A Drongo Ashy

News about an Ashy Drongo seen at the La Mesa Ecopark spread throughout the birding community. This was the migrant subspecies salangensis which differs from the one seen in Palawan by its white face and grayer plumage. Although not a lifer for us - we've seen one in February 2015 near the main library building at U.P. Diliman (see my blog on that) - we still wanted to go find this one, hopefully to get better photos.

So I asked friends, Mon and Ferdie who had already taken pictures of that bird, for directions. They replied with text messages and gave the precise location of the drongo. Armed with this information, we went to the site at 6:30 in the morning. The climb up to the zip line station was exhausting for these two senior citizens. We staked out the acacia trees. Half an hour and the bird was still a no show. We called both our friends to confirm if we were indeed at the right place. Thankfully, Ferdie told us that a friend of us his, Mark, had just seen our target bird. He told us to come down and go to our friend Anthony's shop and Mark would meet us there. As soon as we reached the street we met two friends, Ben and Conrad, who obviously had the same purpose for coming to Ecopark. We proceeded to the Bungee jumping area and there we met Mark. He showed us a photo of the drongo which he took not more than 15 minutes ago. He then took us to where he got that shot and it wasn't long when the uncommon migrant showed up. Although a bit far, it was definitely a drongo I see. Finally our patience paid off when our beloved Ashy Drongo perched on a branch, out in the open, and close enough for us to get some good shots.

A happy group having just photographed the Drongo.

Satisfied that our mission had been accomplished, we bade goodbye to our friends. A short trip to the mini forest yielded absolutely zero birds! With the humidity becoming more and more unbearable and our stomachs grumbling (we haven't had breakfast yet) we indulged in a buffet brunch at Cafe Sweet Inspirations.