This Grey-faced Buzzard (Butastur indicus) flew through our yard here on Siargao yesterday and perched on this coconut frond. Unfortunately, it was mostly obscured by a large mango tree and it was difficult to get an open view. But thought I’d share a few photos since this medium-sized migratory hawk is not a common sight […]
These are photos I took in 2017 of seventy-five different species of birds on Siargao island in the Philippines. Regular readers of this site will have seen many of these pictures before but thought I’d do a year-end ’round-up’. You can hover over each picture to see the English and scientific name of each bird […]
On the morning of December 26th, Boxing Day, we decided to take a walk and work off some of the heavy holiday meals. We headed out for the village of Buhing Kalipay (also known as Borawin) here on Siargao island and for once it was a nice sunny blue sky day (it’s been pretty wet […]
With typhoon Lan (local name Paolo) passing by Siargao to the east and school canceled for the day, it seemed like a good time to go birding with The Teen and look around for vagrant or accidental birds blown inland by the offshore weather.
The Chinese Sparrowhawk (Accipiter soloensis) is a migratory winter visitor to the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia. While it breeds in China, the Korean peninsula, and Siberia this accipiter can be found around the Philippine archipelago from August to May. This one has been hanging around our Siargao yard hunting frogs all week!
The turnstone breeds in the high arctic and subarctic tundra but (understandably) heads south for the winter. We see it arriving on Siargao starting in September of each year.
We’ve written before about the tambokaka (flying lizards) of Siargao island. Recently I was able to get some better photos of this particular species named Draco cyanopterus and some of its diagnostic features. While this lizard is familiar to Siargao natives, the range map for this species doesn’t include Siargao and we’ve received some interest from the […]
With some recent August rains the rice field ponds here on Siargao are again hosting a great number of Philippine and Wandering Whistling Ducks.
A pair of these Mindanao Hornbills, preceded by their noisy call noisy, flew by yesterday. An hour or so later a solitary hornbill of the same species came and perched in our gmelina tree for just a few moments before moving on…
This sailfin lizard is easily the largest we’ve seen around our property here on Siargao island in the Philippines. And it showed up in such an unexpected spot…