IT WAS a moonless and chilly November night when 60-year-old David Capuyan set out from his home in barrio Dagdag, Sagada, Mt. Province, for the steep ridges of Mt. Ampakaw to hunt migratory birds.
It was also drizzling, and cold gusts of winter wind blowing south from mainland Asia sent the municipality’s only thermometer—at the St. Joseph’s Pension house—running well below 10°C.
Mt Ampakaw .
On one hand he clutched a seped, a folded nylon net he himself had woven months earlier; unfurled, the net spread out like a giant monk’s hood, some 12 feet from top to bottom. On his other hand he held a Petromax kerosene lamp.
A teenage Kankanaey boy walked silently behind him through Dagdag’s rice fields at the foot of Mt. Ampakaw, some 6,000 ft. above sea level. The boy carried on his shoulder two 6½ ft.-bamboo poles, on which the seped which soon be hooked. These were all David and his fellow mangkik bird hunter needed for the ikik, the hunt of migratory birds. 
That, and the bottle of Ginebra San Miguel gin, the course spirit of which they would take in soon in careful gulps to warm themselves against the bitter cold gales that swept the top of the mountain.
San Miguel gin
David and the boy walked silently, careful not to speak, lest their hunt would be maamawan, or ill-fated. They also took pains to lighten their footfalls, careful not to disturb the neighborhood dogs—they believed that a single bark could bring bad luck, and force them to return to the beginning of their journey.
The rain stopped, but the two hunters were now soaked. David peered at the low-lying dark clouds that shrouded the mountain: they were dobdob clouds, or clouds that moved from the east to west. He smiled broadly, thinking of the prospects of the hunt. Experience taught him that the strange birds that came only on the last three months each year flew westward, above and concealed by the dark clouds. On many other moonless nights that month, David had patiently watched kasao clouds blow eastward. But now all conditions— the rain, the movement of the clouds, the dark moon, and the time of the month—promised a good hunt.
The old man mumbled a prayer to Kabunian, the God of his Kankaney people who never failed to send them, each cold season for as far back as David could remember, flocks and flocks of strange multi-colored birds. Still, he was glad that time has changed. Tonight he was not obliged to wear black, or to sacrifice a chicken to Kabunian, or to follow any of the rituals that once had to be performed before going on ikik.
EXCITEMENT strengthened David’s old bones, so he and the boy climbed swiftly through the slopes of Ampakaw. Reaching his family’s beka—a 10-ft deep, platform-like trench carved out on the Western side of the mountain’s topmost ridge, David and the boy began to prepare for the hunt.
The Petromax was planted firmly on the ground, placed against the west-blowing winds. The boy built a small fire with pine branches and needles. With experienced figures, David deftly hooked his net to both poles and passed one to the boy. Then they sat, facing each other, huddled close to the fire, with a hand each firmly gripping one pole of the net, and began the night-long visit for the arrival of the birds.
A beam of light from the Petromax cut through the dark, casting the shadows of the two solitary figures on the walls of another beka on the westward curve of the mountain a few feet away. Tonight the two hunters were alone. But had they come on another moonless night a month ago, they would have seen the mountain Ampakaw come alive with the flickering of petromax lights in most of the 50 or so bekas sculpted out of the mountainside, and heard the hushed voices—and suppressed bouts of vinous laughter—of Sagada’s bird hunters.
For the bakakew of the year—the months of September to November—is truly ikik season in Sagada. On every moonless night during this period—some 20 to 50 nights each year—the men and boys of Dagdag, Sagada and Demang barrios brave the cold, and the steep slopes of Ampakaw to hunt birds that migrate from Japan, Taiwan and Mainland Asia.
But with only hand-made tools to catch these birds, luck has much to do with the success of an ikik hunt: a team of mangkiks could return one night with as much as 300 birds, or it could return on another empty-handed.
