Up Close: Bolosan’s Migratory Birds

The night is stolen by the chirping and cackling of birds and wild ducks showing that, as tired fisherfolk retire, life goes on among nature’s other species. The cycle of life continues as another day begins.

By Nicanor Segovia
Bulatlat

It is that time of the year when Bolosan, the quiet fishing community of Dagupan City, comes into life with flocks of migratory birds from the northern hemisphere. There is peaceful coexistence in Bolosan: the simple fisherfolk go about their daily chores, while the migratory birds blend with native ones in forage areas.

Bolosan (200 kms north of Manila) may be a natural sanctuary of birds coming from China to escape the punishing winter from January to June but it has its own reputation too as a community of shallow fishponds, marshes and swamps. Here the old mix with the new: fish culture is done mostly in the traditional way but there are also internet shops and car centers along the barangay (village) highway.

Lying northeast of Dagupan, Bolosan is the point that leads to Mangaldan town, famous for its peanut brittle, to Manaoag where thousands of religious devotees flock to the miraculous La Nuestra Señora Virgen de Manaoag and thence to the coastal fishing and tobacco towns of La Union and the Ilocos provinces. From here one is awed by the majestic Cordillera mountains and, through a pair of binoculars, survey one of its peaks atop of which are communication radars shrouded now and then by thick clouds.

National Artist for Visual Arts Victorio C. Edades hails from Bolosan. In December 2004, the late modernist painter Edades was remembered with an art exhibit of 20 of his oil paintings at the city museum. Almost simultaneously, gallery owner Norma Liongoren, a Dagupeña herself, also organized a separate exhibit showing the calligraphic brushwork paintings and other works of the Liongoren family.

Dawn

Like other rural scenes immortalized by the paintings of Fernando Amorsolo and other artists, life in Bolosan begins at the crack of dawn when fishermen tend to their ponds feeding schools of bangus, tilapia and other fishes, fixing nets and the like. Sunrise would send flocks of herons, egrets and other bird species off treetops and bushes where they spent the night and begin to fly like white and purple petals as they forage for left-over fish and other food. Wild ducks bathe and hunt for food as do other resident birds. Then they begin to fly farther away to other sanctuaries in the remote and idyllic towns of Binmaley, Lingayen, Sual, Alaminos, Anda, Bolinao and Bani in western Pangasinan.

In Bani, the mangrove forests serve as breeding ground of migratory and native birds including the Purple Heron, Rufous Night Heron, Asian Golden Plover, Common Snipe and the Philippine wild ducks. An attraction is the 300-meter boardwalk at the town’s marine-protected area where birdwatchers and other visitors can see the birds and fowls up close.

Bani and Bolosan are just two of several bird sanctuaries in the Philippines the most popular of which are Cebu’s Olango Island Wetland Sanctuary, Pampanga’s Candaba Swamp and Mindanao’s Liguasan Marsh.

As dusk settles, the migratory birds coming from Bani and other sanctuaries begin to swarm back to Bolosan in flocks of 10 to probably a hundred, many of them descending somehow in the area. The night is stolen by the chirping and cackling of birds and wild ducks showing that, as tired fisherfolk retire, life goes on among nature’s other species. The cycle of life continues as another day begins.

Avian flu virus

Last year, news about the avian flu virus sent a chilling effect on city residents particularly the fisherfolk who consider the influx of migratory birds as a natural phenomenon. Health epidemiologists assured the residents however that as long as the migratory birds - suspected of carrying the dreaded H5NI virus - are left alone and not mixed with local fowls, the city is safe from the bird flu. They also said that the H5NI virus becomes harmful only when it comes in contact with the local flu virus, in which case it could mutate to become a dangerous virus. And so residents were warned not to harm the birds and so far no signs of the bird flu have been reported.

The migratory birds breathe color into an otherwise dull, quiet and routine life in Bolosan. Man learns to commune with nature. Their periodic influx has inspired many Filipinos especially environmentalists and ornithologists to form bird-watching societies. And for those nursing some wounds in their life, Bolosan with its simple folks and visiting birds is just the right place to be. Bulatlat

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