This Indigo-banded Kingfisher is a Philippine endemic found in freshwater streams of Luzon and its satellites, Mindoro, Panay, Negros and Cebu. This little jewel prefers to perch low over water on rocks or branches and dives head first to catch small fish and small crabs. The one in the video is a female individual videoscoped in one of the streams from Mt. Makiling, Laguna, Luzon, Philippines. The male individual has two indigo bands on the breast.
Indigo-banded Kingfisher,Alcedo cyanopecta
November 2011, Mt. Makiling, Laguna, Luzon, Philippines
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What more if it is a video?!? Especially if it is a video of a pair of one of Mindanao's most sought-after birds: the funky-looking Mindanao Wattled Broadbill. Mr. Broadbill sports a pinkish, light purple breast and belly (real men wear purple!) while Mrs. Broadbill has a plain white breast and belly. They both have light blue bills and legs and of course the striking brilliant blue wattle around their eyes. They are described as uncommon but they are not as easy to see. They are sometimes given away by their noisy wing beats in flight and their loud bill snapping when perched.
Some birders/taxonomists have split this species from the Visayan Wattled Broadbill seen in Bohol, Leyte and Samar. The birds from Bohol and Samar differ from the Mindanao birds by having a light purple wing patch instead of the yellow wing patch as seen here in the video.
This pair was videoscoped in one of our birding tours last January in the forests of PICOP, Surigao del Sur, Eastern Mindanao, Philippines with a Swarovski ATM 80mm HD, 25-50x eyepiece, Canon Powershot S95 with a Swarovski Universal Camera Adaptor.
Mindanao Wattled Broadbill,Eurylaimus steerii
January 2012, PICOP, Surigao del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines
This is a video of the uncommon and seldom seen Ashy Ground Thrush, Zoothera cinerea from one of our birding tours last November - December 2011. The tour lasted for 21 days and covered the three major islands of Luzon, Mindanao and Palawan as well as the less visited islands of Bohol and Negros.
We discovered the presence of this highly secretive bird in a park within busy Manila last September and we even found a nest with 3 chicks! (Be sure to check the discovery here). As of our latest tour this month, the adult was still seen in the area and so we hope that this little known endemic will still continue to find a safe refuge and stay in the city.
Ashy Ground Thrush, Zoothera cinerea
La Mesa EcoPark, Quezon City, Manila, Philippines, November 2011
This is a Philippine Falconet, our country's smallest endemic raptor, devouring a click beetle. It first started with tearing off the head, then slowly dismembering the poor beetle's legs while it was still alive and kicking (literally). When the beetle was dead, the cute but deadly falconet started to chow down on the juicy inside of the beetle while clamping anh holding the beetle's exoskeleton in its powerful claws like a kid holding an ice cream cone.
This endemic is often observed hawking insects from a dead tree outside TREES Hostel right at the start of the Forestry Trail at Mt. Makiling in UP Los Banos. At the time this video was taken, there were a total of 8 falconets perched on the tree!
Philippine Falconet, Microhierax erythrogenys
December 2011, Mt. Makiling Forest Reserve, Laguna, Luzon, Philippines
This is a video of the uncommon Little Slaty Flycatcher, Ficedula basilanica digiscoped in the remaining forests of PICOP, a former logging concession in Surigao del Sur, Eastern Mindanao.
This endemic flycatcher is a lowland Mindanao endemic, preferring the understory of forests and second growth. It has a very soft call and can be a challenge to see and photograph. This individual came quite close during one of our birding tours last December. The male individual came close, preening and showing off its characteristic blue grey plumage and the white spot above the eye. The female individual with rufous plumage shown near the end of the video clip was a lot closer and would not even fit the frame. 🙂
Little Slaty Flycatcher, Ficedula basilanica
December 2011, PICOP, Surigao del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines
This is a Pied Fantail, a common, garden and urban bird in the Philippines. Locally called maria capra, it is very territorial and has been observed to attack cats, even dogs while protecting its air space. It usually perches on exposed branches and flies out to catch insects on the wing.
This was taken from our backyard, where there is an abundance of insects attracted by the poop from Trinket's two dogs. A couple of years back, whenever the migratory season is in its full swing and the backyard Brown Shrike arrives (see related story here), this Pied Fantail gets bullied and is relegated to the periphery of the yard. But this season, there are now two of them, and they do not allow the Brown Shrike to lord over the garden. In fact, the perch you're seeing in the video used to be the favorite perch of the Brown Shrike!
This is one of my early attempts in (video) digiscoping with my new rig: a Swarovski ATM 80 HD, 25-50x eyepiece, Swarovski Universal Camera Adapter (UCA) coupled with a Panasonic GF1 and a 20 mm lens.
Interested in digiscoping? Make sure to check our website again soon for a Digiscoping 101 blog post from Filipino premiere bird guide and digiscoper Nicky Icarangal. He will be sharing the basics of digiscoping as well as some techniques and secrets to improve your digiscoping skills. Or just "like" us in Facebook here, so you can receive instant notifications when we update our blog or just subscribe to our RSS Feeds at the bottom of this page.
