The Philippine Cockatoo

Years ago, I decided to write a series of poems about birds, using a reference book I had borrowed. A few of these tarried on the loft—the sparrow, in particular, and on occasion the brown shrike and the purple-throated sunbird.

Earlier, I had acquired a manual of verse forms. I wanted to use them, one for each bird. And so I began the project, which advanced in fits and starts, such that, after 17 years, I could show only as many bird poems.

When I went on leave for six months, the situation changed. I plunged into the project with such abandon that, at the end of my leave, I had written poems for all the birds featured in the reference book.

Halfway through the work, I came to the Philippine Cockatoo. The Cebuano name for the bird being “abukay,” I remembered Abucayan, a barangay in the hometown. “Abucayan” means a place of cockatoos. The barangay must have teemed with cockatoos at one time. A native of Abucayan recalled that 20 years ago the bird would visit a rice field near their house early in the morning. Since then there have been no sightings.

Still I wanted to see a live specimen. I considered a government office, which maintains a place for “liberated” birds, rare species that were poached and sold at street corners to game collectors, and confiscated by the authorities, later to be returned to their habitat in the wilds. But a friend warned me that of late all that the pound sheltered was a talking mynah, which upon seeing his receding hairline, shrieked, “Opaw, opaw!” (Baldie! Baldie!) Since the friend and I have roughly the same pate condition, I decided to forgo the visit.

I asked Mother, now 86, and recovering from a stroke, if in her youth she had seen a cockatoo. When she said yes, I asked for the validating details–color (white), head (with a sort of headgear), length (about a foot). And it could speak, Mother said. It would alert Doro, its master, to the approach of a stranger, “Doro, dunay tawo.” (There’s a man, Doro.) And playfully it would cluck, and the chickens would come running in the belief that it was feeding time, to the consternation of Doro. When I asked her exactly when and where she saw the bird, Mother could say only that this was before she got married (at age 15).

What Mother and the Abucayan native affirmed, about last seeing the cockatoo deep in the past, bears out the findings of experts. Until about 1980, the seed-eating bird was all over the place. Because it would set out from its habitation in the trees and mangroves to search madly for corn and half-ripe rice grains, it was even looked upon as a pest.

Since then, the bird declined in number by as much as 60-90 percent because of “destructive human activities,” chief of which was  “kaingin” or  slash-and-burn agriculture. To this we should add the brisk market for birds, which when it comes to handsome species that can mimic human speech, such as the parrot, mynah and cockatoo, can fetch a handsome price. The trade sends many a bird catcher to the interior to set a trap for the cockatoo and raid its nest hole up in the tree.

Daily I travel a two-kilometer distance for lunch with the wife. I make it a point to pass by the intersection where the wild birds are sold. One day there would be parrots and another day parakeets. Everyday a new arrival. I am certain that the mynah that ribbed my friend at the government office was trafficked at this corner. It probably hailed from Palawan, which still has the environment for the wildlife that has disappeared elsewhere. The Philippine Cockatoo, for one, now thrives there only, particularly on Rasa Island, Dumaran Island and Culasian, which have specially demarcated areas reserved for endangered species. Oh, with the exception of Patnanungan of the Polillo group of islands in Quezon.

For the cockatoo I chose the sonnet, for no reason other than that I had not yet deployed that particular verse form in the work. But while composing I kept in mind that the bird could be trained to talk, and in fact I was tempted to make it speak in the poem.

But what would it say? I could make it repeat the words of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel: “Notice the ravens: they do not sow or reap; they have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them. How much more important are you than birds!” And instead of “ravens,” it could say “cockatoos.”

In the end I decided against it. The verse is too long, and it might be incredible for a cockatoo to have the stamina to recite the passage. What would be believable, considering that I am the worrying kind, always anxious about my life, is for the Holy Spirit to inspire the cockatoo to chide me, “Opaw.”