Animals – Tonji and Sylvia's Wildlife Refuge

Fruits! Flowers! New Bird! May 2026

The Big Pond has yielded another new bird for the farm refuge!

Bird #122 is White-browed Crake Porzana cinerea. It was walking on top of the lotus leaves, just like the illustration in the Kennedy field guide!

During our visit we also saw:

One Little Grebe. It’s probably a resident now!

8 Black-winged Stilts.

Egrets.

Buff-throated Kingfisher.

Barred Rails. There were two!

Swallows. I think this is a Pacific Swallow.

A lot of Philippine Ducks.

And Wandering Whistling Ducks! When I visited the Big Pond in the afternoon, at first all the ducks flew away. Then they came back and started grooming and settling in for the night. The Wandering Whistling Ducks and Philippine Ducks were mixed togther. It seems that they are now a mixed flock. Later in the evening, I saw the Wandering Whistling Ducks flying around in a V formation while calling out.

I got a nice photo of a Tawny Grassbird. I tend to have a hard time photographing them. This time I didn’t give up and after many shots of leaves and branches and bird bits, I got a good photo!

The Water Lily pond is ready for the upcoming rainy season! Tonji finished widening and deepening the pond.

Tubby climbing out of the Water Lily Pond. He’s a 4×4 puppy!

He also widened the channel that connects the left and right sides of the Water Lily pond.

We are enjoying the fruits and flowers of summer. The grass is all dried up and and looks like straw. But when you look at the trees, they are green and bursting with flowers!

Narra trees in flower beside the paddock

Balai Lamok with Narra in the background

The guava trees that grow wild all over the farm have small and delicious fruit. I am always on the lookout for ripe fruit. Oftentimes the birds beat me to the fruit. This time there were a lot of hantik (big red ants) making nests in the guava trees and crawling all over the fruit. I was able to get a few though!

I also ate a few aratiles. So sweet!

And here’s a cute video of Tubby bounding down to the grass like a little rabbit.

April 2024

In April we were seeing record high temperatures. The incredible heat combined with a surge of work responsibilities made it very hard for us to visit the sanctuary. The plans for a new guest house were shelved. We are letting the idea sit for a bit more. We tackled one one of the many items on our list of maintenance tasks. This is our new, upgraded fence.

The one on the right is our new fence. The one on the left is the neighbor’s property.

We managed a quick visit to check out the ducks in the Big Pond. The pond looks perilously close to drying up.

Summer is when we all just have to endure and survive the weather. Everything looks stressed and dried up. It’s a treat when you see something that’s doing well in the extreme heat. Like the Balai Lamok near the house!

Another treat for us was being able to get photos of the Red Junglefowl Gallus gallus at the refuge! We had seen them in the refuge before and failed to get photos. We were driving through the mango farm area on the way out of the refuge when we spotted a Junglefowl on the path. Tonji stopped the car, I grabbed the camera and starting shooting though the windshield. Not our best photos, but at least we now have photos!

The Red Junglefowl looks like a domestic chicken. It’s called labuyo in Pilipino. You can tell them apart by the two long tail feathers, grey legs (not yellow like a domestic chicken), and the call. The native chickens in the Philippines originally came from wild chickens that were domesticated.

So cool to see a Red Junglefowl in the refuge!

New birds and plants in August

One of the great things about moving back and forth between Batangas and Alabang is that whenever you visit, everything looks strikingly fresh and new again. Each time we go to the refuge, it feels like there’s something new to see, discover, observe, and document.

EDIT: We thought we had a new bird for the farm bird list. Tonji thought it was a Black-chinned Fruit Dove but now he is not so sure. We will not count it as Bird #103 because the ID seems questionable. I think it is most likely a Pink-necked Green pigeon.

We had a new bird for the farm bird list. This is a Black-chinned Fruit Dove Ptilinopus leclancheri. It’s a fairly big dove. I saw it while walking with the dogs and wasn’t able to get better photos. I thought it looked familiar, but couldn’t really place what it was. I showed the photo to Tonji about a week later when we were already back in Alabang. He said, “That’s a Black-chinned Fruit Dove, what else could it be?” Yey, bird #103 for the refuge!

Bats are a very common and plentiful in Alabang, but there were only a few of them in the refuge. We thought that we had very few bats because we didn’t have enough big trees that the bats could use as roosts. This year all of a sudden, this year we have a lot of bats! It seems that the new swimming pool brought in the bats! We see them flying over the pool and dipping into the water. Good thing we are using a copper-based, non-chlorine pool system.

We saw a Lesser Short Nosed Fruit Bat Cynopterus brachyotis roosting in a tree with an aratiles in its mouth. Tonji was cutting the grass when he spotted the bat and told he to look at it. When I saw it, I thought the fruit was a giant tooth! I was wondering if I should stop Momo from foraging for fallen aratiles fruits near the bat.

