ipil – Tonji and Sylvia's Wildlife Refuge

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!

This is our big year for planting tree seeds. In a few short months, we have gone from having a few seedlings in bags to more than one thousand pots with seeds in various stages of growth!

February 2019 – It all started with the free seeds we received from the Horti Fair in Quezon Memorial Circle. The seeds came from members of the Philippine Native Trees Enthusiasts (PNTE) and they had tips on how to treat each seed type of seed before planting it. It was fun to follow the different pre-germination treatment instructions for each type of seed and very rewarding to see the seeds grow!

June – We received more free seeds from Philippine Native Trees Enthusiasts at another plant show. This time we kept the seeds at home in Alabang instead of bringing them to Batangas.

from left to right Buri, Malapapaya, Ipil, Taluto

None of the Buri sprouted. The Taluto and Ipil were amazing! They grew quickly and were transplanted to bigger pots after 7 weeks. After a couple more weeks, they were big enough to move to the farm nursery. The Malapapaya is slow growing. They are in individual pots and are just getting their true leaves.

Taluto, this is before they were transferred to bigger pots. 16 out of 18 seeds grew and were brought to the nursery in Batangas.
Ipil – 4 out of 7 seeds grew
The Malapapaya are still tiny and just getting their true leaves. I pricked out 82 pieces, we are now down to 52. Something is beheading them!

In June, we also bought 100 Pili seeds that we planted and then discarded by August. They weren’t showing any signs of life and we needed the space for other seeds!

July – We bought 200 Balai Lamok seeds from a member of the Philippine Native Trees Enthusiasts group. We were excited to try the germination technique of Ephraim Cercado from PNTE. He in very successful in growing Balai Lamok.

Success! Back in 2017 we bought 198 Balai Lamok seeds and were able to grow only 8 seedlings. Now with the new germination technique we have 135 seedlings!

about 1 week after transferring from the moist chamber
with the true leaves

I think we can improve our Balai Lamok production even more if we decide to try again next season. We waited too long before planting the seeds and some of them got moldy. I think this may have made the seeds weaker. The potting mix was also too fluffy. It should have been packed down more evenly. The seedlings kept toppling over. We also may have been over watering in the early days.

Our Philippine Teak produced seeds for the first time. We collected them and tried different planting techniques. We were told that Philippine Teak is difficult to grow from seeds. We may possibly have one seed that grew. Or it might be a weed!

August – Our biggest month for seed planting so far! We bought 4 kilos of seeds and gathered fruit and pods from 3 kinds of trees in our subdivision.

We gathered Banaba from flowering trees in our subdivision. We experimented on which pods had viable seeds. The pods that were brown and dry and still on the tree but slightly open did the best. The seedlings from pods that were not planted immediately were undersized.

Banaba germinants
56 small seedlings, down from 75

We gathered Mabolo fruit from two fruiting trees in our subdivision. Some of fruit practically fell on our head while we were standing under the tree. We were able to eat those and enjoy the creamy apple flavor. The other fruits on the ground were spoiled, but the seeds were good for planting. All 91 seeds sprouted!

Mabolo aka Kamagong
All 91 seeds sprouted!

We bought 1 kilo of White Lauan seeds and 1 kilo of Red Lauan seeds from Bukidnon. When the seeds arrived, most of the Red Lauan already germinated! Lauan are from the Dipterocarps family. Their seeds have wings and germinate readily but are only viable for one or two weeks. And many Dipterocarps only have seeds every 5 or more years.

White Lauan
Red Lauan

We bought 1 kilo of Anang seeds and 1 kilo of Tail-leafed Panau seeds. Anang is the same family as Mabolo. It also has black wood. Tail-leafed Panau is a Dipterocarp. Most of the Tail-leafed Panau were germinated when they arrived, with very long roots. The Anang hasn’t sprouted yet.

Tonji noticed a good looking tree with pods in the village. It turned out to be Bani, a beach forest tree that grows quickly and can produce seeds in 3 years. We planted 35 seeds and are waiting for them to sprout.

All these seedlings from seeds that we bought and gathered are like our little babies. They have taken over the front steps of our house, the side garden, and one section of our lanai. We check on them every day, sprinkle them with rainwater, and pick out the hairy caterpillars that like to eat their leaves. When they get bigger, they will move from our house to the farm nursery and then eventually get planted on the ground.

The next stage of our seed collecting and planting will be collecting seeds from the Philippine native trees in our refuge that we have a lot of and that produce a lot of seeds. Trees like Banato, Alibangbang, and Akleng Parang. Then we can distribute them among the tree-loving members of the Philippine Native Trees Enthusiasts group so that even more people can learn to enjoy planting the seeds of Philippine native trees!

Tag: ipil

New birds and plants in August

One Thousand Seeds