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Fewer Migratory Birds Seen At Candaba Swamp This Year
Water birds, which took refuge from the cold Siberian winds in two spots at the Candaba Swamp here, number only 1,449, the lowest recorded migration rate since 2010, according to the combined tally made on Saturday by the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines (WBCP) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for the 2018 Asian Waterbird Census (AWC).
Migratory fowls normally make the trip to the swamp from October to February.
"For the first time, I did not use a calculator to count the birds," said Mike Lu, a WBCP executive committee member, when he joined the recent tab ... -
Ricefields Forever
Gone are the ponds. The place can no longer be referred to as "wetlands". In its place are ricefields, as far as the eye can see. Because of that thousands of migrant ducks and waders no longer come here. This is Candaba now.
In fairness, there were still birds. Chestnut Munias, Red Turtledoves, and Zebra Doves were plentiful.
Our trip with birding buddies Peter Ting and Wenxing Pan last Saturday was like a roller coaster ride. There were ups and downs. The downside being the absence of the ducks and waders I mentioned earlier. The whole time we were there, we only saw two Wandering Whis ... -
Breathing Space Twitching The Candaba Teals
As I mentioned in my previous post on Candaba, a couple of days after Adri and I did our ocular, Rob and Irene and Mel spotted a new country record: a Baikal Teal. After a few days, a duck which was spotted earlier by Kevin Artiaga (one of Lala's students), was identified as a Falcated Duck (also known as Falcated Teal), another country record!
Exciting times again for Candaba, after last year's Baer's Pochard.
With Adri out on tour, I was happy to tag along with Tere, Alex and Drew to twitch the country rarity. Meeting us there were Tina and Neon ready with their bazooka lenses. Mads an ... -
Candaba To Start The Birding Year
Candaba is always a good idea to start the birding year. A few days into 2016, Adri and I wanted to check out the roads leading to the ponds. A late December storm had flooded most of low lying Bulacan and Pampanga and Adri wanted to check out accessibility for his upcoming trips.
We started out at the back route at Brgy Paligue where the dirt road leading down from the highway was obviously not passable to most vehicles. The first 10 meters or so was sticky mud, deeply rutted by tractor tire and still soft. After that the road was quite dry and hard - but it hardly mattered since the fi ...