twitching

Thanks to the magnanimous Lone Gopher, D and SW twitched at lunchtime today. For my first outing, I opted for the genteel lunch hour, rather than the outright hostile dawn hour. I promised that I'd make it for a dawn run soon though (more birds, more species). Not good at dawn stuff, mind you. But I thoroughly enjoyed my first Philippine twitch and BECAUSE I KNOW YOU WANT TO KNOW, here's the list of sightings (also thanks to LG):

Outing #1 – Mt Makiling lower slopes (near UP forestry), 26 Oct 2006

• Scale-feathered Malkoha – Medium/Large black bird with crazy, mostly white head.
• Red-crested Malkoha – Medium/Large black bird with red Mohawk crest and green beak.
• Coppersmith Barbet – Small bird with red and yellow face and mostly green body. Sounds like a coppersmith (tok-tok-tok-tok etc)
• Bar-bellied Cuckoo-shrike – Medium sized grey/black bird with bars on belly. Noisy.
• Philippine Bulbul – Medium sized. Orange throat, brown back, and light brown belly. Makes irritating sounds resembling cats or annoyed babies.
• Balicassiao – Drongo. Black medium sized with “fishtail”.
• Grey-streaked Flycatcher – Small brown bird with streaked throat and chest.
• Brown Shrike – Small/Medium bird on broken branch. Grey or brown head (different races) dirt white chest, brown back and black “bandit-mask”. On telephone wires everywhere.

Eventually I hope to be as respected a twitching authority as this man.