Throwback to 2014

For most of my birding trips I try to write a report. Sometimes this might be helpful or vaguely entertaining for others, but mainly I do it for myself. I like to go back through old birding and reminisce about the birds, the places, the people and the craic. Recently, Facebook has been reminding me that we have just passed the 10 year anniversary of a trip I never wrote up. Perhaps the time has come to rectify that omission.

In 2014 Steve and I were looking for a destination to visit as part of our (then) agreement to do a “big” foreign trip together somewhere in each even year. The timing meant we ruled out some of our favourites, while some other destinations were deemed too expensive, or would need more than the 2 weeks of leave I had available. When we left it to the last minute and couldn’t get a guide for our “banker” destination of Thailand, I though we’d end up not going away all.  Until, that is, I saw a message from Philippine birder Irene Dy that she and two other Manila-based birders were looking for a couple more participants for a private trip to Mindanao.

Only 4 years earlier Steve and I had already been to the Philippines, so this was never going to give us the same bang for buck of a completely new place. But on the positive ledger we could combine a bit of independent birding with a return to a difficult place – PICOP on Mindanao’s SE coast – but with the trickiest logistics already sorted out by Irene and team: she had secured transport and accommodation to Bislig, and booked “Mr PICOP”, Zardo Goring (and a jeepney) to take us into PICOP itself.  We would have a chance to claw back a number of targets that, through a combination of poor weather, 3^rd world logistics and plain bad luck, we had missed and continued to rankle. A further positive for me, was that I do actually like revisiting places; knowing the area and how to bird it adds a new dimension to a trip, with more emphasis on finding stuff for oneself. I also quite like the planning process, which I find heightens the expectation. Birding trip foreplay, if you like!

As a big potential bonus, I found out that a Philippine Eagle had been located on a nest not far from Davao, Mindanao’s biggest town, and was yielding amazing photos from a makeshift hide. Local Davao guide Pete Simpson agreed to take me and Steve, if we could get to Davao. My planning went into overdrive and I worked out that there is a slow, overnight bus from Bislig to Davao. It would be very uncomfortable and sleep-depriving, but we agreed worth it for such an opportunity. Although we’d seen Philippine “Monkey Eating” Eagle in 2010, it had been distant and the experience lacked the wow-factor that such an impressive and critically endangered bird deserves.  

Unfortunately as we were arriving in PICOP I spoke to Pete to finalise the arrangement… and there was bad news :-(. The local captain had banned visits to the village based on rumours of NPA activity in the area. The New People’s Army is a communist terrorist organisation that operates in rural Philippine areas, and is one of the reasons most governments advise against travel to Mindanao altogether (lots of other nice people operate in Mindanao also, MNLF, Abu Sayyuf — in fact there’s so many it’s reminiscent of the JPF, PFJ sketch in Life of Brian). The various organisations that “operate” in Mindanao have been involved in deadly battles with local authorities and the regular Philippine Army, staged a major insurrection in Zamboanga in 2013, and have been responsible for kidnappings for ransom of foreign tourists. The captain’s story therefore had a ring of truth. However Pete strongly suspected that something less sinister and much more petty was at play — this was actually just ruse, concocted because of local jealousies as a way to prevent the village with the eagle profiting “unfairly” from the birders and photographers visits. Steve and I had witnessed this kind of irrational pettiness in the 3^rd world before, so it seems just as likely explanation. Indeed we met another group in PICOP who had taken the risk of defying the captain’s order, managing a gripping encounter with the eagle. But Pete could not risk his licence and his relationship with the local captain, even if it was clearly a ruse.  And Steve and I reflected that, with wives and children at home, and even a tiny chance that the NPA story was true, it was a risk not worth taking just for a bird (especially one we had seen already), no matter how phenomenal.

