Category: Travel – Asia

Sparrow Street

Day for this, day for that. Social media is jammed with ‘world days’ for just about everything now, but World Sparrow Day on March 20th caught my eye – a bit like the real bird, busy and confident in our urban shadow as if it were a small feathered fox. 

Tree sparrow2

This is a tree sparrow, a rarity in England these days but abundant in the Philippines. The unevenness of nature is one of its marvels – some species paint the skies with a million silhouettes while others are known only to the most inquisitive scientists. That is not random; it reflects variation in whatever food and habitat is required, and in how wild things rise and fall on humans rhythms. This little bird, this sweet chirp in the warm grass, is perched firmly on human civilisation. Our crops feed it, our buildings house it, and our boats give it safe passage. In fact, it may have travelled to the Philippines with the Spanish fleet.

But tree sparrows tell us something else. So confident, so confiding, they unwittingly star in one of the bleakest parables of unintended consequences that we as a species have yet managed to write. Mao declared a brutally effective war on sparrows in 1950s China as part of the Four Pests campaign. It was to protect crops, of course, but without considering that sparrows actually eat crop-destroying insects. The destruction of sparrows contributed to a famine which killed up to 55 million people.

It is one lesson that should be told in every school and parliament in the world: think, from all angles, before doing. 

Tree sparrow

But sparrows are birds of the present, and squabble and flutter as if yesterday is in the past. They still link us to nature, building a noisy, unruled life alongside commence and cluttered streets. Like foxes, they are the flag-bearers of a much broader collection of mostly shy wildlife that threads its way past us. When not watching sparrows in the Philippines, I was wondering how to find those others. I set up my my trailcam on the off chance it would catch something unusual, and it happens, it did.

The large dark birds in the first part of this video are barred rail, a common but extremely reclusive species of open landscapes and farmland. The toads are probably Philippine toads Ingerophrynus philippinicus, and I’m not even going to hazard a guess at the bat. I might have got more species except that the trailcam was knocked over by a magnitude 6 earthquake three days into its adventure. Here is the water cooler reacting to the 5.9 magnitude aftershock.

Perhaps that is the final lesson from sparrows. They lean on us, and that is not particularly safe; but we in turn stand on an unstable planet, and no dustings of urban glory will ever quite hide our need to remember that.

Tree Metropolis

So, Philippines.

Yes, I was in Mindanao earlier this month, my third visit to this land of numbers: 7,641 islands, about 109 million people, and trees – who can say how many trees? A hot, wet land under a sun on hyperspeed: it rises in a rush, soars scorchingly high into the sky, and collapses into a sunset twelve hours after dawn, when absurdly the air feels even stiffer. This is the kind of wild artistry that grows rainforests, and left to its own devices, the Philippines would be smothered by them, feathered out by mangrove swamps on the coast and tropical pinewoods in the mountains.

The reality, of course, is that most of the lowland rainforest has been cleared; the tall, straight trunks make for good timber, and the endangered lapnisan or agarwood has the unwelcome honour of being the world’s most expensive tree due to its wood being poached to produce oud perfume. But even where the primary forest has gone, the secondary growth is thick, and supports a fair variety of trilling, busy wild things.

Red-keeled flowerpecker

Red keeled flowerpecker

Philippine brown shrike

Shrike

No tree is a solitary life. Even in the rawest habitats – salt deserts, say, or the arable deserts of modern agriculture – a tree is a lifebuoy seized by lichens, birds and invertebrates. In the tropics, they are grabbed by other plants too; orchids and ferns perch on their limbs and frame, in a manner of living known as epiphytic. Sometimes it is difficult to know where the tree ends and its army of piggy-backing guests begins.

Big tree

Trees produce food as well as support, but not freely. These young glossy starlings will deposit the seeds in their droppings, spreading the tree’s offspring far further than it could achieve through mere gravity.

glossy starling chicks

Humans also gather from trees. In the Philippines, plums and apples are imported exotics in the malls, but mangoes, bananas and passion fruits can be picked by hand. Cacao trees, the birthplace of chocolate, sport their pods.

IMG_0217_DxO_DxO

And this is rambutan, brightening up its parent tree.

IMG_5406

For all of the trees, the sun feeds them, and the moon sets behind them.

And the next day brings the pattern again.

