Chinese Crested Tern and other Waders in Panabo

Panabo is always considered as one of the good birding sites in Mindanao especially during migration season. The big fish pond areas fronting Davao Gulf serve as refuge to different migrant and resident species of wetland birds.

In two separate occasions I was able to join two birding sessions in Panabo with mentor Pete Simpson. The goal was to see the Chinese Crested Tern (CCT), considered to be one of the rarest birds in the world with a decreasing population due to breeding site disturbance, residential and commercial development, biological resource use, human intrusions, invasion of problematic species, pollution and climate and weather change. BirdLife International has been placing Chinese Crested Tern into the Critically Endangered species list.

We were unfortunate in our first attempt last December 7 because the bird was a no-show. We stayed in the Seaside resort where according to Pete the bird always perch in the bamboo post for seven hours amidst the very hot and humid day. Some interesting species showed up though and most of them are lifers to me such as the Chinese Egret, Greater Sand Plover, Pacific Golden Plover and Black-headed Gull. From that session I realized how complicated it is to identify waders because from distant location they really looked identical. The challenge has always been on taking full note of the differences physically such as bill forms, plumage colors and structures and even the behavior which I am learning throughout the days of birding activities with Pete.

The second session last January 4 was a lot better. When we arrived in seaside it only took couple of minutes for Pete to set up his scope and the elusive bird was seen perching in a bamboo post of ocean fish cage to the delight of my Big Year team. It was a mega right there and then, unlocking another sporadic species in my birding list. The distance from our base to the CCT site was very far that left me with a noisy photograph of the bird, another good motivation to be back in the site anytime soon and get a little closer during high tide.

Other than the CCT, Panabo is really a sanctuary of wetland birds. Pete recorded a whopping 45 species in just three hours with observations of some lifers Long-toed Stint, Lesser Sand Plover, Kentish Plover, Great Knot, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Curlew Sandpiper, Red-necked Stint, Terek Sandpiper, Marsh Sandpiper, Gull-billed Tern, Little Tern and a really full-packed flock of Pacific Golden Pover.

  

This record is a good start as we open another big birding year in 2020 with my team. The mentorship of Pete is always helpful to pursue our goal of seeing more migrant shorebirds. It was also a sort of reunion for me and Department of Tourism ASEC Robby Alabado who first introduced me to bird watching last 2014. The inputs he gave were enriching us and binding us to do birding in a more vehement fashion.