Pygmy Flowerpecker, a Philippine endemic. Often labelled microscopic, for it is quite small. It's hyper active, and flies very fast. I encountered this lifer sometime in September 2014. A group was on a feeding frenzy on an aratiles tree. When someone goes around a tree for a couple of hours, that can be intriguing. So my sortie caught the attention of some locals. I sacrificed some shots to start a conversation that i knew would somehow bring the discussion to nature conservation. I had a hard time pointing to them the birds. When a man eventually saw one, you could see the amazement on his face. One woman struggled, so I let her view my LCD with a zoomed image. She asked, "Unsa iya gikaon, apple?" ("What is it eating, an apple?"). I told myself it's just apt to call this tree locally as "mansinitas", or small apple. The activities delayed my lunch. I went home unfilled but fulfilled. For i had a lifer and i captured the hearts of some folks on that one lone tree.

lifer - first photographic encounter of a species
sortie - purpose to photograph birds

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