At least a thousand birds are caught in the thick of each ikik season—ardeids, quails, rails, cuckoos, kingfishers, thrushes, warblers, doves, wagtails and most of all, shrikes. A 1967 joint study by universities in Korea, Tokyo, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines noted that at least 111 bird species from 33 families migrate yearly to escape the beginning of winter in their habitants in the northern parts of Asia.
Many of the birds travel 3,220 kilometers southward through Sagada, Mt. Province, to Buguias, Benguet, to Dalton Pass, Nueva Viscaya, and finally to Palawan, Mindanao and other warmer islands of southeast Asia. They are night-flying birds that navigate by the stars and fly high above the clouds.
With the type of technology the Sagadans use to catch birds, it is impossible to discriminate which birds should be protected. Thus, in many cases, kingfishers—or other exotic birds—are trapped and killed along with the other more common birds. But Sagada bird hunters swear that if they could, they would only hunt a few species. Years of experience has shown these birds to be bountiful—the kuba or doves, atiway or wagtail, and most of all the siteg or red-tailed or brown shrike.
In fact, the Kankanaey ikik season coincides only with the fall migration of the shrikes—tiny brown, yellow, red-tailed or spotted birds that are smaller than day-old chicks and are caught by the hundreds during the ikik season—even while the birds are known to migrate yearly through Sagada from September to April of the next year.
These birds are either cooked and eaten by the hunters themselves and their own families, or sold in nearby Bontoc for P60.00 per half kilo. Indeed, siteg is considered one of Sagada’s specialties; at times it is deep-fried so that all of it—skull, legs, feet—can all be eaten, but more often, its is marinated and preserved in binekbek or uncooked rice and salt, stored in jars, and served later, much like the Pangasinan buro.
BUT FOR David Capuyan and his companion, sitting patiently on the top of Mt. Ampakaw on a night days away from the bakakew and well into the inana or December month, catching siteg was furthest from their minds.
What they were stalking were the bigger birds–quails, doves and the other tougher birds that could stand for longer periods the cold of winter in their habitants. For David after all, ikik was no longer a hunt for food, although a single dove’s meat could easily feed four of his kin, and when preserved, a single lucky night’s catch of doves could last almost a year. Ikik, for David, was a now a sport, a challenge, a test of strength and endurance, the same way it is for many Sagadan young boys today. Stalking the biggest birds, David and the boy waited patiently way past midnight.
AT FIRST the months arrived. Colorful night moths— bukew—always heralded the arrival of the birds. The boy caught a few, roasted them a bit on the fire, and swallowed them whole to give him strength for the impending hunt. Soon the rustling of wings could be heard, and then the collective chirps of birds, faint at first, then gaining volume until it seemed as if the two hunters were surrounded by sound.
David and the boy were now on there feet, grasping with both hands the poles of the net, now unfurled, whipping westward with the wind. The wind blew the clouds apart, revealing the flocks of birds. One solitary bird flew–the birds flew in a strange form—ahead, leading the flock like a giant arrow in the sky.
Two birds, attracted by the petromax light, began to dive swiftly. The two mangkiks jumped in unison, hurling the net against the two birds. Thwack! Thwack! The birds were trapped, the two hunters rapidly lowered their poles and strangled the birds in the net with their bare hands. Still, flocks and flocks of birds went fluttering past. Soon swarms of them were swooping down toward the light, sending the two hunters jumping madly, straining their arms to control the net.
LIGHT BEGAN to paint the dawn sky when the last of the flock flew past. The hours had passed quickly for the two hunters, but with the departure of the last birds the two hunters began to feel weariness seeping into their bones. They gathered the net together and examined their catch. Nine doves. For all the back-breaking work and the night-long vigil on the top of a bitter-cold mountain. But for David, this did not matter at all. He was addicted to the excitement of the hunt, and to the memory of a time some 30 years ago when he had caught 175 parrots and doves on a single night.
