Alain Pascua is one of the founding-administrators of the Wild Birds of the Philippine Page, the only multi-photographer gallery of Philippine birds in Facebook. He also co-founded the Wild Bird and Nature Photography Philippines (WBNPP), a professional outfit, in 2011, and the Wild Bird Photographers of the Philippines (WBPP) in 2012. Alain Pascua’s photos of wild birds have graced numerous publications, the latest are featured in the newly published book Owls of the World A Photographic Guide by Heimo Mikkola.
Dicaeum retrocinctum is endemic to the Philippines where it was thought endemic to Mindoro until the early 1990s when it was surprisingly discovered on Panay and Negros (Collar et al. 1999). On Mindoro it was formerly abundant and still considered fairly common as recently as the 1980s. Data from 1991 surveys show that it remains common in one or two remnant forest tracts on the island but has declined steeply elsewhere. Numbers on Negros, where it is known from just two sites, may be very small. The size of the Panay population is unknown.
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Copsychus cebuensis is endemic to the island of Cebu in the Philippines. It has always been considered rare, but intensive fieldwork in 2004 has revealed it to be significantly more widespread than was previously known. There are post-1990 records from at least 28 sites, including six records within highly urbanised areas such as Cebu City (L. M. Paguntalan in litt. 2012), although very small numbers were recorded at most of these, with observations usually totalling one to five individuals at each. However, in 2004, work at Nug-as Forest, the largest remaining tract of mature secondary forest (700ha), discovered a much larger population, with 85 individuals sighted across 7 km of transects. Extrapolations based on these sightings suggest that up to 2,500 individuals could be present at Nug-as (Jakosalem et al. 2005).
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