Author: Frances Monroe

A tiny striped bird will eventually cross your path as you stroll through practically any Filipino neighborhood, whether it’s a city park with dilapidated benches and vendor carts, a university campus, or a barangay side street. It moves swiftly, bobbing its head and pecking at the ground with little purpose. The majority of people don’t pause to observe. However, the zebra dove, called bato-bato in the local dialect, has been an integral part of Philippine culture for so long that its absence would seem more foreign than its presence. Native to Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, the zebra dove (Geopelia…

Somewhere along the coast of Palawan, there is something subtly striking about seeing a small flock of blue-naped parrots moving through the tree canopy. They are almost completely green, fast, and noisy in that specific high-pitched parrot manner, making them surprisingly difficult to spot unless you’re looking. Most people aren’t. That could be a contributing factor. When most Filipinos imagine a green parrot in the Philippines, they picture the blue-naped parrot, or pikoy as it is known locally. Tanygnathus lucionensis is its official name. Depending on who you ask, it is also known as the blue-crowned green parrot, the Philippine…

You’ll likely see one if you stroll through practically any Metro Manila neighborhood, whether it’s across a jeepney terminal, past a sari-sari store, or along a concrete school wall. Pecking at rice grains close to someone’s feet, small and swift. For generations, Filipinos have referred to it as maya. However, it’s likely that most people have never given the bird’s true identity any thought. It turns out that the solution is a little convoluted. The Eurasian tree sparrow, scientifically known as Passer montanus, is what the majority of Filipinos refer to as maya, or more formally, mayang simbahan. It is…

A heron has an air of leisure. Most people pass it as it stands motionless at the edge of a creek or fishpond with its neck folded in. Most Filipinos in the Philippines are familiar with the name of that bird: tagak. However, what is the Philippine heron exactly, and why does it so gently confuse both curious locals and birdwatchers? The short answer is that the term “Philippine heron” refers more broadly to the members of the heron family that live in the archipelago than to a single species. At least 21 species of the family Ardeidae have been…

Sometimes, while standing close to the craggy sea headlands of the Mediterranean coast or the limestone cliffs of southern Europe, you notice a flash of deep blue somewhere overhead. Even so. observing. Then it was gone. That’s probably Monticola solitarius, the blue rock thrush, which has a tendency to vanish before you realize what you’re seeing. You can infer something from the name alone. Monticola translates to “mountain dweller” from Latin. The sign of Solitarius is solitary. It is difficult to disagree with the binomial that Carl Linnaeus assigned it in 1758. This bird prefers rocky coastal outcrops, sheer cliff…

Wild ducks are proliferating in a lake in Leyte that is sulfur-rich, sour to the taste, and near enough to the highway for passing cars to occasionally see them with the unaided eye. Not in enormous quantities, and not without years of diligent labor, but still growing. That is significant in a nation where wetland after wetland has silently vanished over the previous fifty years. The Philippine Duck, also referred to locally as the gamaw or, in older Tagalog, the patong gubat, or forest duck, is the bird at the heart of this tale. The fact that it is the…

A bird that can mimic a human voice is subtly amazing. Not even close to it. not generate a hazy jumble that listeners willfully mistake for words. Reproduce the exact cadence of someone’s name being called across a room, including the syllables, tone, and pitch. Because of its ability to do just that, the hill myna is one of the most prized and endangered birds in the Philippines. There are several varieties of myna in the Philippines, and the differences are important. When most Filipinos refer to the “talking bird,” they mean the Palawan Hill Myna, a subspecies of the…

In the Philippines, there is a certain type of location that doesn’t make an impression. It is not required to. One of those locations is Taboc, a barangay nestled into the municipality of San Juan in La Union province. It is peacefully situated along Luzon’s northern coastline, just far enough from the bustle of Urbiztondo to feel like a different world, but close enough that it takes less than twenty minutes to get there. The majority of people who visit Taboc do so by accident. On a bad day at Beach Break, a surfer searches for cleaner waves. A family…

Somewhere between the rice paddies of the Philippines and the scrublands of Siberia, a tiny bird perches at the tip of a prickly bush and silently surveys the ground below. It doesn’t appear dangerous. It is about the size of a sparrow and is dressed in creamy whites and warm browns with a black stripe running across each eye, resembling a mask worn to a tiny crime scene. Then something on the ground below is dead as it moves swiftly, decisively, and without hesitation. The Brown Shrike, scientifically known as Lanius cristatus, is one of the most interesting birds in…

Early in the morning, a certain sound can be heard throughout the Philippine countryside: a low, descending series of hollow notes that resemble a warning or a meditation. Birdwatchers can tell right away. Every day, farmers hear it without question. It is a member of the Philippine coucal, Centropus viridis, a big, long-tailed bird that has successfully established itself throughout an archipelago that hasn’t always been hospitable to its fauna. The coucal is not attempting to win anyone over. It lacks both the striking silhouette of an eagle and the iridescent flash of a kingfisher. Its body, which is primarily…