island collared dove – Tonji and Sylvia's Wildlife Refuge

New bird photo records and nice trees too!

UPDATE: The bird in the photo that I identified as immature Philippine Hawk Cuckoo is a Rusty Breasted Cuckoo! That’s a new bird for our farm!

It’s time to go birding again! We used to have so much fun traveling all over the Philippines looking for birds. Our favorite birding site is of course, this place of ours! After being away for three months because of the lockdown, it was reassuring to see that the old regular birds are still there. It seems like there are even more birds now.

We used to hear Philippine Hawk Cuckoos calling in the distance. It was on our list as “h.o.” or “heard only”. ~~This time we saw two of them in the cluster of trees right in front of the cottage and I was able to photograph a juvenile perched on a tree.~~ It’s still h.o. for us.

It has a really distinctive and loud call that can be heard in this video.

Philippine Hawk Cuckoo calling from the trees in front of the cottage.

We had a new bird for the farm! This is an immature Rusty Breasted Cuckoo. It was perched quietly on a tree. Bird #102 for the farm list!

Philippine Hawk Cuckoo immature — I thought this was a juvenile Philippine Hawk Cuckoo, it’s a Rusty Breasted Cuckoo

There was also a Stripe Headed Rhabdornis checking out the nesting box in that same cluster of trees. It was my first time to photograph this bird at our refuge.

Another view of the Rhabdornis.

Stripe Headed Rhabdornis and Yellow Vented Bulbuls in a tree — Rhabdornis with Yellow Vented Bulbuls

I had a great encounter with a Philippine Collared Dove in our mango area. It was perched on a low branch and didn’t fly away even if I was standing near it with the three dogs! It either didn’t notice us or didn’t mind that we were there!

This Black Naped Monarch is on a fruiting Bangkal Nauclea orientalis that we planted some years ago.

Black Naped Monarch in a fruiting Bangkal tree

This Pied Bushchat was giving me the evil eye!

Pied Bushchat male and female — Mr and Mrs Pied Bushchat

And then we had plant surprises! This Mangkono Xanthostemon vedugonianus is flowering! We planted it in 2019 and it is still tiny, but flowering!

Another plant surprise was this row of Binayuyu Antidesma ghaesembilla that was planted by the birds! The BIRDS! We planted a lot of Talisay along this strip. This was also where Tonji made a swale to slow down the flow of water so it would have time to be absorbed by the soil. I also cleared a lot of hagonoy from this area that were choking the trees we planted. Somehow, I failed to notice that there was a row of Binayuyu that we did not plant growing in between the Talisay!

The young trees are in flower. They are very noticeable now! I was told that Binayuyu has male and female flowers. These might be male flowers. We noticed young trees like this all over the refuge. The Binayuyu fruits are a favorite of the birds. Birds, thanks for planting more trees!

Binayuyu, male flowers — Binayuyu inflorescence

Birds Having a Picnic

What a relief! One of the fields that I messed up before has been restored! In 2015 I removed the big clumps of hagonoy that were growing in the picnic lot. The next year the lot was completely covered in small hagonoy plants. They came back with a vengeance!

I was very sad to see the picnic lot in such bad shape. It looked worse than before I did my weed removal efforts. Good thing we have another hagonoy removal weapon in our arsenal! The tractor! I noticed that when Tonji makes a path through a field of hagonoy, the path itself stays remarkably free of hagonoy! Grass and other things sprout on the path, but not hagonoy!

In 2018 Tonji cleared the picnic lot using the tractor. Immediately after, it looked so much better. There was grass and a nice variety of legumes and other plants that sprouted. And best of all, the Philippine Collared Doves seem to like it! They used to hang out on the other side of the field, near the bamboo fence. This time I saw them foraging on the restored area of the picnic lot!

6 Philippine Collared Doves and 1 Red Turtle Dove

They really seem to like the area. Momo, Barkley, and I watched them from across the picnic lot. Then we went on our morning walk. On our way back, they were still there! When I decided to double back and take more pictures, they simply flew up into a nearby tree. It looked like they had plans to do more foraging.

One Philippine Collared Dove perched on a *Madre de Caca*o. The rest are concealed in the native *alibangban*g tree on the right.

Now I know what to do and what not to do when trying to removing hagonoy. It’s so nice to be able to create habitat that the birds can use.

And here is a Purple Heron that was also in the area!

Birds of July near the ground, on the trees, in the sky

Near the ground

The new stalks of amor seco are too fine to support even a small bird like this Scaly-breasted Munia. So it grabbed onto 3 stalks of the grass with one foot so it can feast on the seeds! This red grass is the source of those sharp seeds that stick on pants, fur, and paws. The Chestnut Munias we so fun to watch that I thought I might be ok with some amor seco weeds near the house just so I could watch the munias some more. Tonji had other ideas. A few hours after I took this photo, he brought out the tractor and mowed down all the amor seco growing in front of the cottage!

On the trees

These were some of the regulars in the trees near the cottage. Two Yellow-vented Bulbuls sharing a tree with two Pink-necked Green Pigeons.

Black-naped Orioles are all over the place, even in the rain. It was a very rainy July.

Island Collared Dove. We keep our eyes out for these guys. They are becoming scarce in other areas of the country due to hunting. The ones in our place are favoring the mango trees now even if we didn’t have much of a mango season this year. Tonji has plans to make the mango area even more attractive for wildlife.

In the sky

Black-crowned Night Herons are common birds that roost in colonies. We usually just see one bird flying by.

The migratory season has begun! This is a flock of egrets, most likely Intermediate Egrets. This group did not stop over. They are probably looking for a nice fishpond or rice field.

I have this fantasy of seeing a rare migrant on the grass in front of the cottage! That would be something!