UNLIKE MOST of Sagada’s mangkiks, David has a deeper sense of the history of ikik, and a better understanding of migratory birds. Having grown-up in barrio Dagdag, one of the two barrios settled at the foot of Mt. Ampakaw and traditionally linked to ikik, helps: he can easily recount the various folk tales that explain the beginning of ikik, stories that were past down from generation to generation by the lallakays or elders of his dap-ay (A dap-ay is the smallest Kankanaey socio-political structure found in a village, administered by elders who also create and administer indigenous customary laws.)
In fact, David boasts that he is the rediscoverer of ikik. He admits though, that ikik had been a tradition in Dagdag and Demang–two of Sagada’s 19 barrios—for as far as he, or his father, or his grandfather could remember. So much so, that the families of these barrios handed down there bekas from generation to generation, in the same manner that they handed down their payews or rice fields, and clan forests. David however claims that the exigencies of World War II had interrupted the practice of ikik, and it was only in 1964 that he rediscovered it.
One foggy, moonless night David and a friend went to lake Danum, on the western foot of Mt. Ampakaw, to fish. From out of nowhere, swarms and swarms of birds swooped down, probably attracted to his kerosene lamp. David was only able to hit 12 birds with his flashlight. But the experience whet his appetite for the hunt, and ever since then he scaled Ampakaw to hunt birds. Soon, the practice caught on again among the boys of his barrios.
Experience, combined with his own research on the ikik tradition of his people, has made David a seasoned mangkik. But his informal study of the migration of birds only began in 1967 when his net trapped a banded bird. Naturally, the bird was cooked and eaten. But David sent the ring back to the address inscribed on it—the Korean bird-banding station at the Korean Hee University in Seoul, South Korea. The Station responded by sending him a certificate of recovery and a manual of its operations–both of which David cherishes until today and proudly displays to any interested traveler.
That year, some Asian universities—Korea’s Kyung Hee University, Japan’s Yamashita Institution of Ornithology and Zoology and University of Ryukyus, Malaysia’s University of Malaya and Taiwan’s Tunghai University and the US Army Medical Research University were working together on the Migration Animal Pathological Survey.
Under the study, millions of migratory birds were banded to study their migratory routes and flyways, the distribution of birds in eastern and southern Asia, and the various forms of bird parasites.
Perhaps it was this study that first caused the uproar over the hunting of migratory birds in Sagada, David surmises. He may be right, for it was only after reports of Sagada folk’s catching of banded birds reached the Manila press that the furor over ikik began.
WHAT FEW people know is the even way back in the 1960s, the migratory bird study team was forced to size up the dimensions and importance of the mass migration (of birds) to the lives of native people. In Malaysia, for instance, some 100,000 shrikes were being caught and then sold by farmers to professionals bird dealers for US$0.03 each, then sold by dealers at 6 cents each.
Today’s animal rights activists would probably be outraged over the way the shrikes were treated in Malaysia. In order not to get pinched, farmers often broke the jaws of the shrikes. Also, the usual fashion of carrying shrikes about was to tie them by their feet in a large, dangling mass of struggling birds, so that few of the birds are spared from there bones being broken, or their skulls being crushed.
What few people also know is that hunting migratory birds is a practice known not only to Sagada. Egrets from Japan and Taiwan have been known to be hunted throughout the Philippines. The 1967 study also noted that hawks were heavily hunted in the Philippines.
TODAY, Sagada’s mangkiks are taking the flak from foreign and local environmentalists who are fearful that the practice of ikik disrupts the migratory patterns of hundreds of bird species, and contributes to the dwindling of their numbers.
Even the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Cordillera Administrative Region has called ikik the most destructive bird-catching method here in the Cordillera region. It is not only destructive, but it taints the image of Sagada as a tourist area, a report by DENR-CAR’s Environment Management Specialist Clifford P. Aquino claims. Entitled Let the Birds Fly Free, the report (published in 1995) recommends a total ban on ikik, DENR’s Joel M. Bihis explains. He also expresses surprise over the fact that an international study of migratory birds was done way back in the 1960s even when he had earlier claimed that there are no exact studies on migratory birds up to today.
