IT was half past six in the evening when we arrived at the Capayas Creek in Coron, Palawan, straight from Busuanga Airport. It was getting dark. I immediately installed a long-range lens to my camera body while walking slowly to a hut near the creek. It had black nets to cover ourselves so birds wouldn’t notice us.
I hovered the end of the lens to the porch under the black nets while being guided by a bird spotter, Erwin Edonga. He pointed to a small branch of tree near where the water flows and there it was—the rufous-backed kingfisher.
I was getting excited, but I had to control my excitement. I zoomed in my lens and clicked away. I reviewed my photo looking rather pleased with the outcome of my first bird photograph.
“You’ve got your first lifer!” said Lorenzo Barelli, consul and third secretary of the Embassy of Switzerland in Manila and a bird photographer. Barelli has been all over the country taking photos of Philippine birds during his free time.
A lifer is a term used for bird photographers when one sees a bird for the first time. Apparently for me, every bird I photographed within the next day were all lifers.
Barelli led the team for trip together with Francisco Fernandez Jr., also a bird photographer and owner of Darayonan Lodge, which offers bird watching. We were guided by Edonga, who has been the caretaker of the hut and the small lot near the Capayas Creek owned by Ramon Quisumbing, also a bird photographer and a member of Wild Bird Photographers of the Philippines (WBPP), together with Fernandez.
Along the creek, I saw around 10 different kinds of birds. It was surreal to know that there are birds, as colorful as those I have seen, in the Philippines. Even though I knew from the start that biodiversity in the country is one of the most diverse in the world. Surely, to see is to believe.
Philippine bird scenario
According to Avibase, a world bird database, there are 682 species of birds scattered all over the 7,507 islands in the country. A third of it are endemic, which means they can only be found in the Philippines.
“The Philippines is incredibly rich because it is a place with so many endemic birds, birds that you could only find in the Philippines and this is something just amazing,” Barelli said in an interview with the BusinessMirror.
Before his assignment to the Philippines, Barelli was based in Kenya. “In Kenya I saw more birds than here, but they have only eight endemic-bird species in Kenya, while here [in the Philippines], you have 225 endemic [birds] and it’s just amazing,” Barelli added.
The BusinessMirror asked Barelli how many places he has been, to for bird photography. “I don’t know the number of places I’ve been, but I was in Mindanao for many times already—in Cagayan de Oro, Bukidnon, Surigao, Davao and Bislig.”
He added that he already went to “Bohol; Puerto Princesa, particularly near the underground river; Sabang; Coron Mount Banahaw; Bulacan; and Subic Bay,” and many more.
“I think I got [photographed] 220 species in the Philippines,” Barelli boasted. He also shared his experience in other places near Manila, such as Subic Bay and in Los Baños. “You have an amazing nature reserve in Subic Bay. It has a very nice forest nature trail. Another nice place is near UP [University of the Philippines] Los Baños, at the International Rice Research Institute [IRRI], that’s actually an amazing place for birding, especially water birds, where this place has a lot of it.”
Barelli talked about the greater painted snipe, where, normally, in the world of birds, the male is more beautiful than the female. But in this specie “the greater painted snipe female is more beautiful than the male and is also playing the role of the female because it sits on the nest taking care of the chicks.”
On the other hand, Fernandez, a Coron, Palawan, local and who grew up to see these birds and, eventually, made it into his passion, told the BusinessMirror that in Palawan alone, “There are more than 100 bird species and Palawan has 25 endemic birds.”
Fernandez added that, among the 25 endemic birds in Palawan, “23 were official [declared] and two are not yet approved by the world body.”
Bird-watching industry
The industry of bird watching is growing. Barelli said bird watchers and photographers from all over the world travel just to see these kinds of birds.
“Just yesterday, there’s this Singaporean who came into the night to Mount Banahaw and returned in the afternoon after climbing the mountain for three hours just to take a photo of this bird [whiskered pitta].”
One of the rarest birds in the Philippines is the whiskered pitta, which is found in Mount Banahaw.
Edonga, who has been a bird watcher for eight years, said he had already guided a lot of bird watchers and photographers.
“There have been a lot of foreigners and Filipino bird photographers who contact me just to see and photograph these birds,” Edonga said in Filipino. A former employee on Mount Tapyas in Coron, he was discovered by a bird photographer who asked Edonga where he can find birds.
“I told [the photographer], ‘In our place, there’s a lot of birds,’ and I took him near Capayas Creek and we took photographs of many birds,” Edonga said.
“Bird watching and guiding provide livelihood to residents in Coron,” Fernandez said.
Instead of catching a bird and selling it for profit, bird watching can bring awareness and protection of these animals. “You have to realize that a poor person would say, ‘Why would I conserve and what will it do for me? Whereas when I catch a parrot I can sell it, and that is food for my family.’ Bird watching gives livelihood to guides, like Erwin, here,” Fernandez explained.
Raising awareness and protection
Ecotourism also plays a big role in promoting awareness and protection to birds. Bird watching need not be device-intensive, unlike photography.
“You can be a bird watcher by watching them through binoculars,” said Fernandez, who offers bird-watching activities to tourists in Coron. These activities, he said, “are basically creating awareness.”
He added: “This can lead to appreciation, and appreciation would lead to protection and conservation because these [birds] are beautiful and they want to protect it now.”
With Fernandez’s club, Birdwatch Coron, together with WBPP, they gave school supplies to children in selected schools, especially those near the birding areas.
The school supplies have stickers with the words “Regalo mula sa mga ibon [Gift from the birds].”
Fernandez also told the BusinessMirror their bird-awareness efforts. “We give the schools posters of the birds that are found here so the school will be aware that there are a lot of birds here and they are beautiful. This can lead to appreciation and conservation.”
Both Barelli and Fernandez criticized the decline of birds not through hunting but of their habitat loss. “Habitat loss may be [caused by] urbanization since more forests are converted into homes or resorts being built, and the other is kaingin [swidden farming],” Fernandez said.
Barelli added that said the illegal deforestation and illegal mining in the country contribute to habitat loss for the birds. He said, “I saw in my experience here, generally, amazing things, amazing birds, but these birds and the nature are threatened by a lot of activities that are quite dangerous for nature and, consequently, for the people.”
Barelli emphasized the need for Filipinos to recognize the natural beauty the Philippines has.“Once you destroy this [nature] you can never recreate it.” He encouraged and called on the government to look into theissue.
“Let’s hope the new government will look into this matter, which would benefit nature and and the people in this country.”
Image credits: Lorenzo Barelli