Moonset

Stories under the Durian Tree

Philippines, March 2023

If heat has an anthem, perhaps it is something like this:

Coppersmith barbet, singing stories of feathered things in the land we call the Philippines. Birds know it better than we ever will, swooping and squabbling over trees that seem to be standing on tiptoes to outdo each other.

IMG_5420

Past durian stalls and stray dogs, over telephone wires and construction sites.

IMG_5416

Living their lives, learning their land, even as the millions of people in Mindanao do the same. In the heat and the hubbub, amidst the jeepneys and basketball courts, and the birds remain wild, but perched on the apparatus of humanity – or on the plants that we are pleased to provide.

Asian glossy starling

Glossy starling

Collared kingfisher

Collared kingfisher

Olive-backed sunbird

Sunbird1

Chestnut munia

Munias in grass

And the durian tree watches on, its fruits ready to fall.

Durian fruits_DxO

Hawk

Australian falcon

Australian hobby, and it sees everything that moves in the Top End.

It’s been estimated that raptors have eyesight up to eight times as powerful as that of a human. So much information gathered with every glance. What would you choose to remember? Not an easy choice, in this fantasy forest of fire and graves.

Termite mounds3

Well, not exactly graves, although they certainly startled the first Western explorers. These bizarre monoliths are the work of compass termites, which align their mighty constructions with the poles. It is thought that they do this to prevent their nests overheating, which might easily happen if one side faced the full wrath of the southern sun. As it is, only the narrow side is cooked.

Termite mounds1

But everything here is strange to a non-Australian eye.

Agile wallaby

Agile wallaby1

Agile wallaby4

Night falls and wakes the dingoes – one lopes across the road in front of our car, but there’s no time for a photo. Australia’s only native canid leaves us with a memory in our minds instead.

Other hunters do tarry. A southern boobook – a small owl – pauses in a tree.

Boobook

It has only been a brief trip to Australia, but the tantalising glimpse of the forest leaves its mark.

Fire, water, termites and heat.

It is good to know that somewhere out there, right now, a hawk is watching them all.

Water Watcher

The forest has Fire, but it also cradles this:

Wangi Falls

Water roars off Litchfield’s sandstone plateaus, but like everything here, it is seasonal. May is still early in the Dry season and the land is ridding itself of the liquid acquired in the Wet.

Or call it Yegge, if you prefer; the Aboriginals traditionally recognise six seasons in Australia’s Top End.

Traditional seasons

The high rivers support saltwater crocodiles – and other, more delicate living things. None are more beautiful than the rainbow bee-eater, which swoops over the pool hunting insects.

Rainbow bee eater

Rainbow bee eater2a

Wherever there is water, there are birds. And they just keep getting stranger.

Masked lapwing

Masked lapwing Darwin Jun 2018

And more entertaining.

Rufous fantail

Oz Fantail

And more impossible in hue.

Forest kingfisher

Forest kingfishers1

Firebird

Fire. These forests are built on it.

Litchfield overview

It destroys, but it also cleans. Flames flicker in Australia’s Northern Territory in May – deliberate small fires sparkling under a thousand stars. To the minds of people, this prevents catastrophic wildfires later in the dry season. To the minds of birds, fire brings food.

Black kites1

Black kites swarm over fire fronts, seizing small fleeing things. Traditional Aboriginal belief claims that kites set new blazes by dropping smouldering twigs. It has never been scientifically documented, but if true would be almost the only example of fire being managed by something non-human.

Black kite2

Red-tailed black cockatoos hunt in the ashes.

Red-tailed black cockatoo2

And one of the bush’s strangest creatures looks after itself as best it can.

Short-beaked echinda LNP 30 May 2018

I met this ball of prickles as it waddled down a road in Litchfield National Park. Not a hedgehog, not like anything else on earth – it is a short-beaked echidna, one of only four species of mammal that lay eggs. It is also quite intelligent and can live for 50 years.

That is many years of watching the forest burn and regrow.

Family: Parrot

Draw a squawk that squawks for the sheer love of squawking.

Roll it into bird-shape.

Dip it in a paintbox.

Set it loose in the trees.