Indeed, the DENR-CAR may even be in danger of duplicating the results of the old study: on Oct. 5, 1995, a memo for Virgilio Q. Marcelo, DENR’s secretary for the field operations from the DENR-CAR recommends the setting-up of migratory bird monitoring sites in Besao and Sagada. At the same time, Bihis admits that his office, the Protected Areas and Wildlife Division-CAR, under the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) in Manila, is still in the process of information gathering. Yet despite this lack of information, the DENR report was published in full by the Baguio Midland Courier last Sept. 24, 1995.
What the DENR does have are tough laws that protect migratory wild animals, prohibit their trade, and penalize the hunting of such wild species. The Convention on International Trade of Endangered Specifies of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), signed in Washington DC in 1973 was ratified by the Philippine government in 1987.
By doing so, the country—through the DENR—is bound to regulate, control and prohibit the trade of wildlife. None of the migratory birds caught by mangkiks have been known to be sold outside the country, and thus technically do not fall under the CITES, the international document that lists species and sub-species of birds whose international trade should be banned.
But the CITES list can serve as a guide to what birds are rare or endangered, and can be used to determine which ikik birds should not be hunted. The country has also signed—but not ratified—the 1979 Bonn Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. Yet copies of these laws are not even available at the local DENR office.
Laws on the local level are even tougher. DENR Administrative Order No. 36, series of 1991, authorizes DENR personnel—and even members of the local police—to confiscate, or seize illegally collected, gathered, acquired, transported or imported wild flora and fauna, including the instruments, tools, vehicles, and other equipments used to collect these wild plants and animals.
Any person caught with such illegally collected wildlife can be arrested without warrant, charged in court for violation of PD 705—or the forestry code, and sentenced with the same penalties as qualified theft.
Tough laws, indeed, but are they ever enforced? To date, no Sagadan has ever been caught or imprisoned for going on ikik, DENR’s former Community Environment and Natural Resources Officer for Sagada, Manny Pogeyed, admits. Neither is the only animal rescue center in the region—found in Baguio City—really used.
Can the lack of systematic information on ikik, and loose enforcement of wildlife protection laws in the Cordilleras spell a crisis for the migratory birds?
Since the 1960s, the Cordillera mountain range from Mt. Ampakaw in Sagada southward to Sinipsip, Buguias,Benguet has been identified by ornithologists as a main flyway of hundreds of migratory bird species. Among the more common ones are ardeids, quails, rails, cuckoos, kingfishers, thrushes, warblers, doves, wagtails and most of all, shrikes—some of these birds are now rare and endangered. Is it highly unlikely, then, that some of these threatened birds are trapped and eaten by the mangkiks of Sagada during ikik season? If this is so, does ikik threaten the survival of some migratory bird species?
FOR SAGADA (former) Mayor Thomas Killip, these questions are out of the question. I don’t think ikik is disrupting the migratory pathways of the birds. Ikik has been an age-old practice in Sagada, and if this practice disrupts migratory pathways, then there would probably be no ikik birds nowadays, Killip says. The question should be, he points out, not whether ikik is disrupting migratory patterns, but whether it is reducing the number of birds. But is there any observed detrimental effect of ikik on the environment? Despite the old-age practice of ikik the Sagadans have not observed any detrimental effect on, or a change in, their agriculture and environment. Of course there may be an effect on a wider scale, but is this enough to offset some ecological balance? he asks.
Kilip is also quick to defend ikik from charges of its being a destruction practice. That’s an outsider’s point of view, he reacts. It’s like when the British say that eating dog meat is a crime. But how different is ikik from the fishing practices of small fishermen throughout the country? And what about hunting pheasants in the many parts of Europe?
Indeed, the furor over ikik may be misplaced. For one, environmentalists agree that the most important cause of species extinction is the direct and indirect destruction of their habitats by deforestation, shifting agriculture, urbanization, construction of transport corridors, siltation, and chemical and solid waste pollution.
