Hatchlings/August Bird of the Month

It was strange that in the dark of night, a bird was clearly chirping somewhere above one of the huts. We investigated and was startled to find not just one, but two injured and weak, newborn olive-colored birds on the ground, tortuously bitten by ants. We hurriedly cleaned them and put them on a hanging cage close to us. We presumed the chirping bird is the mother, and that the hatchlings fell from their nest (most likely in the eaves of the cógon-roofed hut).

The next morning, we excitedly woke up to see that the hatchlings look better than the previous night.

Before we can even figure out and organize what to feed them, the mother comes and feeds them herself.

As the mother started to flit around gathering food and feeding the two, we were even more surprised to find a third hatchling sitting in a fern leaf, looking like it's hanging for dear life. 

Just like last night, we promptly cleaned the third and temporarily put it on the cage alongside the first two.

The mother would periodically check on them throughout the day, and we opted to keep them another night until we figured they can already manage to fly by themselves the day after.

They are called Lowland White-eyes (matáng-dulóng); we first mistook them as Sunbirds because of their size but on closer look, the large, white-rimmed eyes clearly distinguish them from other small birds.