Corregidor’s other heritage--birds!

Corregidor is a tadpole-shaped island located 48km west of Manila. It is about 6km long and 2.4km wide, and has a land area of 900 hectares. It used to be an important defense base during the Spanish and American regimes, and had suffered heavy damage during WWII. Now it is an important tourist site that attracts history buffs, nature lovers, and photography enthusiasts. Recently, word of the diverse bird life on the island started to attract birdwatchers as well.

Corregidor is under the jurisdiction of Cavite province, but the coastline right across it is part of the Bataan Peninsula. The island is accessible via the Sun Cruises fast ferry from the old Hoverferry Terminal in Manila, or the M/B El Corregidor from Mariveles, Bataan. Nearby birding sites are the Mt. Palay Palay National Park and the Caylabne Bay Resort in Cavite, and the Balanga wetlands and the Subic Bay Freeport Zone in Bataan.

Development and commercial activities on the island are under the administration of the Corregidor Foundation Inc. There are no residential structures in Corregidor. Apart from employees of the tourist establishments, no one else lives there. The forests are relatively lush but mostly secondary-growth. This is because every inch of the island’s original vegetation has been wiped out by fire during the war. Monkeys are common even in areas with high human traffic. Hunting is prohibited on the island.

Corregidor is mostly rocky and there are no major water bodies inland. Geologists say it is a remnant of an inactive volcano, but could still awaken at some point in the future.

Day 1
Our group of 15 birders and bird photographers (including two kids) got to the island a little after 9am on Saturday, Feb. 19. Upon arrival, we got on board a tram that took us around the regular tourist circuit. The tour, which ended shortly before the ferry’s 2:30pm return trip to Manila, gave us the opportunity to recon sites that looked promising for birding. Already we noted that the island was teeming with Asian Glossy Starlings and Black-Naped Orioles. We also saw a family Red Junglefowls foraging on the side of the road.

After the tour, we were brought to McArthur’s Inn and Cafe where we were booked for the night. We were supposed to stay at the Corregidor Inn, but a booking snafu on the part of Star Cruises forced us to go to McArthur’s (although some of us suspected that we were deliberately edged out in favor of a big group of photography students from a Manila university).

McArthur’s is located at the beach front, near the statue of the general after whom it is named. The inn’s facilities and service quality fell below expectations, given the rate they charged us. Thankfully, we were mostly outdoors the whole time we were there. Behind McArthur’s was the Corregidor Hostel, a basic accommodation option for groups of eight or so. There was also a campsite nearby where visitors can put up tents for a fee.

Bottomside birds

We left the inn to go birding around 4:30pm. We followed the road from the Bottomside going uphill. Just a few meters from the inn we spotted Pygmy Woodpeckers. A little further up and we spotted a Common Emerald-Dove, a male Blue Rock-Thrush and our first Pink-Necked Green-Pigeon.

We were about a kilometer uphill when our vehicle arrived. We went to the Battery area, where some of us earlier saw the junglefowls. We birded the vicinity in groups of 3-4. We saw flycatchers, bulbuls, more junglefowls, and a variety of doves and pigeons, including Yellow-Breasted Fruit-Doves, Philippine Cuckoo-Doves and White-Eared Brown-Doves.

Then we decided to walk to the hospital ruins via a lesser-used trail. Some guides had told us earlier that the Brahminy Kites roosted there, and would darken the sky like clouds when they fly out in the morning. By then we had noticed that at least one Brahminy Kite would be seen in flight every time we looked up.

Exotic cockatoos
On the way to the hospital, we saw Pied Trillers, Crows, and more doves. But what excited us the most was the pair of Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos that made a lot of noise right above where we were walking.

There have been sightings of cockatoos reported on the island before, and a tourism brochure had mentioned Philippine Cockatoos. It is possible that the reported sightings were of this pair, but they were misidentified as the Philippine variety. If so, it is likely that the pair is either both female or both male, as there was no indication that they had multiplied since they were first sighted several years back.

It was almost dusk when we got to the hospital ruins. No Brahminy Kite was roosting yet, but just as when we were about to leave, we saw about a dozen converging at a distance behind the ruins, and they looked like they were flying in. We stopped to wait for them to roost, but it was like they sensed we were in the area, because they seemed to change direction and sort of retreated.