Once destroyed, most habitats cannot be reconstructed, and the loss of associated biodiversity cannot be recovered. Also, in international circles today, there is much talk of the so-called environmental practices of indigenous people. At one extreme, these tribal people are even believed to keep ancient secrets that have the power to ultimately save a world bent on destroying itself. But how much of this talk is mere rhetoric?
EVEN SHORT visits to Sagada will show that the core of its culture had been molded by nature. Most Sagadan ritual revolve around its livelihood, which has traditionally been tied to the land and its seasons.
Sagadans in their 30s recount that it was only in the past two decades—when electricity was installed and more and more tourists began to arrive—that Sagada’s culture began to change rapidly. But for centuries, life in this Western Mountain Province town swung with the seasons.
Yesterday’s Sagadan lived off the land. 
He depended in part on agriculture, and in part on what nature offered him freely.
Rice and camote were the staples; rice was grown on 50 sq-meter, clan-owned, irrigated rice paddies. Planted during the bakakew, it was harvested eight months after—from June to August every year. Only green manure—sunflower leaves and weeds—were used as fertilizer and pesticides, so the rice harvested was usually not enough for a family’s yearly needs. Camote filled in that need. This was grown on umas—or small, swidden, non-irrigated plots, together with corn, peanuts, beans, legumes, coffee and bananas. Some of the rice went to feeding the chickens, and most of the camote tops or leaves were fed to the pigs.
Jessie Degay, former president of the Sagada Environmental Guides Association (SEGA) explains pigs and chicken were traditionally ritual animals, Hindi, basta basta yung pagkain ng pigs and chickens, he says, noting that for by Sagadans centuries ago, pigs and chickens were only butchered during rituals—to appease angry spirits, to pray for rain, to bless a marriage, or to thank Kabunian for a good harvest.
Within this context, Sagadans a long time ago must have been forced to find other sources of protein, forcing them to evolve a tradition of hunting, Degay proffers.
Seventy year-old Edmund Cangbay is old enough to remember a time when hunting was a tradition in Sagada, that involved not only the men, but even women and children.
January to May were fallow periods for Sagadans, Cangbay says. They were the months of the long wait for the rice to ripen. Hunting during these months was an imperative.
The men and the older boys were sent to traditional hunting grounds that spanned what is now the boundary of Mt. Province and Abra to hunt wild animals—sabag or wind chickens, buka or lanas, wild boar and usa or deer. When I was young, there was plenty of wild deer, now no more, Cangbay muses.
For younger boys it was stalking wildcats—just about the size of a domestic cat and once plentiful in the caves of Sagada. It was also the boys who went to caves during summer to trap kupiti or wild birds—a tedious job of covering the mouths of the cave with a net and waiting for a week for the bats to emerge.
But it was the arrival of the first rains—in the months of April to May—that highlighted Sagada as a hunting culture. For during these months, even women and children were involved in the hunt, and even the insects were not spared. With the first rains come the liyek or dragonflies, and the abeb and lusingan, two varieties of beetles.
Liyek gathering is a children’s affair. Children build a mangkaob or a three-and-a-half-foot grass hut with stick posts, and cover it with mud. Where to build the mangkaob is a secret passed on from mother to child, and once built, the children gather around waiting for the dragonflies to emerge from their hiding places underground.
Gathering abeb and lusingan, in turn, is a community affair. These beetles come in swarms during the twilight of the first rain, and settle on the ground, where they are handpicked by the Sagadans, and collected in a bamboo tube.
There is a joy in catching beetles, Cangbay says wistfully. But apart from the joy, the gathering of insects was alternative source of protein for the Sagadans.
Seen within these contexts, the hunting of migratory birds seems but part of Sagada’s past subsistence agriculture. Ikik is a part of Sagada life, Jessie Degay insists, even when he claims to be an environmentalist. His views are echoed by Mayor Killip who notes that ikik was a source of protein for many years. For mangkik David Capuyan, this alternative protein source was even a blessing. That is why the method was even called the hunting of birds pangkikan, which means sharing with the Gods, he explains.