So the plan went like this: we would join Irene and team for 4 days and 4 nights in PICOP. Then when the rest of the team carried on to Mt Kitanglad – a fabulous place but one where we had done well 4 years earlier — Steve and I would return to Manila for a twitch (more on that later) and then take a quick flight to Palawan for some unfinished business there.  Steve also had another objective: he still needed Spoon-billed Sandpiper (my naughty, unannounced twitch on a return journey to UK from NZ in 2010 risked ending our friendship); this would have been a key target had we done an extensive tour in Thailand, but by travelling on Royal Thai Airlines we could insert Bangkok (“Man who get on plane with erection, probably going to bang kok”) as a stopover en route to Manila and have two days in the Gulf of Thailand as a low-cost pre-trip extension.

So our first trip together since my move to Adelaide from Oxford commenced with a meeting at Bangkok’s huge Suvarnabhumi Airport. We took a short taxi ride to our cheap but adequate airport hotel then jumped on a train to downtown Sukhumvit for a few beers, to breath in the heady, spicy, humid smells of this amazing SE Asian capital, starting the trip off to flyer (even if it meant we’d be hungover on the drive down to Pak Thale the next morning)

We had two excellent days on our “extension”. Day 1 we went straight to Pak Thale where we found thousands of waders of more than 25 species. The Gulf of Thailand in winter really is one of the world’s great wader hotspots. Most importantly we were able to track down a Spoonie for excellent scope views and Steve was very happy with the grip-back. But we also found critically endangered Nordmann’s Greenshank, difficult Asian Dowitcher, and a boat trip out to the famous spit with Mr Deng yielded Chinese Egret, Malaysian Plover and (the then undescribed) White-faced Plover. I also had my lifer PG Tips (Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler for the uninitiated) on one of the causeways between salt-pans.

We then headed into Kaeng Krachan for a bit of forest birding.  Like my two previous day-trips to this bio-rich area, the forest did not yield its goodies easily, and two key targets — Blue-winged Pitta and Grey Peacock Pheasant — were disappointingly heard only. Our best sightings were Orange-breasted Trogon, Blue-bearded Bee-eater, Great Hornbill, and Silver-breasted Broadbill.  We were still very relaxed about this since it really was just a bonus “palette-cleanser”, after our SBSP entree, and before the Philippine main course.

We rendezvoused with the rest of the team in Manila. As well as the two of us and Irene (whom I had met in 2013 – that’s a different tale), the team comprised the young, good-looking Mark Bezuijen, whose foreign-sounding surname belied his public-school English accent, and Mark’s former ornithology masters supervisor, Australian academic Richard Noske, now retired. We’d originally been thinking we’d be a party of 6, but at the last minute, Kitty Arce, one of Irene and Mark’s Manila birding friends was forced to drop out because she’d just got a new job and couldn’t take leave.

Like 2010, we stayed at the Paper Country Inn, because it’s pretty-much the only place in town, and therefore the closest accommodation to the lowland forest known as PICOP, where would be doing most of our birding. The acronym PICOP stands for the Paper Industry Cooperative of the Philippines, and this company once controlled a logging concession near Bislig, some of the best (only?) quality lowland rainforest left in Mindanao. In a deep irony, when the Philippine government banned logging, PICOP moved out taking their security forces with them, and the rate of deforestation actually increased, as poor locals saw that illegal logging could provide them with a subsistence living. In 2010 we had birded to the constant sound of chainsaws, and 2014 would be no different. Moreover, our return was in part due to missing key targets because of this illegal activity; a logging truck had become stuck and blocked the only access route to “Road 42”, the only reliable spot in PICOP for Steve’s top target, Celestial Monarch.

We gave ourselves 4 full days in the forest, and when I say full, I mean full. We birded pre-dawn  and post sunset for owls, only returning to the Paper Country Inn for dinner and abbreviated sleep. Our efforts were much more successful than 4 years earlier, especially on the night-birding front:  we found Giant Scops, Chocolate Boobook, Mindanao Scops, and Mindanao Boobook, the latter two of which we had missed in 2010, and on our first evening an Eastern Grass Owl flew over our heads at Bislig airstrip (though I failed to get a reasonable picture, as you can see). 

