breathing space: my lost september

Tuesday, October 15

my lost september

as another semester winds down and comes to an end i finally am looking forward to more birding time in the next few days.

all of a sudden migrants are everywhere and i wonder what happened to my september. my work took over the month, but i did get in a little birding time plus a lifer to make up for the lost birding hours.

so before october takes over and i forget september ever actually happened, a quick recap of my short outdoor adventures during the last month.

i did get to escape on a day of the work week to join a survey of kawayan cove in nasugbu, batangas. it was a lovely day trip to the seaside residential resort community. gracious hosts, good food, easy birding and a great group of birders. i finally got my first brown shrike of the season hunting by some lounging chairs beside the pool. after a relatively short birding day, we had come up with 42 species, highlighted by a pair of red-crested malkohas beeing fed by an adult, a dark-phase eastern reef egret hunting on the beach and a family of mangrove blue flycatchers quietly feeding near some houses.

a very quiet thursday morning at the beach

adri and i also spent a morning at westgrove heights in sta. rosa with leni s. for a change, this wasn't a birding trip but a butterfly walk! leni was interested to know more about butterflies and so we did a quick morning survey around the residential subdivision chasing butterflies under the hot morning sun. i'm looking forward to more "butterfly-ing" with leni at westgrove soon!

one of a pair of Papilio alphenor that caught our attention

most of the days of september flew by as things got busy for me in school and before i knew it, it was the last week of the month!

thankfully, a short birding trip in irri at los baños was arranged in tandem with a welcome back get-together for ixi in calamba. the goal was to check out some reported super migrants: oriental plovers at the upland agricultural fields. prop tirso kindly obtained permission for our group to enter the restricted area. unfortunately, we were too late to catch these rarely spotted migrants, although the fields were full of munias, egrets, skylarks and an occasional rail. on top of the dip, adri and i got into car trouble! our radiator hose had sprung a leak which quickly drained all of the water causing our engine to overheat! but thanks to drew and his ever reliable duct tape, the problem was quickly remedied. we decided to cut our birding short to have a more permanent fix done at a repair shop while the rest of the group went on birding. after we had exited the irri grounds and were already at uplb campus football field, mel quickly texted: "red-necked phalarope"! a quick glance at our temp gauge showed that the duct tape was working fabulously, and so we speedily drove back and searched for our companions at the agricultural fields. sure enough, at some empty fields, together with several whiskered terns, cattle and small egrets and pratincoles, was a black and white bird that did not quite look like any of the others. it was very active, busy feeding in the watery mud, running around.

and with that sighting, my lost september was suddenly found.