The sun had already set when we got back to the inn, but there was still an orange sunburst across the horizon. We took advantage of the last light to learn rock balancing at the beach in front of the Kiosk where we had our meals. When it got too dark for that, a birder took out a star map and this time we watched the sky, not for birds but for star formations.

Day 2
The next morning, we were ready to leave the inn at 5:30am, but it was almost 6am when our vehicle picked us up. We proceeded to the Topside grounds where we came upon some tourists waiting for the sunrise. There was already light when we got there, but the sun was not out yet. It was windy and a bit chilly.

We divided into smaller groups and assigned trails for each group to cover. One group took the 300-step trail that went down to the Middleside Barracks (just a few meters below the hospital ruins), another group covered the Battery area road network, and another group took the trail going to the Suicide Cliff.

I was with the group that went down to the Middleside Barracks. We saw more doves and pigeons along the trail, and then on the ruins and behind them. There were Pompadour and Pink-Necked Green-Pigeons perched in the open. Green Imperial-Pigeons were seen mostly in flight. More Emerald Doves were seen all over what remained of the three floors of the barracks.

Brahminy Kites
We were going uphill from the Middleside Barracks on our way to the pickup point, when a few meters away, through gaps in the canopy, we saw a flock of at least 100 Brahminy Kites swooping down the ravine beyond the trees. The noise they made sounded like they were on a feeding frenzy. The spectacle lasted some 30 seconds. Then we saw a few kites flying upwards or in circles just over the ravine. This was a little past 8am.

Our sighting confirmed the guides’ description of the kites. A flock that big could really block the sky like clouds if you were directly under it. A few years ago, birders watching from Ternate, Cavite just across Manila Bay saw a flock just as big. The kites were circling above the area where some illegal fishers had just detonated a dynamite. It looked like the birds were anticipating dead fish to float to the surface. It is likely that it was the same flock that is roosting in Corregidor. The island had earlier been the release site of rehabilitated Brahminy Kites. Some of the birds we saw could have been the same ones that were released there, or their descendants.

Our breakfast back at the Kiosk was supposed to be at 730am, but it was almost 9am when we left the birding areas. After breakfast, a group of six birders decided to go to the tadpole’s tail side. The others decided to stay and explore the Bottomside further. The group that went tail-side reported seeing a Crested-Serpent Eagle. The ones who stayed saw more woodpeckers.

We had lunch at La Playa, a restaurant at Corregidor Inn. It had a nice view of Bataan Peninsula across the bay, and we saw more kites flying about. From the other side of the restaurant, we had a view of a forest canopy where pairs of Black-naped Orioles chased one another.

Our boat left the island 230pm on Sunday, Feb. 20. But the birding did not end for some of us. Bird photographer James Biron went out to the deck and continued taking pictures of sea birds in flight. And halfway between Corregidor and Manila, a Pomerine Jaeger decided to fly by the boat, and into his camera’s cross-hairs (sighting will be submitted in a separate report).

Others notes
On the whole, birding in Corregidor was easy. We chalked up at least 40 species, nine of which were endemics. This is a very conservative count, considering that we did not do any call playback, we birded only from the roadside and existing trails (we did not venture deeper into the forests), we did not do any night birding, and we did not have a dedicated vehicle to take us to the different sites on our own time.

The few vehicles on the island had to be shared with the other tourists, so our arrangement was limited to drop-off and pick-up. Because of this, we were only able to cover the head side of the island’s tadpole shape; the tail side was given only a quick survey on the second day.

Birders who wish to visit the island are advised to arrange for a dedicated vehicle. With your own ride, not only can you cover more sites, but you can also stop anytime you spot a bird on the roadside. Note, too, that cellphone signals could be hard to come by in some birding areas, so it could be a challenge to call someone to pick you up. Also, it is probably best to go on weekdays. Corregidor on weekends is overflowing with tourists. You are likely to come across DSLR-toting people in the trails.

Trip photos:

Alain Pascua’s album

Lydia Robledo’s album

James Biron’s album

Under the Dome -- what's with the ending?

We were in Iloilo shopping for a nice book for my goddaughter when I came across Stephen King's 2009 novel Under the Dome. It was a brick of a book, around 4 inches thick. I've always been fascinated by King's take on the paranormal, so I got me a copy 'to read during the flight back to Manila,' I told Arnel.

