Barili's Vanishing Wonders

The municipality of Barili is “beautiful country.” From Carcar, the road turns, curves and twists amidst mountain peaks and slopes, crowded with corn, coconuts, mangoes and wild foliage that never seem to stop sprouting. Ferns, vines and bushes cling to limestone cliffs and cover deep gorges, ravines and embankments.

Barili is emerging as a modernized niche in the Province of Cebu, but it is losing some of its natural wonders.

Birds

Heron (tikling). A common sight was a heron on the back of a carabao in a little patch of ricefield beside the road near the coastline. From moment to moment, this pure-white bird did some calisthenics: flexed a leg or pulled it up; executed a ballet step, and so gracefully turned its neck around in a flirtatious stance to attract attention.

When dusk crept in, one by one the farmers came to guide their black pets home to the hills, an en masse, the herons would return to their nests at the limestone cliffs that buttressed the shoreline. As they winged their way above the blue waters of Tañon Strait, they looked like white buntings flailing within the bursting colors of the setting sun.

This was a panorama of yesterday, never to be seen again. The patch of riefield is now a burial ground.

Hawk (banog). This brown-white-breasted and telescopic eyed lord of the skies fed on chickens, and chicks. It soared high above the ground, stalled its flight just over a mother hen and her chicks. And, just like a stealthy, silent murderous thief, it swooped down on the victims. Before the mother hen could gather all her chicks under her wings, the banog would have pulled out a chick by its legs, then swept up to the skies. While the poor victim dangled from the talons of its captor, it would chirp for help, while mother hen cackled, jumped and beat her wings in despair.

No more will this scene of agony recur: now, hens and chicks are imprisoned in houses. There are human sling-shot thieves and mother hen could end up skewered.

The Cebuano-Visayan term banog has been applied to the flying toy – tabanog, meaning kite. Banog-banog means the kite soars like the banog. Magtabanog means to fly a kite or kites.

Tamsi. This yellow bird delighted in looking at humans. It entered houses, warbled and chirped as it swung from one tree branch to another. It surveyed the gardens by flitting around, like shafts and slivers of the yellow sun along the pathways of bumble bees, butterflies and other creatures.This jolly bird is seldom seen nowadays.

Woodpecker (tikarol). A very colorful, green bird with a flaming red tuft. It pecked at the trunk of a tree until the bark broke and splintered, leaving a hole. The bird would enter the hole and clean its inside by spitting out the splinters. It stayed inside for some moments, once in a while thrusting its head outside, its red tuft a flame under the thinning clouds of a sunset sky. Then, green plumes and all flew towards the shore to look for food.

Sal-ing (the talking bird). This was a small, grayish bird which was hard to find and catch. Once caught, it was placed at the bottom of a tadyaw (a big, clay jar) and subjected to patient and constant teaching of words. In time, it could mutter some syllables, and learned to imitate its teacher. It could also be taught to sing.

Crow. This bird could be a primitive version of the majestic hawk. It was a noisy one, caw-cawing all the way to the target ricefield and terrified the little brown maya birds who were also after the ricegrains. To ward them off, farmers fashioned scarecrows, tied them to poles and stuck them to the grounf in the middle of the field. Some naughty farmers painted the face of a scarecrow to look like some wives.

There were not so many ricefields in Barili, so there were not so many crows. But now, are they still in town?

Fireflies. These insects were not visible at daytime; they came out at night and lighted the trees with the natural flashlights in their bodies. When the trees were lighted, they looked as if a thousand stars had dropped from the heavens for the purpose of beautifying them.

Can we ever recover these losses? Only God knows!