A Tricycle Ride to a Birding Hotspot

Boarding the outrigger boats at Mactan for the trip to Olango Island.

At the end of our second day in the Philippines (but just my first full day) we flew to the island of Cebu and spent the night there. The next morning we drove to Mactan and boarded outrigger boats for the short journey to Olango Island. On Olango we were going to be transported to one of the Philippines' finest shorebird-watching spots, the Olango Island Wildlife Sanctuary.

Tricycles waiting on the Olango Island wharf.

The short boat ride was pleasant, but we could already feel the power of the South Pacific sun. Bottles of sunscreen went around and wide-brimmed hats were pulled out. As we drew close to the wharf on Olango Island, we could see our transportation waiting for us: a fleet of a dozen or more motorcycles with attached, enclosed sidecars. These are called "tricycles" by the Filipinos. As we disembarked with all of our birding gear, looking more like an invading army than a pack of avid birders, we each chose a tricycle and loaded ourselves and our gear aboard.

I hesitated a moment, taking photos of some of the fancier tricycles and my travel companions grabbed all the well-maintained vehicles.

A tricked-out tricycle.

I was left to get into one that was called Shazam, but might have more accurately been named Rustbucket Tailbone-breaker. But this was an adventure, and there was birding ahead, so I chuckled to myself, slipped my waistpack under my bum and off we went.

Here's a short video of my first tricycle ride:

It would have been a long walk to the sanctuary..

After a tricycle ride of 15 minutes or so, we arrived at the Olango Island Wildlife Sanctuary. We had a short orientation and then were escorted out to the main blind (called a "hide" by my British birding companions).

Entering the main blind/hide at the Olango Island Wildlife Sanctuary.

View from the hide, looking toward the ocean.

In front of us stretched a thousand yards of sand and mudflat. It was low tide and the birds were seen in the heat-hazy distance foraging, running, and moving about. This was scope work, but we'd come prepared for that.

Gray-tailed tattler. This bird came obligingly close to us in the blind. This is a digiscoped shot.

In seconds bird names were called out inside the blind: gray-tailed tattler, ruddy turnstone, whimbrel, little ringed-plover. Then it was my turn to spot a new shorebird. It was a lifer for me—a bird I'd always wanted to see. And I found it for myself!

I'll resume the story here tomorrow.

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Mr. Brown is Back in Town

The brown thrasher returned to our ridge-top farm on Sunday morning. Zick heard him first and yelled it to me from the other end of the house. I stuck my head out the window and heard his jumbly sing-song coming from the spring trail.

This is a photo of the same dude (I suspect) from a few years ago. He was singing from the same tree yesterday and I would have gone after him with the camera for some fresh images, but I was simply not able. I've been down with some weird flu-like affliction since Friday night and have not been feeling anywhere close to myself.

Nice to know spring goes on, rolling around on Nature's giant wheel, even when we, ourselves, feel more like roadkill.

I am thankful for brown thrashers. Knowing that Mr. Brown is back in town has me feeling better—I'd say he's done more tom improve my health than a full dose of Biaxin—at least so far.

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This Just In: Tree Swallow

This morning when I took Phoebe out to the bus, dawn was barely breaking and there was a heavy dew on the ground. By the time I took out Liam to his bus, just after 8 am, the dew was still there, and it was joined by a heavy, filmy mist, which obscured the sun. As we walked to the garage, the silhouette of a bird sitting on the power line caught my eye.

"Is that a tree swallow?" I asked myself. Liam overheard me and said "Walll, you know what preddy-mush all the birds are Daddy, so, yep, it prolly is!" He was right! It WAS a tree swallow.

Now THAT'S a good sign of spring's arrival.

Bus duties completed, I tossed a handful of dried eggshell bits up onto the dark-shingles of the garage roof. The tree and barn swallows eat these eggshell bits all spring and summer. I know it's early, but it felt good to start yet another spring ritual: The Feeding of the Eggshells.

Also in full song this morning: eastern meadowlarks, eastern bluebirds, house finches, a red-shouldered hawk, and all the usual suspects (cardinals, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, song sparrow, wild turkey) joined by some het-up dark-eyed juncos who are getting a head start on their spring concertos.

