Cattle Egret at Maambal Orchard (4K)

I finally had some time to go birding at the orchard, and my first capture is a Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis). A medium small egret (19 inch length), this white bird is very common locally. It stays close to cattle or carabao to catch insects the larger animals disturb. 

With the orchard at least 400 meters away from the nearest road frequented by vehicles, it's amazing to hear that no man-made noise can be picked up by the microphone, just the distant calls of a sunbird and later the squawk of another cattle egret. 

Shooting info - Sony RX10 IV, 600 mm, f/14, 1/60 sec, ISO 100, Uniqball UBH45 + Manfrotto 455B tripod, manual exposure in available light, 4K/29.97p capture, ambient sound recorded by the camera's built in microphone, Maambal Orchard, northern Philippines, October 24, 2020.

 

 

Dreaming of preparing some home-made chocolate

A small group of cacao trees (Theobroma cacao) are starting to bear fruit in the orchard, and I'm excited to learn how to prepare some home-made chocolate drink when the fruits have ripened. 

 

A cluster of cacao fruits.

 

From the online videos I've seen, it looks like I need to ferment the seeds for a few days, then dry these under the sun for another few days. The dried cocoa beans are roasted, and the skin removed. After that, the beans are ground with a manual grinder, together with the optional ingredients (sweetener and flavoring). It will take several passes through the grinder before the combined ingredients assume the consistency of a thick chocolate paste. This can now be molded into tablets which are locally called "tablea."

The final step is boiling the tablea with some water, and adding more sweetener and milk to taste.

Much of this process will surely be done by trial and error later, but I need to go online shopping now for an old-fashioned, hand-cranked grinder.

Some 9-year old cacao trees are thriving in the orchard.

Small tree, giant fruit

One of the several jackfruit trees (Artocarpus heterophyllus) in the orchard has started to bear quite a few fruits. With a height of less than 15 feet and a trunk diameter not more than eight inches, this individual tree is heavily laden with oblong fruits, with the skin fully covered with little spikes.

Photographed on October 15, 2020.

I've observed this particular tree for a few weeks now, and the fruits grow quite fast. According to one website, it's the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, each weighing up to 100 lbs and measuring up to three feet long on maturity.

Largest fruit of the lot is head-size after just over a month of growth.

The largest fruit of the lot (above) is now about the size of a human head and probably weighs over eight pounds. If all the fruits in this batch reach maturity, I surely need to prop up the tree and its main horizontal branch with extra support so it won't topple over.

Day 27: Our water well is now working!

After digging for over a week through rock-like strata (which our well digging contractor called "adobe"), we temporarily stopped the job after reaching a good water-bearing depth of just over seven meters . 

We used two sizes of electric-driven jackhammers - the smaller one weighs about 10 kg, while the larger one is over 15 kg - to break through the hard layers, as using a crowbar manually is ineffective. 

Each morning, the recharged well has a water depth in excess of 3 meters (equivalent to about 2,400 liters of water). We took out this accumulated water with a 2 HP submersible pump so we can continue digging with jackhammers. We stopped digging at just over 7 meters because the little streams of recharge water coming from fissures in the rock-like layers is quite strong. Our jackhammer is clad in plastic sheets, but the danger of electric shock is too great for us to continue. 

We plan to extend the depth of the well in early summer, when the water table has subsided enough for us to dig safely. Meantime, we now have enough water to sustain our building jobs.