Sagadans also insist that ikik is negligible factor in the dwindling of species. They seem to have evolved a deep-seated belief that they are part of the birds’ ecosystem, and that ikik is only some form of natural predation. According to Mayor Killip, There will always be migratory birds—migration is part of their instinct. Besides, not all birds are caught, only low-flying ones.
Mamamatay naman talaga sila (They are bound to die), says Degay of the migratory birds. He believes that the birds caught are the weaker birds, after all. And when cut open, talagang walang laman ang bituka nila (their innards are empty), he insists. In the end, it boils down to the survival of the fittest, he concludes. And for one who grew up in the harsh mountains of Sagada, this explanation seems but fitting.
Even the DENR report reflects this general view. Let the birds fly free notes that one Sagadan individual interviewed on ikik reacted and said that God created the birds for the people to eat and accordingly, bird catching is not a sin. It is a sin when you catch more that what you need and throw away the excess, the interviewee said.
Sagadans are reasonably upset over DENR’s focus on ikik, insisting that the office should focus more on the region’s more important environmental crises.
I think DENR should be more concerned with indiscriminate mining and logging, Mayor Killip notes. At paano naman yung caves (And what of the rock formations)? asks Degay. Ano ba ang ginagawa ng DENR sa destruction ng rock formations (What is being done about the rock formations)—that are blasted for concrete? The birds will reproduce, the trees can be replanted, but can you replace a rock formation? he queries.
What Sagadans seem to forget is that while they once lived in a culture that was bound by a deep respect for nature, that culture is changing rapidly. Electricity, television, tourism, are only a few factors that are eroding Sagada’s culture.
In fact, the Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance—a group concerned with the culture and rights of indigenous peoples in the Cordillera provinces—classifies Sagada and surrounding parts of Mt. Province as among the Cordillera areas where the indigenous culture still survives, but is today threatened.
Tourism, overseas contract work and vegetable gardening dependent on chemical fertilizers are now becoming a bigger part of Sagada’s economy. The rituals surrounding ikik are no longer practiced and now it is done indiscriminately, and for sport. It is not yet a tourist attraction, but many tourists see it as such.
What Sagadans also seem to overlook is the much of the world’s biodiversity is now threatened, and any factor that contribute to that threat—however negligible—may still help spell disaster.
How sad though that a people who had long lived in harmony with nature are now forced to pay the price for a destruction they alone did not wreak.
..............................................................
The Birds that Fly Past Sagada
Since the 1960s, the Cordillera mountain range from Mt. Ampakaw in Sagada southward to Sinipsip, Buguias Benguet has been identified by ornithologists as a main flyway of hundreds of migratory bird species.
Among the more common ones are ardeids, quails, rails, cuckoos, kingfishers, thrushes, warblers, doves, wagtails and most of all, shrikes.
At least one bird species, the Japanese Night Heron (Gorsachius goisaki) known to have been caught by Sagada’s mangkiks has been classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, as a “threatened” species.
The Spotted Imperial Pigeon (Ducula carola), commonly hunted during ikik season belongs to the same family as the Grey Imperial Pigeon (Ducula pingkerengii)—another bird the IUCN classifies as threatened.
Other common birds caught through ikik are closely related to threatened species: four species of kingfishers—the common kingfisher, the white-colored kingfisher, the muddy kingfisher and the white-breasted kingfisher, belong to the same family as the Blue-capped kingfisher (Halycon hombroni); two species of pittas— the red-breasted pitta and the horned pitta—are kin to the endangered Steere’s pitta (Pitta steeri); and six species of flycatchers—the Japanese Blue Flycatcher, Gray-spotted Flycatcher, Narcisus Flycatcher, Siberian Flycatcher, Blue-tinted Fantail and Black & Cinnamon Fantail Flycatchers are related to the threatened white-throated jungle flycatcher (Rhinomyias albigularis).
Published, the Sunday Times, February 2006
Image of Lakay Kabayo is by renown photographer Eduardo Masferre
For more on threatened birds visit www.rdb.or.id
