Silenced songbirds

A bird  sings because it has a song,” Chinese sages claim. An  Inquirer  “Viewpoint”  column on silenced bird songs  sparked a cyberspace discussion that  ranged  from  savaging of  the Mindoro imperial pigeon to the Isabela oriole.

“The number of native species, threatened with extinction, is now  89,” the column “Feathered  Desaparecidos” noted. These include  the blue-winged racquet-tail, dark-eared brown dove, Mindanao bleeding-heart  to the Chinese crested tern.

The Philippine  eagle  is, hands down,  the best  known. An eagle, weak from loss of blood due to  shotgun pellets, was treated by  Pastor Abanag, veterinarian Stephen Toledo  and teachers at  Calbiga, Samar. They entrusted the  recovering  bird  to the National Wildlife Rescue Center

“This means the Philippine eagle is still in Samar, particularly in areas where there are virgin forests,” concluded Department of  Envrionment’s Danilo Javier. By happenstance,  Sen.  Juan  Ponce Enrile’s San Jose Timber Corp. logs this last patch of natural forest.

At  the Philippine Eagle Center in Davao, mating calls “would resonate  among  its  35 birds in July or August,” manager Tatit Quiblat said. Now, these “sex vocals”  are heard in May, a full  two months earlier. Is weather, gone out of whack, confusing even the eagles?

Birds perform multiple tasks from curbing insect infestations to scattering seeds. They’re also  a unique early-warning system.  When  birdsongs  are silenced, that signals “the environment is under severe  stress,” notes “Philippines Red Data Book.”  Species survival  becomes  precarious.

“Here’s a beautifully illustrated version of  the Inquirer column on vanishing birds,  courtesy of  Edd Aragon,” author-editor Alfredo Roces e-mailed from Australia. Aragon  works as a newspaper artist in Sydney. He  wove  bird photos into “Viewpoint”—which he uploaded.

“I’m just a courier who hopes it is not too late,” Aragon e-mailed. “Filipino youth is picking up on protecting  our environment… I fear the day when our grandchildren ask: ‘Lolo, what is a sparrow?”

“Thank you, thank you! What a lovely thing this Edd Aragon did,” e-mailed Dette  Pascual from Iligan.  “As a little girl, I’d  see  this red-and-black hornbill in a forest near our farm. It’s gone now. But one wondrous morning, last week, I saw a flock of white herons in formation passing over our  Dalipuga-by-the-Sea  home. There is a bird  sanctuary in next-door  Misamis Oriental. “

Edd  Aragon’s photos  also swamped Libia Chavez of  Cebu with memories. “Orioles were  ubiquitous in our school  campus.  From trees beside the river, kingfishers would  swoop into the river. During summer vacations,  we’d  shoo hawks from snatching  baby chicks.   Now they are only images from our past.”

There was a twist of  Carol Montilla’s e-mail  from Leyte:  “Strapped for funds to enroll his children, a father asked to do gardening jobs for me. In gratitude, he gave me a bird  he caught in the wilds of  Palo.

“It was an exact replica of  what Edd Aragon pasted on to the Viewpoint column: a hornbill from Sulu. It is a threatened species.

“I dubbed  him Rufus. He makes a loud noise when he sees me and  bows his head offering it to be caressed!   One day I shall have to surrender him to DENR,  as he is one of a few 150 hornbills now in existence worldwide. Any advice? Friends say I can take care of him better.”

The  eminent scientist Jurgenne Primavera lobbed  Montila’s enquiry to ornithologists and avain enthusiasts.  Some of their  responses follow:

“If Ms Montilla is in Leyte, scientists replied, that  bird is  probably the subspecies: Buceros hydrocorax semigaleatus. All wildlife cannot be kept without a DENR   permit.

“It  will be  difficult to  raise that hornbill in the wild,” Lorenzo Vinceguerra e-mailed from Geneva. “He   will not survive a day,” Birdwatchers Club’s Arnel Telesforo agreed. “He has to learn to find food  and recognize  other hornbills.”

“The only way  is to feed him within a cage, in the forest,  for a couple of weeks.  Thereafter, open the cage and offer food on top. This way,  he may  slowly adapt to life outside the cage.  Contact  with more  people must be avoided.

“If kept in captivity (by  DENR?) he will never get the chance to be a wild  bird again. Better a week in the wild and then die by … ? But then, he’d  be  forever a caged  bird.”

There are  “two recognized avian extinctions”  here,  ornithologist J.C. Gozalez wrote.  “These  are the  Ticao tarictic hornbill (Penelopides panini ticaensis ) and  Sulu bleeding-heart  (Gallicolumba menagei). Scientists use the term  “functionally extinct.”

Under this strict definition, “everything else is still considered extant. (That) includes  the Cebu flowerpecker (Dicaeum quadricolor).  A few were  rediscovered in 1992.  Dominic Couzens’  “Atlas of Rare Birds” (2010)  described the Philippine eagle as a “lost  cause,” Gozales added. “If we don’t preserve our endemic feathered treasures,  they’ll  just be remembered in stamps.”

In Rasa Island, Palawan, a project  seeks  to  save 1,000 or so  red-vented cockatoo  (Cacatua haematuropygia ), writes  GMA  managing editor Yasmin Arquiza. These are remnants of  singing  “abukay” flocks we heard as kids.

Razing of mangroves and forests, plus poaching, severely decimated this bird’s population. Rasa Island holds today the highest density. And that’s only 200 birds. UN has declared  the cockatoo,  whose white plumage sparkles brilliantly in flight, as critically endangered.

“Songbirds exposed to polluted environments sing more,” says a  BBC feature on exotic birds in cities. “But they also die early.”