Despite the logging, the birding remained excellent, and the conditions were so much better than in 2010.  We had no rain and could access all of the key areas, and apart from one very sore dip (for me, not the team), we clawed back our 2010 dips and had better views of other A-listers.

On our first morning we headed straight to The Quarry, and walked a few km along a trail that I barely recognized. In fact in 2010 our path had been blocked by a flood so we could not access some of the better areas. Now on our very first morning we managed fabulous views and photos of two birds we’d seen but which evaded our lenses in 2010, Philippine Trogon (male) and Steere’s Pitta. Later as we milled around a spot that became our “base”, about 2km from the quarry, I wandered away from the group and tracked down a Streaked Ground-babbler. I’d seen this in 2010, but only poorly, so to get clear, prolonged views of the skulker – the Philippines closest thing to antbirds – was brilliant. I called Steve and Irene over and she managed a superb pic. Although a relatively new birder, coming to the hobby as a photographer, she was already driven, even obsessed. Although in those early days she didn’t find much, she had super-sharp eyes and was regularly among the first to get onto other people’s finds. When it came to photographs, she was already near professional, at one with her top-of-the-range Canon gear. Of course now Irene is a pro-bird guide, specialising in custom trips and leading for Ornis’ new venture. She’s progressed from those early days to be the Philippines top birders!

Our second day was crucial to the success (or otherwise) of the trip, since this would be our first and best chance for Celestial Monarch, picked out by Steve’s 9 year-old as the one to see and one of the two most painful dips of 2010. It’s a much longer drive Road 42, deeper in the forest and with steeper inclines meaning it is less disturbed – or at least, back in 2014 it was less disturbed.  Rumours are that by now, a decade later, it too has fallen victim to the relentless illegal logging.

To get this deep into the forest necessitated a crazy-early start, something like 3am, but now, finally, we found ourselves at this famous place walking along a narrow trail overlooking a deep valley. We walked back and forth for several hours, but kept returning to one spot where there was a vista across the valley, and distantly from the other side, we regularly heard the underwhelming and somewhat indistinct 3-note monotonic whistle of a Celestial Monarch. It would occasionally answer our playback but refuse to come closer, and the range and steepness of the valley made approach impossible. As comparative veterans of Mindanao, Steve and I were fully focused on this one species, and hung around, even if we did doze a bit as the morning drew on. But with the Monarch misbehaving and lots of other potential lifers, Mark and Richard drifted off in opposite directions to do some birding by their respective selves. Inevitably it was at this point that the bird decided – briefly – to play ball. We all saw a small bird fly in to the large tree next to where we’d spent much of the last few hours, but Zardo had noticed something familiar about the jizz. He was sure this was it. We swept our optics across the boughs with renewed urgency and, yes, this was it, Celestial Monarch!!  For a relieving few seconds we had lovely views of the stunningly beautiful flycatcher, heavenly by name and heavenly by nature. Even Irene, the almost-pro-photographer soaked in the views through bins and before any of us could reach for cameras it had flown back down into the depths of the valley. If not for Steve’s brilliant artistic skills, quickly sketching the scene in his notebook then creating the beautiful rendition below, I would have to make do with memories. But we were elated after a four year wait for the grip back, hugged each other and celebrated with our traditional malt whisky.

Richard heard the commotion from some distance away and came rushing back, but was too late; it had gone, never to return. And several minutes later Mark returned, outwardly remarkably calm and sanguine about the dip. “It was my choice to bird alone for a while, and I had a nice time doing so”, he reasoned aloud.