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Forest Birding Around Subic Bay

Coleto, a starling relative, is a common forest edge bird. Its head is covered in bare pink flesh.

On the afternoon of March 3 and the morning of March 4 our group looked for birds in the forested hills around Subic Bay. The birding was somewhat difficult for a few reasons: the birds were not present in large numbers or variety (though a different group visiting later in the week had great birding there), the forest was thick and dark, and the light, after sunrise, made any bird in the canopy appear in silhouette. It may have been a timing thing, or perhaps these trails had been recently hunted (subsistence hunting has a major impact on wildlife in the Philippines). But we saw just a few birds well, but many more birds fleetingly. And we heard far more than we saw.

Most of our group in the forest near Subic Bay, scanning the canopy for small birds.

The main trail we walked along on the morning of March 4 was perfect for group birding—safe footing, and wide enough for all to find a good vantage point. There would be times on this trip when we'd all miss birds along a narrow forest trail. There is a Zen to forest birding. Quiet bird watchers moving slowly always see the most birds.

The Subic forest trail.

A canopy of bamboo.

With few forest birds coming close enough to photograph, I decided to photograph the forest itself.

Some bamboo species are native to the Philippines, others are imported for cultivation.

Lest I give the impression that we saw nothing, let me say that nearly every single bird we encountered was a lifer for me. Not all of them gave me the kind of "bee-eater" looks I'd gotten earlier on March 3: great views, lots of photos taken. But, as is the habit of an addicted bird photographer, I did not let the improbability of capturing a decent image stop me from taking dozens of frames.

A soaring brahminy kite.

Silhouetted against the light: a female tarictic hornbill: the smallest hornbill in the Philippines.

Yellow-vented bulbuls were everywhere.

Slender-billed crow.

White-throated kingfisher.

Soon it was mid-day and we were on the move again to another island: Cebu, via the Manila airport. As we loaded into the mini-bus for the ride back to our hotel to pack up, the cool, air-conditioned comfort laid many of us low. We nodded off with dreams of the Cebu flowerpecker dancing in our heads.

Sleepy birders on the bus.

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Giant Golden-crowned Flying Fox

I posted an image a couple of weeks ago of the flying foxes my group saw in the Philippines, but I wanted to share a bit more about them. We encountered this mammal (a lifer for me) in the forest near Subic Bay on the island of Luzon.

The flying foxes (formerly known as fruit bats—they are not foxes, but merely look like foxes) were in their daytime roosts, hanging upside-down. The scene was something I'd only ever seen in nature documentaries or in films set in Southeast Asia. From a distance, it looked as if a whole shipment of dark-brown umbrellas had fallen from a cargo plane and landed in the trees.

These flying foxes are, I believe, giant golden-crowned flying foxes, a species that is endangered in the Philippines. There may have been more than one species present in these roosts. But we only had limited time to see them, scope them, snap a few images or some short video clips, and then we had to split for a lunch date.

A couple of notable things about these animals.

1. They were BIG! I am not a squeamish person, but seeing a bat this large was pretty gulp-inspiring.
2. They sleep by day and forage on the wing at night.
   
3. They flapped a lot to keep cool in the late-morning sun.
4. They are fruit-eating bats, not vampire bats (which are native only to the Americas).
   
5. As fruit eaters and pollinators, they play an important role in the health of the forests.
   
6. Many of the flying fox species are hunted in Asia, mostly for food.
   
7. Their faces are dog-like, their eyes surprisingly human.
8. You could certainly pick out the male bats with no trouble at all.
   

Here are two short video clips I shot of the giant golden-crowned flying foxes near Subic Bay.

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Tracking the Timberdoodle

Can't find the woodcock in this photo? It's not there. This was a test shot.

It's the time of year when the male American woodcocks perform their sky-dance courtship displays on our southeast Ohio ridge top. Some nights when it's cold or rainy or both, I wonder how they muster the energy. Lately we've had two or three displaying males each night on various clearings on our farm.

