Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Birds on a Wire

On our first birding foray in California we visited our favorite destination - Eaton Canyon Park in Pasadena. We spent the whole day seeing familiar birds.

In the afternoon still affected by jet lag, we decided to just explore my son's neighborhood in Glendale. Palmer Park was a huge disappointment. It became a "people park". It now has a basketball court, a children's playground and a "social area". With such an abundance of human beings, the birds were nowhere to be found. So our option was just to walk along the street inasmuch as we've seen some crows and a mockingbird there earlier.

Surprisingly, the birds were here! Albeit perched on electric wires. Some would fly down to catch some unfortunate insect. And here they are:


Hooded Oriole (immature)
House Finch
Mourning Dove
Northern Mockingbird
Western Bluebird
Then suddenly this lovely bluebird spotted a worm and flew down just a few feet from where I was. That resulted in my photo of the day:










Saturday, March 18, 2017

That's Oriole Get

We did not get what we wanted. It was as simple (and painful) as that. No Scops Owl, no Philippine Nightjar. Not even a Long-tailed Shrike or a Pied Triller. How about Collared Kingfishers? Not even those. The Coppersmith Barbet was heard only and no-show.

Thankfully there were Black-naped Orioles. That's all we got.




Monday, March 13, 2017

Missing Tit

Early Saturday (March 4) morning I got a Facebook PM from birding friend Bim Quemado. "If you're interested, the White-fronted Tit is easy here at Subic" was his message. A couple of weeks earlier, our friends from the Baguio-Benguet Birding Group also posted photos of this species. The White-fronted Tit was my nemesis bird. Cynthia and I never saw it despite our many attempts.

Sunday afternoon we drove to Subic and proceeded right away to the place Bim said he saw the Tit. Three hours of searching and nada. Early the following day we went back. Again, three hours of waiting and staring at the trees with red flowers and still no Tit. I thought I saw it fly across the road but somehow never found the place where it landed. Or was it just my imagination playing tricks on me.

Although not seeing our target was a heart-breaker, birding wasn't that bad at all. This is the time of year when the Blue-throated Bee-eaters start their nesting period. There were dozens of them congregating on the electric wires waiting for their turn to visit their respective holes on the ground.



Some even displaying a unique posture.



Having spent most of our time looking for the imaginary bird with a white forehead, we were not able to photograph much of the avian denizens of Subic. Here are some that we got:


Blue-naped Parrot
Large-billed Crow
Coppersmith Barbet
Coleto
Luzon Flameback
Oriental Dollarbird
Stripe-headed Rhabdronis
White-bellied Woodpecker