Hope you enjoy this video and happy birding!
-- AdriPied Fantail, Rhipidura javanica
December 2011, Manila, Philippines
For more Bird Videos and Photographs, please check out our galleries here.
(This is a cross-post from Birding Adventure Philippines' blogger Trinket Canlas. Check out the original blog here)
i have never really paid too much attention to wagtails before. they came and went along with all the migrants, pretty much a given during the migratory season. at least the yellow and the grey wagtails.
during a tour a couple of weeks ago, adri added the forest wagtail to his list... described as rare by the philippine field guide. he had seen it in makiling, where it had been reported a few times before the past few years. we had hoped to see it during our bonifacio day birding in makiling, and were disappointed. still, at the back of my mind, i was looking forward to adding white wagtail to my list (also described as rare), thanks to a tip from wbcp-er ruth f.
where would this rare wagtail be found? at la mesa eco park, a mere 20 minutes from my home !
i was hopeful that these were not merely passing through as they had been reported (and photographed) everyday of the week, the latest of the bird sensations to be discovered at the la mesa eco park.
how could i resist the twitch?
on friday i was impatiently looking for friends jops & maia and alex & tere online, wanting to set-up a date with the white wagtails for the weekend. thankfully, they were as twitchy as i was, and we set our date at 7am. (adri, unfortunately was on a trip to mindanao. but with his forest wagtail one-up, i didn't think he'd mind i went ahead to meet the white one)
arriving at la mesa at 7am, i met up not only with jops, maia, alex and tere, but other birder/photographer friends! bong n. told us that we had just missed the targets, and showed us his photo. we hoped that the previous reports that the wagtails would return to the spillway like clockwork would hold true. so we made ourselves as comfortable as we could in the small space between a wire fence separating the spillway and a vermiculture plot. it was not hard to figure out the best place to be to spot the birds, as those who had come before us had done a bit of gardening on the vines which had covered the fence.
little heron, little egrets, common kingfisher, common sandpiper, grey wagtails. nuninuninu. osprey, zebra doves, collared kingfisher. another osprey. each high pitched peeeeepeeet had us all focusing on the bottom of the spillway several meters down. argh. another grey wagtail.
after around an hour and a half, at last! somebody declared, "ayan na sila! anjan na sila!" all conversation stopped as several binoculars and several camera lenses focused on the black and white birds which had landed on the low wall at the bottom of the spillway.
this subspecies, leucopsis, was not even reported in the kennedy guide. i had always found black and white birds beautiful and elegant, and this pair was no exception. one was greyer than the other, and had a smaller dark patch on its breast. they went about the spillway with their wagtail habits, bobbing their tails as they picked up food from the surface of the ground/cement/water. each even spent a few moments preening. action moments included a white wagtail suddenly stealing the food from its cousin grey's beak and a sudden air attack by a collared kingfisher.
they allowed us to enjoy our observation for over half an hour! despite the distance of the birds from us, it was a very, very good sighting.
white wagtail... check!
This is one of the uncommon endemic pigeons of the Philippines: a Pink-bellied Imperial Pigeon videoscoped by our lead guideNicky Icarangal in a birding trip with Singaporean birders (check out a portion of their trip report here) in Mt. Kanlaon, Negros Island, Central Philippines.
It is a big pigeon, measuring up to about 17 inches and is the only pigeon in the Philippines with a green breast and a pink belly. The female Black-chinned Fruit-dove also has a green breast but it is much smaller and the belly is dark green as well. It prefers fruits and will feed singly or with other pigeons or hornbills in feeding trees. It can be found in good intact forests from the lowlands up to 1500 meters in most of the Philippine islands except Palawan. Unfortunately, due to its large size is has become an easy target for hunters and has become particularly rare in Luzon.
Pink-bellied Imperial Pigeon, Ducula poliocephala
April 2011, Mt. Kanlaon National Park, Negros Occidental, Philippines
by Nicky Icarangal using a Swarovski 80mm ATM HD, 25-50x eyepiece, Swarovski Universal Camera Adapter, Canon Powershot S95
This is a video of a pair of Colasisis, sometimes called Philippine Hanging Parrots. They are the smallest parrots in the Philippines with an average length of only 6 inches. These cute, little green bullets are found in most islands in the Philippines (except Palawan). They live in a variety of habitats; from lowland forests up to 1000 meters, mossy forests up to 2500 meters, even in wooded parks and gardens in the cities.
Both male and female have red patches on the forehead but only the males have a red patch on the breast while the female has blue patches near the eyes. These parrots feed on blossoms and juices from flowering and fruiting trees like coconuts, bananas, fig trees, and this rambutan tree in the video.
Colasisi (Philippine Hanging Parrot), Loriculus philippensis
October 2011, Quezon City, Philippines
they allowed us to enjoy our observation for over half an hour! despite the distance of the birds from us, it was a very, very good sighting.
white wagtail... check!