The next day we would discover what a skilled and persistent birder Mark is. Back at our “usual” spot near The Quarry a low boom drifted up from a sinkhole next to us. “Mindanao Bleeding-heart” he announced, excitedly. We all listened and sure enough the low cooing continued and he was right “I have to go for it”, said Mark, determinedly. “I’ll have more chance on my own, but I can’t stop everyone else coming”. I’d been thinking that the bird was deep in the sinkhole, probably inaccessible, and even if we could get down to the bottom, we would surely flush it well before we could get any visual. But as everyone else jumped on board, I was buggered if was going to miss out.

We carefully picked and scrambled and bum-slid our respective ways down the steep bank and regrouped at the flat base of the wide sink-hole. As a group we were walking forward slowly when suddenly Mark stopped. “Shhh! Wait…. That’s it, Mindanao Bleeding-heart!”. Brilliantly, not only had he heard it, and guided us down the precipice, but he had now found that bird! He gave careful directions and eventually from the deep shadows I locked onto the shape of the stonking ground dove as it moved slowly across our path at about 20m range. The view was hardly ideal; side on, some way off and in the shadows, and no chance of a photo – I just held the view as best I could as we all tried to help everyone get on it, an increasing panicked tone entering Irene’s voice as she whispered urgently for clearer directions. I could just make out its eponymous feature, the red stain on its breast, as if it has been shot. Mindanao Bleeding-heart, wow! We had seen one of the Philippines hardest species; I’d not even thought it a possibility.

But Irene and Richard had failed to get on it. We regrouped, worked out where we thought it was heading, set up our speaker in a slightly clearer spot, and stationed ourselves about 15m back. After a minute or two, for some reason Steve, to my right, looked over his shoulder. “I’ve got it”, he whispered quietly but urgently. I tuned to see him looking back almost directly behind us. Later he described how the bird had been standing in a small clearing, facing him and began a display, puffing its chest and wings as it cooed. Wary that his shutter would disturb it, mindful that two of us had still failed to get any kind of sighting, and selflessly adhering to group etiquette, he took no pictures, but beckoned Irene and Richard over. Irene arrived and managed a tickable view, but as Richard moved a slightly longer distance he stumbled over some logs and in the commotion the bird apparently slid away before he could get a view. Bugger!

Disappointed for Richard, but elated at this unexpected lifer, we scrambled back up the bank to where Zardo was waiting with our gear.

There was one final notable moment, but which was not a highlight, in fact the complete opposite, a dip of magnitude that it is still a major sore point today, and maybe will mean I have to return to expunge the pain. While Celestial Monarch had been Steve’s top target, mine was Mindanao Wattled Broadbill. They are small but funky looking birds and missing them in 2010 was a major disappointment.  Although MWBB are not especially skulking, they are very unobtrusive and are rarely vocal.  Even when they vocalise, it is a short, high-pitched single note or a nondescript “chip”, easily lost amongst the constant sounds of other birds and insects. We spent long periods in the right areas, especially on days 3 and 4, listening and looking and hoping. And hoping some more. But still drawing a blank.

In the final hours of our final day we were exploring a new trail a bit further from the quarry.  As four of us filed back to a spot we’d left rucksacks and scopes, we inadvertently left Richard behind. He explained later that he wanted to do some birding on his own for a bit, and had heard a Hooded Pitta which he’d tried to entice with his very best Noisy Pitta impersonation.  About 15 minutes later he arrived back to where we had gathered, sauntering up the trail.  “See much”, we enquired? “Yes, I got these”, he casually announced as he turned his 7D2 around to reveal a superb picture of a fucking Mindanao Wattled Broadbill! Faaark! Part panic, part excitement took over and we sprang into action, heading back to the spot where Richard had minutes earlier had two MWBBs. I broke into a jog, then a full-blown sprint, eager not to waste a single moment. We arrived out of breath, hearts racing, but excitedly scanned, confident this would be the rescue mission to top all rescue missions, finding the main target in the dying minutes of the trip, grasping victory from the jaws of defeat. But as we explored further and time ticked on and on, our excitement dimmed and confidence waned. Despite combing the area extensively for over an hour, we failed to relocate them, and eventually had to accept that we would dip.

