First birds on return...

We just returned to Oakburn from the Philippines after visiting for a month. Of course our feeder was long empty so I refilled it. Yesterday afternoon I saw no birds at all but this morning there were quite a few redpolls and one lone chickadee.

Trip to a farm

We visited a friend's farm of about 14 hectares well out in the boondocks. Most of the road in is OK but then before we reached the farm we had to walk a ways. In time the actual property will be reachable directly.
I saw only one new bird. It was larger and slimmer than a sparrow with a long beak, with white underneath but darker grey black on top. We could hear one bird in particular but could not ever see it. The farm has large white ducks and chickens but they seem to be strictly for ornament!
The birds I see in the evening at Legazpi are bats and a type of swift.

Egrets in rice fields..

We took a trip up north to Tiwi where there is a large thermal hydro generating plant. Along the way there were many rice fields and I noticed that there were egrets in the fields quite often. No doubt the egrets I see every day probably go into the rice fields at the base of Mayon volcano.

My Philippine Bird Feeder

I set up a makeshift feeding arrangement on the platform on top of the house from which I regularly watch Mayon volcano. We bought some bird seed but it is probably for fighting cocks or something! I have not seen a regular bird seeder ever in the Philippines. When we asked about bird seed at the Mall we were steered to an agricultural supply store!
So far I have not actually observed any birds feeding from the wide plastic cap we are using for the seed. We also have a bowl with water. Some seed spilled and was gone the next day so I assume it may have been eaten. On the other hand maybe the maid swept it up. I have seen a few maya land nearby but they are frightened by my presence.
The common sparrow here is the Europena tree sparrow rather than the house sparrow as in Manitoba. The house sparrow has a grayish head whereas the tree sparrow has a brown head. There are other differences but they do look quite similar.

Egrets near Mayon in the Philippines

I was able to find a local who knows about the birds hereabouts. As I suspected the white birds that I see flying over at dawn and dusk are egrets. Last evening I counted about a dozen in all but some nights there are considerably more, up to forty or so.

Taload: Kingfisher or Egret.

There is a fairly large white bird that flies over our area in Legaspi both at dawn and at dusk. The birds fly towards Mayon volcano at dawn and back over the opposite direction at dusk. Locals say that they are called Taload and one local said that in English they would be called a kingfisher. The birds seem to be all white and looked to me to be more like an egret than a kingfisher.
We like to sit on a platform on our roof in the evening and count how many of these birds we can spot.

First Philippine birds.

On arriving at Ninoy Airport in Manila the first birds I saw were what are called here maya-maya
They are very much like the common house sparrows back in Manitoba. They also seem to like the same locations where there are people. I also saw later from an open window of the hotel quite a few pigeons flying about in the early morning. Smog and traffic obviously seem to be perfectly normal for these birds. I suppose the human residents too have adapted.