birdwalk for the boys

Last December 14, I left my CelMol class with my TA and, together with Adri, handled an alternative class at the High School.  The class?  Birdwatching for Beginners of course! 

A handful of students and their faculty handler, Ms. Agnes, willingly showed up at the designated time of 730am beside the Cafeteria.  Adri and I had a Long-tailed Shrike ready on the scope.

We had a very short birdwalk (I had after all left my class!) through the drive in front of the High School, to the Moro Lorenzo SC Parking Lot, back across the High School Parking Lot to the Church of the Gesu.

The students were surprisingly enthusiastic, asking a lot of questions about birds and their habitats.  (Boys will be boys of course, they thought up a whole lot of alternative uses for their binoculars) Thankfully, we were able to rack up a good enough list... Adri and I had prepared a set of photos of birds we expected them to see on the birdwalk, and we saw most of them. We even had an "unexpected" sighting of a barred rail!  It was a good view from across the ground barrier in front of the Math & Science building, the barred rail unusually calm and not paranoid, foraging in the grass, giving everyone a clear (if brief) view.

We had good views of the LTS, brown shrikes, zebra doves, black-naped orioles, collared kingfisher and a lesson in bird-listening to the songs of the gerygone, white-eyes, philippine woodpecker and the orioles.  All in all we were able to get around 15 species on our list.

At the end of our 2 hour walk, we asked the students what they had learned and one student summed it up in a simple statement that made me feel "mission accomplished!"


"Hindi lahat ng ibon maya!"


Not all birds are (eurasian tree) sparrows!  Which is exactly what we wanted them to learn.  All you  need is to know what's out there to see.



(thanks to ms.  agnes for all the photos!)

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