Tag: birding philippines

A pair of Greater Flamebacks

This is a pair of Luzon (Greater) Flamebacks "doing it" in Subic Bay, Zambales, Luzon, Philippines. These woodpeckers prefer forests and forests edge more commonly in lowland forests. Their strong bills are used for drilling holes into tree trunks to extract worms and insects. Luzon Flamebacks are found all over the Philippines with four races having distinctive characteristics. This pair is from the haematribon race and are considered as endemic subspecies found only in the islands of Luzon, Catanduanes and Marinduque. EDIT: The Greater Flamebacks have been split and the birds shown are now called Luzon Flamebacks. Luzon Flameback Chrysocolaptes haematribon August 2010, Subic Bay, Zambales and Bataan, Philippines Video by Nicky Icarangal, JR. Digiscoped with a Swarovski ATM 80 HD, Canon Powershot S95.

A Cinnamon Ibon building a nest!

Check out this video clip of a Cinnamon Ibon clearing out a nest hole during one of our sorties in Mt. Kitanglad Cinnamon Ibons are high-elevation Mindanao endemics residing in submontane and montane forests above 1000 meters. They are usually seen in mixed feeding flock with Mountain and Black-Masked White-eyes, Black and Cinnamon Fantails, Sulfur-billed Nuthatches, Elegant Tits and other montane flocking birds. The excellent (and one and only) guidebook "A Guide to the Birds of the Philippines" by Robert Kennedy lists this bird as common yet the nests and eggs of this Mindanao endemic have not been described. This video clip maybe the first documentation of the nest of the Cinnamon Ibon. This video clip was captured in using a Swarovski 80mm HD scope with the new 25-50x eyepiece mated with a Canon Powershot S95. Check out our Swarovski Digiscoping Section for more superb stills and videos of Philippine birds.