Chestnut Munia In Our Garden (Mayang Pula)

 

(c) Tirso Paris 2011

At around past 1 PM today, I saw a unique bird perched on one of the leaves of our Vanda orchid. It was small, with a brown body, black head, and white beak. Then it flew immediately to a nearby Ficus tree in our garden. 

When I went outside, I saw it again much to my amazement, majestically perched on another Ficus tree this time. It stayed there for a while,  just enough for other people in our house to see it, before it flew again and went back to the first Ficus tree.

(c) Tirso Paris 2011

I immediately searched for it on the net it by typing “Philippine urban native birds”. Google led me to a wordpress site devoted to Philippine bird species and voila: I saw a picture of the same bird that I saw in our garden and learned that its name is Chestnut Munia. I further made a research by clicking our ever reliable Wikipedia and found out that its scientific name is Lonchura atricapilla and that it is also called as Black-headed Munia.

Both sites mentioned that it is called mayang pula in our country, just so to distinguish it from the predominantly brownish Tree Sparrow that we see everywhere – the maya. 

(c) Romy Ocon

One very interesting fact that I learned about the Chestnut Munia is that it used to be our national bird.

It was an awe-inspiring experience for me since it was my first time to see such bird species. It is a common urban bird, but how come it was my first time to see the Chestnut Munia?