travel – 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 2026 – Hello Tubby!

We have a new, very squishy, very cute French Bulldog puppy. His name is Tubby. Tonji had been wanting to get a French Bulldog and I had been resisting. Then one day my sister messaged me asking if I wanted one. For free to a good home from her architect! I paused for a minute and thought, if it’s a male and black and white, then it’s a sign that I should say yes to this puppy and yes to Tonji’s dream of having a French Bulldog.

I’m glad I said yes and I’m grateful to his owner for giving him to us! We are enjoying having a little one again.

Tubby has such a great personality. He’s very curious and outgoing. Even if he falls into a hole in the ground, he gets right back up again!

I thought Ollie was the one who wanted another doggie buddy. I thought they would play together.

It turns out that Lulu is the one who enjoys playing with Tubby! She licks his face and lets him climb all over her. They play tug of war together. She has become much more active and playful now that Tubby is around.

We also took him for his first swim. He didn’t seem that excited about swimming. Maybe when he has a proper life vest.

Tubby enjoyed running in the grass and even managed to retrieve his toy hoop!

Tubby playing fetch!

the pack walking to the Big pond

It is so much fun to have a little dog again. Tubby’s spunky, go-getter personality reminded us so much of all the fun we had with Barkley that later that evening, I had a dream about Momo. In my dream I was looking for Momo. I kept asking, “Where’s Momo?” When I remembered that Momo was gone, I woke up with a start!

We didn’t get to do much during out visit because we were so excited about having Tubby and also because our visit got cut short by a medical emergency back home.

Tonji is taking advantage of the hot and dry weather to improve the Water Lily Pond. He’s using the CASE skid loader to make part of the pond deeper and wider so that it will hold more water when rainy season comes.

We have tree near the pool that always makes us whether or not it should be there, in such a prominent spot. We bought it in an agricultural fair many years ago, when we weren’t committed to planting Philippine native trees. This month, our “foreign” tree looked the prettiest it’s every looked! It gets to stay for now!

Tonji by the “foreign” tree with his dogs, Lulu and Tubby

It was a short but very nice visit to the refuge. I had to carry Tubby on the drive to the farm. This is him on the drive home!

February 2026 – Bird #121!

We had another new bird for the Farm Bird List! Tonji spotted a Balicassiao near the cottage! We had just finished walking around with the dogs. I went inside the cottage to use the bathroom when Tonji called me to come out fast because there was a new bird! I finished up in the bathroom as quickly as I could and rushed out to the veranda! You never know how much time you have to grab your camera and bins and spot the bird before it decides to fly away.

Good thing this bird hung around long enough for a photo. There were 2 of them, but I only got one in the picture.

I was so focused on trying to get a good shot of the Balicassiao that I didn’t even realize until I went through my pictures that there was a Rough Crested Malkoha right next to it! Oh my goodness. I was happy that I got the Balicassiao but felt dumb that I missed the Malkoha. Also, it may or may not be a thing, that birds of the same color flock together. We had an experience like that before when we encountered a mixed flock of different kinds of black birds!

The following day I went back to the spot where the Balicassiao and Malkoha were to get better photos of the Malkoha. There is a big Ficus benjamina near the are that was full of unripe green fruits. A big flock of Pink Necked Green Pigeons were eating the unripe fruits. Maybe the fruits were what attracted the Balicassiao and Malkoha also. I didn’t know the birds ate the green fruits also.

Pink Necked Green pigeon eating the green fruits

The Malkoha was not that easy to photograph. It kept hiding its face behind the leaves. Got the face eventually!

Some of our visiting migrant birds were still around. This is the Ashy Minivet .

At the Big Pond, the Garganey, Tufted Ducks, and Eurasian Wigeon were still there along with the 100+ Philippine Ducks.

How cool is it to see 3 different species perfectly lined up?

left to right: Philippine Duck, Eurasian Wigeon, Garganey

Loving view of Tufted Ducks in the foreground, tall grass in the middle, and Philippine Ducks in the back because it looks so natural!

At the Water Lily pond, I had a good view of a White Breasted Waterhen. Look at those long legs and long toes!

I usually don’t take pictures of the crows, unless they’re doing something unusual like perching on a horse or standing in a field in a menacing manner. This one got photographed because it was perched so nicely on a beautiful flowering and fruiting Malabulak tree!

It was a very nice February at the farm refuge. It is such a treat to walk outside and see birds, trees, flowers, and water!

We also did some rearranging of furniture. Now I have a comfy spot for some knitting, napping, and Netflix!

10 Reasons to Build Your Own Wildlife Sanctuary

Here are 10 reasons why you should build your own wildlife sanctuary.

1. There’s a good chance your government won’t do it for you. Unless you live in some forward thinking country that recognizes the inherent value of its biodiversity, there will most likely be less and less natural spaces where wildlife can flourish and that you can access in your future. I recently heard of a group of 10 friends that banded together to buy 10 adjoining parcels of undeveloped land. They all agreed to each build on a small area and keep the rest of the area green so that they would have a big green space to enjoy! Imagine if more and more people had that mindset? There could be corridors of green criss-crossing the country!

2. You will be spoiled by all the birds. It’s amazing how nature can bounce back when given the opportunity and a helpful nudge. You will find yourself saying things like,”Oh, it’s just 3 Coppersmith Barbets in front of the cottage.” instead of “I remember back in the day, many years ago, there were more birds and you could see them easily, and now there are none.”

3. White-eared Brown Doves and Philippine Bulbuls from the comfort of your veranda. Aside from the usual garden birds, you will get forest birds. It really is true that if you build it, they will come. In this case, if you provide the habitat, they will come!

4. Baby munias feasting on seeds. What could be cuter than a flock of baby birds?

5. You will have fun. Of course it’s not just the birds and wildlife that are having fun. You will have so much fun too! You want to walk around in a camouflage cape and try to sneak up on ducks so you can photograph them without disturbing them? You can do it!

6. You will come up with so many fun projects. Your mind will open up when you’re outside surrounded by wide vistas. You’ll come up with all sorts of ideas that might not have occurred to you before. When we visited the sanctuary time we thought, let’s make a small hide in the Big Pond so we can view the ducks without disturbing them.

7. You will make your dogs happy. They might even become the happiest dogs you know. Outdoorsy dogs will definitely approve of your sanctuary. This sanctuary was also approved by the original farm dogs Momo the dachshund and Barkley the Boston Terrier.

8. Watching ducks instead of your phone. You get to sit down on a grassy bank in the afternoon to see and hear Philippine Ducks settling down for the day.

9. You can restore what was destroyed. In an ideal scenario, you could acquire a forest or other type of habitat that’s rich with wildlife and protect it. But that’s highly unlikely. Chances are the properties that are available are bare or denuded or over-farmed or choked up with weeds. This is ok! You don’t need to start from pristine land to make a sanctuary!

Here’s a powerful quote from FORRU-CMU:

Tropical forests, once destroyed, are lost forever” – NOT TRUE. It is possible to transform largely deforested landscapes into tropical forest that supports rich biodiversity in just a few years.

In just a few years! Not decades! They even have a free book that shows you how. Click on the link below to download the book.
Restoring Tropical Forests by FORRU-CMU

10. You will make the world a little bit better! Who doesn’t want a better world? You don’t have to wait for the government or a big foundation to take action. You can start small. You can team up with like-minded friends. You can be the change you want to see!