Our Ipil tree has flowers! This is one of the birthday trees that our daughter Monica gave us for our 49th birthdays in 2014. This was our first time to see this tree flowering. It is so cool when a tree you planted flowers and you get to collect the seeds and plant more trees! Ipil trees have big seeds that germinate well. I hope this tree produces lots of seeds!

Tonji found a new flowering plant while cutting the grass in the paddock.

Tonji: What is this plant?
Me: Looks like talong (eggplant).
Tonji: How can it be talong, it looks like a tree!
Calls for Ambet.
Tonji: Ambet, please look at the plant. What is it?
Ambet: Tawag namin diyan talong-talongan.
Tonji: Ano??
Me (under my breath): TALONG!!

Sometimes you see birds that look “new” and you get all excited. But on closer inspection, turn out to be young birds.

Or faraway young birds.

Some things remain the same. Like the amount of time I spend trying taking pictures of Red-Keeled Flowerpeckers. You know when they are around because they have a distinctive call like pebbles being tapped together. When we were starting out with bird photography, a friend brought us to his mechanic’s house so we could take pictures of Red-Keeled Flowerpeckers up close and at eye level. The birds were feasting on aratiles fruit and didn’t mind us being around and taking their pictures.

Now we have our own aratiles trees and we have Red-Keeled Flowerpeckers visiting the trees. But the birds in our place do not behave like the ones in that mechanic’s house. Ours don’t stay put and are often even hard to spot. They are my bird photography nemesis. One of them, because there are others! So far this is one of my best attempts.

When I’m walking on our trails I tell myself “I am open to the possibility of seeing something awesome”. And I really believe it!

Bird Stories

Story #1

I was taking pictures of the Pied Harrier when I saw a smaller bird zip by. I snapped a few shots of the smaller bird. When I looked at the photos, I couldn’t tell what it was. I sent the pics to top birder Rob Hutchinson for ID. He said it was definitely a falcon but not a Peregrine or Kestrel. He said it was possibly an Amur Falcon or Northern Hobby, except that my photos were too far and blurry to confirm an ID!

I almost, maybe had a lifer at the refuge!

Story #2

The next week while we were scanning the skies hoping to see the possible Amur Falcon or Northern Hobby, we saw a Brahminy Kite. Being the trigger-happy photographers we are, we snapped away at the Brahminy Kite.

At first it looked like it was flying with its legs dangling.

Then we saw that it was carrying something. Hard to tell what it was carrying, maybe it was a chicken.

The following week, Tonji saw one of our neighbors. One of his chickens was missing! Our neighbor thought someone either stole it or set a trap for it. Tonji said that sure, maybe one of those trappers got it. That’s all he said.

Story #3

Tonji was walking back to the cottage when he saw a mouse impaled on a tree branch. When he reached the cottage he told me about it and we went back out so he could show it to me. When we got to the tree it was gone. He said that it was probably a Long Tailed Shrike that impaled the mouse. It was watching him when he went to inspect it and maybe it moved it or ate it after he left.

I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to see the mouse, impaled through the eye and all. I didn’t think a Long Tailed Shrike could catch a mouse! Lizards and frogs, yes. But I was surprised that it could get a mammal! Our bird reference book the Kennedy guide says that Long Tailed Shrikes eat insects and small vertebrates. We also have Brown Shrikes and the book says that they eat large insects, small birds, and possibly mammals.

The following day I was clearing overhanging dead branches near the horse poop compost area and saw a mouse impaled on a tree branch! This one was long dead and eaten.

I believe that this is graphic confirmation that Shrikes can catch mice!

Story #4

This week Tonji found half a crow in the grass. He was on the Day 2 of building Pond #7 when when he found a dead crow that looked like it was cut in half. He showed it to me, but I didn’t take pictures. The strange image stuck in our minds though. What could have done that to a crow. A crow! They are big, tough, and travel in groups called a murder of crows!

A few mornings later while Tonji was preparing our morning coffee, a Grass Owl flew in front the cottage. What a treat for us to see an owl in the morning.

Then a Pied Harrier flew into view. They were both probably hunting for mice!

Then Crows flew in and started chasing the Pied Harrier. They were very insistent.

They were doing the same thing the previous week, mobbing the Grass Owl and Pied Harrier. The crows were so aggressive towards the Pied Harrier I thought they might have permanently driven the Pied Harrier away.

Pied Harrier and Grass Owl flying together. This was from the previous week.

Sudden realization! The Pied Harrier probably ate the half Crow! That’s why the Crows are attacking the Pied Harrier. If a Brahminy Kite can catch a chicken and a Shrike can catch a mouse, surely a Pied Harrier can catch a Crow!

And that’s the story of how Half Crow Pond got its name.