Grassbird (Megalurus palustris) caught in Paligue, Pampanga, April 26, 2008.

New Philippine record: Black-browed Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus bistrigiceps) caught and released in Barangay Visal San Pablo, April 27, 2008.

Note the broad buffy-whitish supercilium bordered above by a broad blackish stripe. Warm olive-brown upperparts and whitish underparts with warm buff flanks. According to the paper by Alstrom et al. entitled, "The taxonomic status of Acrocephalus agricola tangorum" published in Forktail 6 (1991), "A. bistrigiceps breeds from south-eastern Transbaikalia and northeast Mongolia, eastwards along the Amur River valley to Amurland, Ussuriland, Sakhalin and Japan, and southwards through Korea and northeast China as far south as northern Jiangxi. The species occurs widely on passage through Japan and eastern China and winters from West Bengal and eastern Assam, through Burma and Thailand to the Indochinese countries (Vaurie 1959, Ali and Ripley 1983, Watson et al. 1986, Cheng 1987)."

The main survey will be conducted in the next winter migration season.

Shed somewhere in Barangay Mangumbali where harvested rice is stored awaiting transport.

The remains of a Suckermouth Catfish (Hypostomus plecostomus), commonly called Janitor Fish in the Philippines, found dumped along a fishpond dike.

The Candaba Wildlife Refuge in Barangay Visal San Pablo is a triumph of political will and good sense by Mayor Jerry Pelayo.

The refuge is of national importance because it is the only place in Luzon where one can easily see Philippine Duck (a threatened endemic species), Purple Swamphen, Watercock, Little Grebe, Painted Snipe, Pheasant-tailed Jacana and other marshland species which have thrived under the protection of the local government's conservation policies.

Black-browed Reed Warbler in Candaba

2008-06-26T19:52:00.001+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | Individual netted in Barangay Visal San Pablo, Candaba, Pampanga on April 2008. First Philippine record. Photo taken by Phil Round.

New Bird Species for the Philippines

2008-06-26T19:31:00.000+08:00

BY MADS BAJARIAS | A brief four-day survey of the Candaba Marsh in Pampanga Province, on April 2008 was aimed at locating the globally threatened Streaked Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus sorghophilus).

This small, buffy-brown insectivorous bird migrates to the Philippines every winter from its (still unknown) breeding areas somewhere in Northeast Asia. Like many other wetland birds, it is of conservation concern owing to habitat loss—destruction of native marsh vegetation and its replacement by rice paddies and fishponds.

A team from the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines (WBCP) and the Wetland Trust covered a representative selection of sites throughout the greater Candaba Marsh area. They neither found any Streaked Reed Warblers, nor any extensive areas of likely suitable habitat (thought to be reeds, sedges or other tall grasses).

“Although reeds are widespread throughout Candaba, most were in small fragments lining the banks of ditches and rivers. These fragments are probably too small to hold any sizeable numbers of Streaked Reed Warblers. There were no large and contiguous expanses” said WBCP President Michael C. Lu.

“The largest single block of reeds that our survey team found was only about five hectares, and even most of this had been thoroughly burnt.”

“We are encouraging the local government of Candaba to create awareness among its communities to stop burning of the remaining wetland vegetation to save what is left for critically endangered wetland birds,” added Lu.

The Streaked Reed Warbler is still present at Candaba (a single individual sighted just a few days before the survey by a visiting birdwatcher was the first confirmed record for seven years) but its population is likely to be very small.

The Wild Bird Club of the Philippines plans a follow-up survey in January or February next year, before the annual burning of reeds has started. In addition, it is hoped to survey further sites elsewhere in the Philippines.

In spite of its failure to find any Streaked Reed Warblers, the survey was nevertheless highly valuable. It provided the first overview and survey of the condition of wetland habitats in Candaba, which remain of national importance for a great range of waterbirds, including herons, bitterns, egrets, and the threatened endemic Philippine Duck (Anas luzonica).

Additionally, the team discovered the first Philippine record of a similar, closely related (but much more common and widespread) reed warbler, the Black-browed Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus bistrigiceps).

The Wild Bird Club of the Philippines (WBCP) and the Wetland Trust thank the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the Office of the Mayor of Candaba Municipality, for their kind assistance and collaboration.

Additional Notes:
1) The sole wintering grounds of the Streaked Reed Warbler in the entire world are in the Philippines.
2) The Streaked Reed Warbler was once found commonly on migration along the coast of Eastern China, and was regularly seen in small numbers at Candaba until the mid 1990s. Since that time there have been very few sightings.
3) Most reed beds at Candaba have been drained and converted into rice paddies. Local people burn reeds and other native vegetation in order to encourage new shoots for livestock such as cattle and goats to graze.
4) The Wild Bird Club of the Philippines has been established to promote birdwatching and to provide support and records to other groups with similar interests.
5) The Wetland Trust is a UK-based Registered Charity whose remit is the conservation of migratory and resident birds and their habitats.

[Photo by Philip D. Round/The Wetland Trust]