SUBSCRIBEBirding last Saturday
Last Saturday, I joined some birding enthusiast from Philippine Bird Photography Yahoo egroup where I was invited by a Flickr contact Valkyrie,a Cebu based bird enthusiast/photographer. Actually, its my second time to go birdwatching, the first was in Olango a few years ago but that was not so eventful as birds were quite few that time.
PropJerry, the one who invited us fetched me at Philcoa in Quezon City at around 0600H and then brought me to the first stop, Philippine Nuclear Research, a patch of open space near the Iglesia ni Cristo main church. A few trees are present here and the area is covered with grass. Already, some of the enthusiasts were present and setting up their camera gear. I was just envying their 400mm L lenses or the 500mm of TJ Parpan. I tried out my 70 - 200mm f/4 L lens but really, with the size of the birds in these areas, it really fell short. Yes, I was able to take photos of the cisticolas, grass bird as well as long tailed shrike as well as the munias, but then, because of the focal lenght, these were too small to get details. Good thing that Tina Mallari, another enthusiast let me borrow her 1.4 teleconverter.
We transferred to the UP grounds and visited several areas. It was also the first time for me to see a bittern, a snipe, Philippine woodpecker (an endemic), which I didn’t realize that it is present in this country, a good view of a sleeping Philippine night jar, another endemic and several bird species that I’m familiar with, having seen and experienced them during my childhood years on vacation in Mindanao.
Left, a sleeping Philippine night jar in UP Diliman. A Philippine endemic, this bird is nocturnal and its color and plumage camouflage it well in its surroundings.
Right, another Philippine endemic, a small woodpecker alighted on a branch of a dead tree, preening and sunning itself.
Overall, the experience was great and really, I didn’t thought that rare birds inhabit this space of Metro Manila. Unfortunately, my lens gear fell short that I have to contend myself with crops and disappointments of not having to get a good picture of these beautiful birds.