The woodcock is a shorebird that lives in wet woods. One of the folk names of the American woodcock is timberdoodle. 'Timber' is clearly a reference to the species' preferred woodland habitat. And 'doodle?' Perhaps that's a reference to the bird's method of foraging by walking slowly, probing the soil for earthworms. Or maybe it refers to the woodcock's slow, wing-twittering flight? Or maybe it just sounds good to put 'doodle' on the end of 'timber?'

Anyway...

The star performer of our displaying males is a bird who uses the upper portion of our middle meadow path. He starts his display by calling from deep in the woods below the house, down along the spring trail. Peent! Peent! And as soon as he feels the ambient lighting of dusk has reached the preferred number of foot-candles, he flies slowly up out of the woods, taking the stage at a favorite spot in the meadow path.

I'd been watching this dude's show for a few nights when I decided to try to take his photograph. It would be no use trying to sit in the weeds along the path and wait for him. He'd see me and seek a safer stage elsewhere. I'd tried that a few year ago, wanting to get some video of the performance. It was a miserable failure. The woodcocks, with their huge eyes perfectly adapted for seeing well at night, could see me clear as a bell. I could not see them at all, which is a problem when you're trying to videotape something.

But now I had a new stealth-increasing weapon. My Doghouse photo blind, which would (I hoped) permit me to be close to the birds without seeming like a threat to them. I set my blind up in the afternoon, near by the male timberdoodle's favorite peenting spot. That evening, when I heard the male start his warm-ups in the woods, I hurried out to the blind and took up my position.

Now, I know next to nothing about the techniques of good nature photography. I know how to turn my camera on and what peephole to look through—but that's about it. I fiddle with Manual and A/V settings but it's mostly just guesswork. The Auto-Everything setting is my default. Clearly what I need to do it to take a nature photography course.

Anyway, I took a few test photos, prefocusing on the woodcock's favorite spot. I felt ready.

Soon I heard the wing whistle of a flying woodcock and the male settled down on the path. But he was 25 feet farther up the path, not at his favorite spot. The presence of the blind probably made him a bit wary. Craning my body to the left out the blind's shooting hole, I struggled to find the woodcock in my viewfinder. This was manual focus territory and I could not see ANYTHING in the viewfinder. In desperation I pushed the shutter button. Here's what I got:

The ghost of woodcock present.

Then the male took off. He returned, peented, and flew a few more times in the normal course of his evening show, each time taking off before I could managed to take a single frame. I was having a really hard time finding the bird and focusing.

Now the male woodcock was landing and calling from a spot much closer. You'd THINK I'd be able to find the bird and get a decent photo, but the daylight was mostly gone now. It was as if the woodcock knew this and thus felt safer in coming closer to the noisy, cursing human in the dark camo structure tucked off to the side of the path. Finally the camera clicked and I got a few more ridiculously bad images.

If Monet painted an American woodcock, it might look like this.

If I were photographing sasquatch or an ivory-billed woodpecker, the photo would look like this.

And then, for a single frame, it all came together. I have no idea how or why. It must have been the photo gods reaching down to tap me on the head (and tweak my camera settings). He is the result: the only photo I took that night that is worth keeping.

Sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you! American woodcock male, between peents.

I'm leaving the photo blind up so the woodcock can get used to it. And I am not touching a single button, dial, or switch on my camera until I get another session with the timberdoodle. Who knows? Next time I might even get two keeper images!

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Long Live Acoustic Music!

There's a real satisfaction in sharing favorite songs, albums, and artists with and among my music-loving friends. A year or two ago, my friend Debby Kaspari sent a CD she'd burned (legally) of a live performance by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings at the legendary Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I'd listened to the CD several times, but I'd never made it all the way through, for some reason.

The other night, while driving home, I was reaching for something different in the ear-candy department. I popped in the Telluride CD and hit the random button on the CD player. The first track that came up was one I'd never heard, and it it was so beautiful and mournful that it just killed me!

It's been the song in my head ever since.

It's called Throw Me a Rope and it's not yet been released on any Welch/Rawlings studio album. But you can see them perform it (minus one verse) on this YouTube video.

This song reminds me how much I love acoustic music. Tonight, The Swinging Orangutangs will be playing mostly electrically at The Marietta Brewing Company, but I plan to sneak in an acoustic song or two on the break with our old pal Jimmy Clinton playing along on mandolin.

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