Red-breasted parakeet – Singapore

Red-breasted parakeet SG

Red-tailed black cockatoos – Litchfield National Park, Australia

Red-tailed black cockatoo

Sulphur-crested cockatoo – Mary River National Park, Australia

Sulphur-crested cockatoo1

Galah – Kakadu National Park, Australia

Galeh1

Little corellas – Mary River National Park, Australia

Cockatoo Mary River3

Timelapse

This, too, is Singapore.

Pulau Ubin

Before the skyscrapers came, there were kampongs. On the little island of Pulau Ubin, old times are still here, and narrow roads shadowed with tropical forest twist between the village and the sea. You cycle up them, pausing to swallow buko and listen to the insects buzzing in abandoned fruit plantations. There is no mains electricity or tap water on Pulau Ubin, but there is something wilder, quieter, hotter.

It is not so many years since tigers and black leopards swam in these turquoise straits, but the largest predators today are white-bellied sea eagles.

It is stifling – always – and the skies are stiff and sullen.

Pulau coast 29 May 2018

Red rocks, smooth beach, hot waves – this is Singapore.

Pulau Ubin beach

Long-tailed macaques exploiting the human presence – this is also Singapore. Nobody likes to see wildlife handling plastic, and it is rather depressing that monkeys are still affected by it even in the most anti-litter country on Earth.

Long tailed macaque with orange juice

Like wildlife conflict everywhere, it can be avoided with a little common sense.

Long-tailed macaque Pulau Ubin 29 May 2018

But the crabs of Chek Jawa concentrate on the tides rather than people.

Crab Chek Jawa

Pulau Ubin knew granite mining in the past. Picturesque quarries are silent reminders of an era of Chinese secret societies and massive construction in Singapore proper. Lighthouses on the main island were built out of Pulau Ubin’s bones.

Quarry Pulau Ubin

The industry fell apart decades ago, and rain filled up the quarries. But nature, as ever, just carries on.

Flowerpecker

Mystery bird SG

A Tale of Two Eagles

Haring ibón.

King of birds.

Philippine eagle1 6 June 2018

I rarely photograph captive animals, but made an exception at this moment.

This majestic Philippine eagle is part of the conservation programme run by the Philippine Eagle Foundation in Davao City, southern Philippines. According to the order of wild things, the Philippine eagle is the undisputed apex predator of the sweltering tropical forests of this complex archipelago. Unfortunately, like top predators everywhere, they have not fared well in human company and their status in the wild is now extremely precarious.

The foundation where this eagle lives is the species’ lifeline. Hopefully, one day it will be easier to see them in the wild again.

___

‘Wild’ still exists elsewhere, of course. My recent travels slipped briefly into northern Australia, a land of fire and termites which I will relate in later posts.

And over those flickering forests soars another of the world’s great raptors – the wedge-tailed eagle. I spotted this one perched on the carcass of a roadkilled-wallaby, and it flew calmly into the tree.

Raptor NT Jun 2018

It is related to the golden eagle of the northern hemisphere, and has been heavily persecuted by Australian farmers in the past, although the Northern Territory protects them.

Two eagles but one sky. It would take a lifetime – many lifetimes – to learn all the living things in the forests of south-east Asia and Australasia. This journey only caught a snapshot, but I will relate its highlights over the next few days.

The Plant Dimension

They stretch from sand to stormclouds with enough lordliness for hornbills to choose them as a throne.

Oriental pied hornbill 28 May 2018

They sprout nuts and fruit alien to the English visitor, but welcomed by a hungry plantain squirrel.

Plantain squirrel SG 28 May 2018

They clothe fences built by people, sheltering reptiles in their sprawl.

Lizard1 SG 28 May 2018

This is Singapore.

People have had creative ideas about what to do with this island for generations, but for all the skyscrapers, golf courses and godowns, there is no doubt that this is first and foremost a humid, beetle-buzzed, rain-lashed benevolent dictatorship run by plants. Every square metre where something can grow, something does. They even scramble over each other, climbing high like children.

Plant scramble 28 May 2018

Epiphytes – plants that live harmlessly on the surface of other plants, usually trees – are as common as daisies here. Amongst them, more lizards lurk.

Lizard2 SG 28 May 2018

It would take several lifetimes to document the bewildering variety of wild living things in south-east Asia. I’m travelling around the region for the next couple of weeks, revisiting some places, venturing into new ones.

There are many more moods of plants to learn.