Week ending 6th March - IRRI

An extraordinarily wet week considering that this is supposed to be the middle of the dry season. Rain every day, barring sunny sunday (when overcast conditions would have been better for ringing!) The farms have started to pick up recently with very large flocks of Wood Sandpipers moving through fairly constantly. No oddities amongst them yet, but I'm still looking. A pair of Oriental Pratincoles showed up which was a nice early spring record. The Peregrine is still around, and a Kestrel passed through on Thursday.

Ringing on Sunday was again made more difficult by bright sunlight showing up the nets, however I did catch one Swinhoe's Snipe, and one Collared Kingfisher. The snipe was a surprise as the underfoot conditions were very wet and I'd been led to believe that that was the preferred habitat of Pintail Snipe, and Swinhoe's preferred drier conditions. Near the ringing station a pair of Philippine Woodpeckers seem to be excavating a nest hole.

Incidental birding around IRRI included a Philippine Cuckoo Dove over my house on Friday, and a Philippine Scops Owl calling from near the main dormitory buildings on Thursday.

One of a pair of Oriental Pratincoles that arrived this week.

Lesser Coucal hiding in its preferred habitat of rank grass

Collared Kingfisher

Philippine Woodpecker working on a hole near the ringing station

Chestnut Munia

The tail of a Swinhoe's Snipe that I caught on Sunday. The outer tail feathers are real feathers, not the incredibly thin ( less than 2mm) 'pins' I'd been expecting to find to indicate it was a Pintail Snipe.

Swinhoe's Snipe

A rather bedraggled juvenile Yellow Wagtail, one of hundreds present this week

Male Painted Snipe