Took me a week to read it, but not because of its length. Let's just say King is no Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight series he dissed some years back. Meyer, at least, is a sensitive storyteller, and she managed to retell an old love story in a way that captivated the world. As for this King novel, well, I could have put it aside and forgotten about it, if it were not so huge and heavy.

As with most of his stories, this one was full of interesting characters. But they were mostly either bad or good, with the bad ones really badass, and the good ones almost losers (in fact, some of the good ones made decisions that were so stupid they were unbelievable). The buildup was crawling, and the plot was riddled with a lot of coincidences that influenced how the story went.

I've never been a fan of stories built on coincidences--I think it's a cop-out on the part of the storyteller--but sometimes they can work if they were subtly worked into the plot. But that's not the case here. Coincidences are so common, and they all seemed to work for the bad guy's advantage you would think the universe was in his payroll.

But the thing I can't forgive was the weak ending--it just didn't justify reading through four inches of pulp. I got the ants-under-the-magnifying-glass theme, and the part where (spoiler alert!) one of the main characters tried to convince the alien (who happened to be alone at that moment--its companions having gone out for a snack or something) that humans were thinking beings, their petty lives notwithstanding. It seems the protagonist used a traumatic memory from her childhood to convince the alien that she had feelings, too (remember the 'dogs are people, too' buttons of the 80s?).

All throughout the buildup I got the impression it was another commentary on human behavior in isolation. That disappointed me somewhat--after all I didn't pick a Stephen King book to get Lord of the Flies. I was relieved when I reached the part where the kids had visions right before they had seizures. I thought, wow, we're finally getting some paranormal involvement.

But lo and behold, the prophetic visions were not adequately explained by the ants-under-the-magnifying-glass framework. It was like King ran out of space and didn't bother to stitch up this loose end. Did the aliens know how the show would end--perhaps because they controlled it--and had somehow planted the visions on people? What purpose did the visions serve, apart from holding the attention of readers looking for paranormal involvement?

I intended to surf around for explanations, but that would only waste more of my time. I hope fans of this book who read this blog would be kind enough to enlighten me. I'm waiting.

Suicide is a form of flight

Some even say it's a form of plea bargain: your life in exchange for leniency for your loved ones, or for whatever remains of your dignity.

The news of Angelo Reyes' suicide shocked everyone, even those who never gave a crap about Philippine politics, me included. Opinions spilled from all over. Some insightful, most obviously uninformed. After the initial shock, I tried to make sense of how I felt about the issue. And here's what I'd like to add to the din of opinions out there.

Reyes was a man at the end of his rope. Either he didn't believe he would get justice, or he believed justice would get him. Either way, he was still doomed.

What was he likely to face had he not taken flight? On top of the list would be the highly stressful inquiries into allegations that he received P50M in slush funds when he left military service, and P5M a month for 20 months before that. These inquiries would have been televised. He called it a shame campaign, which is neither a denial nor an admission. But if the accusations were found to be substantial, he would have been treated like Garcia, and was likely to face jail time.

What a man values most speaks a lot about him. For someone like Reyes, a master games man with degrees from PMA, AIM and Harvard (I wonder if he would have turned out differently had he gone to UP as well... hmmm), being shamed was a fate worse than death. He was a proud military officer, a man with a lot of amour propio.

Unfortunately for him, the battles he chose not to fight proved to be the ones worth fighting in the end. It was his passive stance on corruption that tainted the honor he worked so hard to project. It was what pushed him to kill himself. It was, in essence, what killed him.

This is not to say he was a bad man. On the contrary, I personally think he was more decent than most. The fact that he played along with the military's corrupt system shouldn't trivialize his accomplishments as a cabinet secretary for various departments. He was well-loved by the people who worked for him, I was told.

But our standards of good governance go beyond being popular among your subordinates or being an efficient manager. There are higher ideals that we expect our civil servants to uphold, and Reyes fell short of these.

Filipinos are essentially a forgiving people, and there's nothing we want to do more than forgive the good general for one fatal shortcoming. But it's not just up to us to forgive. His failure to recognize corruption as a legitimate enemy has failed the military establishment as a whole. We're talking of the foot soldiers whose blood we sacrifice in the altar of war everyday. We're talking of the families they leave behind so they can go to war. We're talking of every taxpayer whose money it was that became the P50M pabaon.

These are the people Reyes owed to--more than his mother.