MANILA, PHILIPPINES - If there's one place in the world you want to get to quickly before all the endemics are gone, it is the Philippines. Poverty, the plundering of natural resources and population pressures are all factors in destroying one of the richest assortments of endemic species in the world. I was in Manila on business last week, and am happy to report my fiancee Janeth is now here with me in Jonesborough and a November wedding is being planned. While going through the visa process I hooked up with Tim Fisher, co-author of "A Guide to the Birds of the Philippines" for two days of birding in the rice paddies and on the mountain above the University of the Philippines with Nicandro Icarangal, who works as a guide for Ben King's Kingbird Tours. We had some amazing good luck when Nicky spotted a Luzon Bleeding Heart (a dove) flutter across the road and I was shortly afterwards able to get a glimpse of it as it walked between two trees. This bird has not been located on Luzon for the past several years by Kingbird. Later, below the raptor center we scored on one of those amazing flocks in the treetops you sometimes get in tropical forests after a day of hiking. This is on the grounds of the botanical gardens on the university campus. In this group we had both the Scale-feathered Malkoha and the Red-crested Malkoha, the flashiest group in the cuckoo family, and then Nicky spotted a Philippine Trogon and while he was getting it in the scope, I saw a Rufous Coucal, the first-ever sighting of this bird at the University. With a long tail set off by extremely short wings and overall rufous color it was an unmistakable bird to call. Then I got a nice scope view of the trogon, which is rarely reported on Luzon anymore. The next day while walking back to my hotel in one of the scruffiest parts of Manila - a block from the US Embassy - a flash of vivid blue dove out of a tree, swooped down almost to my ankles to snatch an insect and soared back up into the foliage of the only tree for some distance. The vivid color and its flycatching made it a flycatcher, and the white I observed in the tail was diagnostic for a Blue-and-white Flycatcher, the first seen in many years in Luzon, according to Tim. I groaned at hearing the news of its rarity. "When a new guy comes into town and picks up two first-ever birds, my credibility has to be about zero," I laughed. "Probably so," Tim said in his Australian brogue, "but there is something to be said for the experience birdwatcher in a new area not taking anything for granted. We get a lot of sightings that way on my trips. Some I come to expect, like mistaking the female of one species for the male of something else again." While this is definitely outside the scope of tenn-birds.net, there's a motive to my madness. I exhort the readers of my bird column in the Johnson City Press to get outside and see other birds than the few species that come to their feeders. But those of us who are doing field birding tend to chase the same birds year after year in Tennessee, and limiting yourself to a few hundred species and there are thousands of other wonders to behold out there may seem to be safe. However, if we are so parochial in our interests that we let the environment in the rest of the world perish it can only come back to bite us in the butt. Birdwatchers are then environmental conscience of the world and it becomes our duty whether we will it or not, to bear witness to the loss of that environment. James Brooks =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to sign your messages with first and last name, city (town) and state abbreviation. You are also required to list the count in which the birds you report were seen. The actual date of observation should appear in the first paragraph. _____________________________________________________________ To post to this mailing list, simply send email to: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx _____________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, send email to: tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. ______________________________________________________________ TN-Bird Net is owned by the Tennessee Ornithological Society Neither the society(TOS) nor its moderator(s) endorse the views or opinions expressed by the members of this discussion group. Moderator: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _____________________________________________________________ Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp _____________________________________________________________