ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Feb. 10, 2014) – The southern Filipino port city of Zamboanga is the venue of this year’s 9th Philippine Birds Festival and the three-day event is expected to draw various wildlife photographers and bird watchers not only in the country, but from other nations.
This year’s theme is “Pajaros: Bula Sin Miedo, Sin Lingasa” (sic) which translates to “Birds: Fly without fear, without worries.” (Pajaros: Volar sin miedo, sin preoccupaciones).
Gina Mapua and Michael Lu, from the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, have visited Zamboanga City where they met with local government officials and the local media and briefed them about bird watching in the country.
“Zamboanga is a fantastic city for bird watching,” Mapua, president of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, said.
Bird watchers are also expected to climb Mount Baluno. Mapua’s group would also hold a series of lectures for high school students at Paseo del Mar Park and bird watching trips in Pasonanca Park.
Zamboanga is famous for the thousands of birds that seek shelter in high tension wires at dusk and fly at the break of dawn to find food in marshes and forests around here. The Pasonanca Park here, which is one of the oldest forests in the southern Philippines, is not only rich biodiversity but is also home to various bird species, some of them are even endemic to the region.
Documentation undertaken by international and local ornithologists has recorded not less than 200 bird species in Pasonanca and for this reason the park is classified as an important bird area in the country and is considered as one of the bird watching destination in the Philippines.
The bird festival – an annual event organized by the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines and participated by its more than 200 members from all over the country and members of other wild bird clubs in the ASEAN region – starts on February 28 and ends on March 1.
It was originally scheduled on October 4 and 5 at the Paseo del Mar, but a rebel attack in several villages here in September shelved the project. (E. Dumabo)