As a team we had pretty-much cleaned up all of PICOP’s specialties, and it was apt that Richard, who had dipped on the other two key specialties, the Bleeding Heart and the Monarch, was the one to see the Broadbill. Justice done, fairness evening things out, spreading the love, and all that. I tried hard to rationalize it this way, but birding is in the end an individual pursuit and I had missed the one I most wanted. Again ☹.

In Butuan Steve and I bade goodbye to the team, settled our share of the costs, then boarded our flight back to Manila. We were ultimately heading for Palawan but we had a cheeky day twitch for another Steve grip-back.

Once in Manila we found a left luggage portal and nabbed a taxi at departures. This was a slightly naughty tactic that Irene had advised to avoid the long queues at arrivals, and to enable us to negotiate an off-meter flat-rate to take us to Angono, about 45 minutes drive away, wait for us there, and then return us to the airport. Irene had warned that some of the taxi drivers are scammers and so I was ultra cautious, taking pictures of his licence and the taxi and at pains to be clear about what we expected. The driver’s English was poor and we were very suspicious, so when he stopped next to a field still 15-20km from our destination I feared the worst. He kept uttering something… “Your ‘ere” it sounded like initially. I had been to Angono before I knew this wasn’t it.  “You’re in”??  Is that what he was saying? “Urine!!”, Steve finally twigged. The poor guy just desperately needed a piss, and I was trying to bully him back into the car.

Once we did actually arrive at Angono it was a short walk though a tunnel to the “Angono Petroglyphs”, a site of ancient writings preserved in the rock face. There is a small museum here and a boardwalk up under the cliff face to view the petroglyphs. But our quarry was above our heads.  From 2012 onwards, this location had been discovered to be a breeding site for Philippine Eagle Owl. With some help from the local museum guys we stood on the boardwalk and located two birds, an adult and a near fully-grown juvenile, above us in the trees adjacent to the cliff face. Magic!  The taxi driver was waiting for us (phew!) and we returned to Manila airport in plenty of time for our short flight to Palawan. We rounded out the day with a few beers in a local Puerto Princesa establishment near our cheap but comfortable hotel.

The next day was among my favourites of the trip: the partly because of the unconventional birding, partly because of the scenery and the craic, but also because I had spent much time planning it, and it went more-or-less without a hitch. First thing, we jumped in a tuk-tuk to take us to the port, where we hired a catamaran to take us island hopping in Honda Bay. I was aware that in recent times birders have not been welcome on some of the islands, allegedly the result of some poor behaviour from a well-known tour guide, so we travelled incognito: normal tourists with t-shirts, board shorts, thongs (flip-flops) and sunnies, our minimal optics stuffed into ruck-sacks rather than advertised around our necks. On arrival to Cowarie Island we found our way to the bar for a swift beer as good tourists would do. We then resisted the temptation to have a beach-side massage and sloped off behind the village, extracting binoculars only once out of sight of the beach. There, we fairly easily tracked down the island specialist Grey Imperial Pigeon.

Once back on the mainland, late afternoon we met up with Rommel Cruz, a local guide whom we’d booked for our birding for the next couple days. On dusk, Rommel took us down to a small harbour west of Puerto Princesa (finding a Spotted Wood Owl on the way). A small boat transported us across 1 km of water to Cana Island, where over the next hour Rommel helped us locate three Mantanani Scops Owls. Cracking!

As well as the island specialists that we’d had no opportunity to look for in 2010 (a flight cancellation reduced our stay on Palawan from 4 to 3 nights), we had missed three other key species on Palawan: endangered Philippine Cockatoo, Palawan Scops, and Falcated Ground-babbler. The cockatoo would have been guaranteed back in 2010 had our logistics not been compromised by the flight cancellation, but the other two were very painful dips, birds that we had made huge efforts with, spending many hours in the right places and hearing both, but failing to get a visual on either.

