Birds, nests, seed pods, and old bottles

Before we head to Manila to greet the incoming Valor Tours group for our annual “Ghost Soldiers of Bataan” tour, we’d like to share a few more recent photographs.  Several surprises include three different bird families in their unique-looking nests, a huge butterfly, a thunderstorm that seemed to pop up out of nowhere, and war-era bottles found near our house.

Sulphur-crested cockatoo just after lift-off

Mated pair of collared kingfishers

Pair of white-breasted woodswallows

Philippine bulbul in taluto tree

 

Brahminy kite on its nest in sea-eagle cove; notice adult is shading the egg from the hot afternoon sun

Lowland white-eye by its nest

Yellow-vented bulbul harassing the white-eye's nest

Olive-backed sunbird chick peeking out of its nest

Closeup of olive-backed sunbird chick peeking out of nest

Adult sunbird leaving nest after feeding chick.  Notice the long, scraggly looking nest, which reminded Marcia of the limerick:

There was an Old Man with a beard,

Who said, "It is just as I feared!

Two Owls and a Hen,

four Larks and a Wren,

Have all built their nests in my beard.

Butterfly so large that Marcia first thought it was a bird

Same butterfly with folded wings.  Marcia believes that the wing span was at least six inches!

Pink seed pods high up in the trees.  They look like flowers from a distance

Taluto seeds with built-in parachutes

Clouds forming in the early afternoon before a surprise late-afternoon thunderstorm

Newly-discovered bottles

We found all of these bottles on a walk down the old trolley tracks just above James road, quite near our house.  From left to right are a small Japanese sake bottle, a San Miguel beer bottle, a large sake bottle, another beer bottle, and an American glass hip flask.  The sake bottles are typical of the ones found here, in that they were probably opened by a bayonet or other hard object.  Both beer bottles are greatly heat-deformed, undoubtedly from fire during the war.

Steve and Marcia on the Rock