Birds of Bacolod City,Negros Occidental

Don Sausa took me out today for a drive round Bacolod City today and  we saw some nice birds. Sadly no photographs as it was raining hard though I may add some from Don as he was shooting with his 500 mm telephoto lens, a real monster! The highlight however was the barred rails in the Town & Country estate, including a family with three chicks. Beautiful birds with very distinctive markings and good to know that they are breeding and to all intents and purposes in good shape. [Edit 14.10.10: I omitted the small matter of a beautiful lifer, namely a java sparrow in the same estate, in fact there were four of them, quite distinct, in among the barn swallows below.....no less a lifer! I don't know much about the provenance of these sparrows but their counterparts in Bangkok are thought to be from once captive birds; they are beautifully coloured birds and would make ideal caged birds for those of that ilk.] Elsewhere we spotted a pied bushchat in the estate and probably an olive-backed sunbird and plenty of barn swallows all looking rather ragged. Just outside the estate a lesser coucal was in the tall grasses and lots of scaly-breasted munias plus a striated grassbird or two and of course the ubuquitous collared kingfisher. On the estate near Don's house more brown shrikes and a number of white-breasted woodswallows. In the nearby mudflats at high tide there was a common sandpiper and many whiskered terns. We drove downtown, near to the shopping malls and there is a significant area of mudflats nearby and there were lots of little egrets to be seen and who knows what else. Conditions very wet so really only a half-hearted attempt. Clearly there are a lot of good birds in and around Bacolod City and thanks to Don  I am getting to know where to find them.