These three would be our targets with Rommel. The Cockatoo proved easy: Rommel took us to a lookout at dusk on the way to Sabang, and we observed several big, white Philippine Cockatoos coming in to roost. Likewise the scops owl, on our first evening we went out to Lion’s Cave a few km from Sabang where we’d dipped on 2 mornings and 2 evenings. In no time we’d heard a bird, and although I saw nothing initially, Rommel evidently was aware of its arrival and shone the torch directly at a gorgeous brown-eyed Palawan Scops Owl.

The third of the main targets proved trickier. We tried several different known, regular spots for the Ground-babbler and didn’t even hear one, including spots in the Iwahig Penal Colony and a number of places on the road to Sabang. Not a sniff. Would we dip yet again?

The next morning, after our success with the Palawan Scops the previous night, we returned to the road above Sabang for another try with the ground-babbler. Next to some dense, steep forest we finally heard one. We dived into the forest as it continued to call, but it was clearly down a deep gully and would not come closer. There was only one thing for it, and we scrambled and slid down the steep slope towards the excited calls. Two Falcated Ground-babblers circled us, agitated by our playback and desperate to find the intruder. They were active, fast and generally stayed in cover, but yielded repeated excellent, close, albeit brief views. Satisfied with our cleanup we now contemplated the tricky task of picking our way back up, which we did by hauling ourselves up using small trunks, roots and vines, bracing our feet against slightly larger trees. This was the last of our grip-back targets and ensured that the final day and night would be very relaxed.

There is now an upmarket resort on the beach in Sabang where four years earlier, we’d had bitterns and painted snipe ☹ and I’d done a reckless, naked plunge into the sea to wash away the sweat and cobwebs from a hot, long and fruitless chase of the Falcated one (I rechristened it Foul-c*$&ed as a result). Now we lay on sun-loungers, dozed and swam. The toughest call was wine or beer for pre-dinner drinks.

The following morning we headed to the Subterranean River on a dawn catamaran. Previously our hardcore birding had not allowed time to visit the river itself – far too touristy and eating into valuable birding time for a BTA tour! – but today we enjoyed both birding and tourism. Russell, the habituated PPP performed well, we had some nice encounters with a Hooded Pitta, and some not-so-nice encounters with an aggressive male Baboon. Then we boarded the first boat into the underground river for a private viewing of this natural wonder. As we drifted out of the cave after a 30 minute cruise, the first tourist boats were making their way into the system.

We made our way slowly back up along the Sabang Rd, which has nice forest on both sides, and in places outstanding views across Ulagan Bay.  We found Palawan endemic Blue-headed Racquet-tails at a small private area where Rommel knows the owners, and grabbed lunch at Buenavista, admiring the view and the Brown-backed Needletails hawking overhead. As we finished lunch our driver came in to say he could hear a Falcated Ground-Babbler down a track on the other side of the road from the restaurant. We’d tried this exact spot yesterday with not a sniff. But today we raced down and a FGB popped out directly in front of us for outstanding views (now that we didn’t need it, it was decidedly cooperative – isn’t that always the way?). I thought that I’d grabbed frame-filling shots and showed the guys the back of my camera for high fives all round. Sadly when I got back to a big screen I realized that the for the best shot, the focus was locked onto a tiny leaf of grass in front of the bird, while others marred by slow-shutter-speed motion blur. At least DxO and Topaz have been some help in resurrecting the shot.

And that, my friends, was the end of the trip. In terms of new species seen, and even in terms of world-list, bucket-list birds I do sometimes look back and wonder if I would make the same choice to return to Mindanao. But it was a cracking trip with my lifelong birding partner-in-crime, I made some excellent new friends, and I have enough vivid, lasting memories to have written several pages about it a decade later — it must’ve been good!