Farm Projects – Tonji and Sylvia's Wildlife Refuge

September 2023 – The Big Pond is Finished!

The pond construction is done! On September 6, we told the contractor to stop digging, bring out the heavy equipment and to close the pond wall. Monica and Kristian came over so they could walk on the pond floor and see the pond in it’s “before” state! Who knows, if we are lucky a big storm could hit us and fill up our pond!

It is a bit late in the season for a big storm to hit us. This is more like wishful thinking! It’s nice though to be done with the construction and all the disturbance it brings to the site. Now we just have to wait for rain. A lot of rain!

I think it the big pond will be amazing once it’s full of water. Maybe, it will be like the water lily pond, but more! Bigger and better! It is so enjoyable to see all the activity in the water lily pond. We saw diving beetles, a lot of wild passionfruit, and bird tracks!

Diving beetle

We celebrated Tonji’s birthday at the big pond. We went for the day with some wine and water plants! We also moved all the seedlings from the nursery to the big pond. We will plant them around the area.

Happy Birthday Tonji!

August 2023 – Ongoing construction of big pond and bridge

Work on the big pond was stopped for more than 20 days, almost a month because it was too rainy. They were able to start again in August. Things started moving along quickly!

this is what the bottom layer of the soil looks like

This is the bottom of the bridge. It will be covered in soil.

August was a rainy month. The rain makes the soil very sticky!

the soil instantly sticks to your shoes making it hard to walk

No work, too muddy! Puddles are already forming!

The rain made it hard to work but it was very good for the other ponds! The water level in the water lily pond went up and the plants were thriving.

The back part of the water lily pond.

The front part of the water lily pond. There’s water in the extension area at the side.

Tonji is worried about whether it will rain too much for us to finish the pond. We should have started this project earlier!

July 2023 – Turning Inspiration into Reality

We have enjoyed all the ponds we built at our refuge. We have learned so much from each one. We saw that we have the right type of soil for holding water, that the birds enjoy even the small ponds, and that water plants help make the pond come more alive.

Each succeeding pond we built has been bigger than the previous one! We learned that a bigger and deeper pond has a better chance of holding water all year round, attracts more birds, and is a nicer place to watch birds.

We decided to make our biggest pond yet! There were two big ponds that served as inspiration for this big pond idea:

1). The man-made pond in Saud Resort in Ilocos Norte
It is a very big pond right by the entrance of a beach resort. It is where we had our best views of Philippine Ducks, plus photos of rare migrant birds! We visited this pond many times over the years for bird photography. During one visit, I got sick and had a fever and was still able to easily walk to the pond, pull up a chair and take photos of birds. It was that easy to get to the pond! I loved how the birds appeared very comfortable and relaxed in this pond. This is also where we saw Philippine Ducks perched on a tree!

2) The Small Water Impounding Project (SWIP) in San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte
Unlike the pond in Saud, we never visited this site. We just saw it on YouTube. What we liked about it is that how they said that the area and their lives changed for the better because of the SWIP. Their deep wells that were dried up had water again, they earned more because they could plant more, they enjoyed visiting the SWIP because it was pleasant and beautiful, and they saw more birds! Their SWIP though has big fish which are not good if you want to have a lot of frogs, dragonflies, and other creatures.

We realized that to turn inspiration into reality, we would have to bring in big equipment plus people to run the equipment. It would be a much bigger expense than building it ourselves but we would save a lot on time. Once we were decided that we wanted to go through with this project, things started moving quickly! We were able to find a contractor with a lot of experience building the type of pond commonly used for fish and rice farming with earth walls called pilapil. He was also familiar with SWIPs. Our pond would have the same type of construction, but we would make it look natural.

The first step was to clear the site of the shrubs, aroma, and madre de cacao so we could decide on the final boundaries of the pond. The final size of the pond depends on the budget and the site. Of course I wanted it as big as possible! The cleared area is less than one hectare. It is about 50sqm x 175 sqm. We will extend it further out and also make a road to the cottage.

Our promising start got stalled by rain. Work had to stop for most of the month. The newly cleared area got covered in new growth!

look at those vines growing on the ground

There was no progress on the pond project. We had to wait until the rain stopped and the ground dried up enough for the heavy equipment to be operated.

All the rain was good for the other parts of the refuge. There were fruits and flowers in some native trees.

The water lily ponds had more water. The water reached the “extension area” where Tonji widened the pond. The water lily pond is a good place to see Island Collared Doves and Spotted Doves. The Island Collared Doves are more shy.

The U-shaped pond that Tonji was working on in February has water now. There was still work to be done on that pond, but that will be on hold for now.

It’s also nice to just sit in the veranda and enjoy the cool breezes and the birds. I am still amazed at how many birds we get to see from the comfort of the veranda!

The rains turned even the roads into mini ponds. We saw a Barred Rail bathing in a puddle on the road.

When the weather clears up, we will continue building the big pond. It is exciting to see the transformation of an area that was weedy, uninteresting, and difficult to access into a rich habitat for all sorts of wildlife!

April 2023

April was hot and I only got to do one quick visit to the refuge. I was able to see the Philippine Teak and Balai Lamok flowering! The water levels of the ponds were extremely low. I wanted to save the water lilies but I also felt a little conflicted about adding water to the water lily pond from the deep well. Was I wasting water? It would have been ideal if the pond water could last the whole year round. However, we decided to just go ahead and add water to the pond before completely dried up.

this is the small water lily pond

I think it was a good decision to add water to the pond. The water was very low and very warm but also very clear! I had never seen the water that clear before. There was so much life at the pond. There were tadpoles swimming and dragonflies flitting about. Usually we just see the red dragonflies. This time there was also a big blue one and small ones with other colors!

There was still enough water in the big water lily pond. We didn’t need to add water to it. The plants I was most worried about saving are the peach colored Colorado water lilies. They are in the deepest part of the pond. Tonji thinks the water in that section of the pond will last until rainy season.

the Colorado water lilies at the big pond

there are also dragonflies here!

I am quite happy with our experiment in planting water plants in these two ponds. I did not plant anything in the other ponds, mainly because I didn’t know anything about water plants back then. I think the water plants and guppies brought in more living things to the ponds. The water looks alive, not like a stagnant pool of water. I also think the water plants help to keep the water from evaporating too quickly.

In April, we also had more doggie health woes. Lulu and Ollie got kennel cough and Momo got very sick. I thought Momo was going to die! Thank goodness he pulled through.