New records and other observations of birds on the island of Tablas, Romblon province, Philippines

The Philippines are well known for their high number(and proportion) of threatened and endemic bird species(BirdLife International 2001). However, until relativelyrecently, little attention has been paid to subspecies. Collar(1997, 2003) drew attention to the problem of taxa thathad been reduced from species to subspecies status withscant study at a time when such lumping seemed preferable.He pointed out how such distinct but lumped forms nowprovide a problem for conservationists when legislationand priorities usually operate only at the species level.There are many such obviously distinct forms in thePhilippines, and some less obvious, but the present-daystatus of many of the 708+ endemic subspecies scatteredthrough the Philippine archipelago remains little known.For example, four endemic subspecies are consideredrestricted to just Tablas or Tablas and Romblon, butthere had been no recent studies on either of these islands.None of these subspecies has been considered a full speciesin recent literature, although three taxa are particularlydistinct: Spangled Drongo