Birding at UP Diliman 2012-11-10

I wanted to do a little birding during the weekend. Following Jun's advise, I decided to volunteer on a club trip to guide some highschool students. I got up at half past 4 in the morning to have a quick morning preparation and proceed to the site arriving at a little past 6. When I arrived, several birders were already giving those first-time birders a quick introduction.

After the short intro, we showed them a Coppersmith barbet resting on top of a nearby tree. When the bird flew away, we aimed the scopes to a few Eurasian tree sparrows on a building ledge. After that, we started moving.

On the next area, we saw a few small Golden bellied flycatcher, but couldn't point the scopes due to their constant movement. At the parking area, some of us managed to aim the scope at a Pied thriller. I was a bit slow to find the bird before it flew away, but managed to see it on another scope.

We started moving again after the bird was gone. While walking, we stopped at one point to listen to bird calls as we were trying to find a White collared kingfisher that was very common in that area. It seems we weren't able to hear any kingfisher calls, but luckily as we moved forward, we saw two of them resting quietly. Most of us were glad that we didn't disappoint the kids. The 2 kingfishers stayed far longer than we expected and didn't even fly away. We got more than 10 minutes of viewing time before we left to try and find other birds.

At the main oval road, we stopped several times to try and observe some birds there such as the Brown shrike, a pied fantail and some flycatchers. A few of us also saw the Philippine pygmy woodpecker that we've been hearing earlier.

As we move to back to the grassy area, we saw an immature Brush cuckoo. It was a life bird for me as well. I had a great time looking at this bird and tried to photograph it several times. After the cuckoo, a few of us managed to see another bird, a Grey wagtail. We weren't able to show the kids this bird, as we have very limited viewing time. Some experienced members weren't lucky enough to see it as well.

After the wagtail, the group decided to go to the lagoon area, but I have to leave due to a prior scheduled engagement. So I pack up my stuffs and bid the group farewell.