QC Bird Race 2026 — Leg 2 at the Wildlife Center for Philippine Eagle Week
QC Bird Race 2026, Leg 2: Birding Under the Sign of the Eagle
There's a particular weight to lifting a camera during Philippine Eagle Week. You won't find the Great Philippine Eagle in the middle of Quezon City — it belongs to the country's last deep forests — but on June 6, its presence still presided over the second leg of the QC Bird Race 2026.
Leg one had taken the community into the forest at La Mesa. Leg two brought it back into the heart of the city: the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center, the green oasis on the Quezon Elliptical Circle, for a morning of birding held in honor of the national bird.
A Bird Race in the City's Green Lung
The QC Bird Race 2026 is a three-leg bird photography and conservation series presented by the Wild Bird Photographers of the Philippines (WBPP) and the Quezon City Government, all under the theme The Joy of Birding. Leg two set up inside the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center — a protected 22-hectare nature park in the middle of Metro Manila, and exactly the kind of urban refuge the whole series was built to celebrate.
The morning opened the way every good race does: at the registration table, with test shots, name lists, and the low hum of photographers sizing up the light.
Then came the ritual every birder knows: the gear check. Long lenses out of bags, batteries seated, settings dialed, straps over shoulders. In bird photography, the minutes before the walk are half the game.
For the Love of the National Bird
What set leg two apart was its timing. The event was recognized by the DENR's Biodiversity Management Bureau as an official activity of the 28th Philippine Eagle Week — the annual celebration of the Great Philippine Eagle, one of the rarest and most powerful raptors on earth, and a living symbol of everything the country stands to lose or protect.
No one expected to photograph a Philippine Eagle over the Elliptical Circle. That's the point. The eagle stands in for a bigger idea: that protecting the national bird means protecting the forests it needs, and that the same care extends all the way down to the smaller, everyday birds thriving in a city park. Birding here became a small act of that larger advocacy.
Save the eagle and you save the forest. Save the forest and you save everything living in it — right down to the birds in a city park.
Lord of the Forest
The leg carried a genuine milestone. Alongside the race, WBPP Co-Founder and President Alain Pascua launched his new book, Lord of the Forest: The Fall and Rise of the Great Philippine Eagle — a sequel to his 2017 work Haring Ibong: The Great Philippine Eagle. Both the launch and the race were folded into the official Philippine Eagle Week program, tying the day's photography directly to the story of the national bird's survival.
It's a fitting pairing. A bird race is a day of images; a book is those images given weight and permanence. Together they carry the same message past the event and into the wider conversation about Philippine conservation.
Into the Field
Then the real work began. Teams fanned out across the park, reading the trees and the water's edge, waiting for movement, and swinging into position when a bird finally broke cover. As in every leg, the race was judged in two categories that reward two different instincts: Paramihan, for the most species photographed, and Pagandahan, for the single most beautiful frame.
Running through it all was the education piece the series never skips: a Bird Photography Clinic, with sessions on identifying Philippine birds, ethical field practice, shooting birds in flight, and getting the most out of an image in post. It's the part that turns a fun day out into a sharper, more responsible community of shooters.
The Glass That Gets You There
Bird photography lives and dies on reach. Small, fast, far-off subjects demand serious autofocus and long, bright telephoto glass — and the field showed it, with super-telephoto lenses tracking the treeline all morning.
CameraHaus was on the ground as a proud sponsor of the leg, together with Sony and a lineup of imaging partners backing the race. For a community whose craft depends on exactly this kind of gear, being there — in the field, with the photographers — is the part that matters most.
The Birds of Quezon City, on the Wall
As with every stop on the series, the race shared the venue with the traveling "Birds of Quezon City" Photo Exhibit — a wall of images that turns the abstract idea of urban biodiversity into something you can stand in front of. For visitors who came to the park for a regular day out, it's a quiet revelation: all of this lives here, right in the middle of the city.
The Community That Keeps Showing Up
Two legs in, the through-line of the QC Bird Race is clear, and it isn't the scorecards. It's the people — local and visiting birders who keep coming back, sharing sightings, lending a hand, and folding newcomers into the group. Quezon City, for the record, is home to 77 resident and 47 migratory bird species; days like this are how a whole community learns to notice them.
On to the Finale
With La Mesa and the Wildlife Center behind it, the QC Bird Race 2026 has one leg left: the finale at the University of the Philippines Diliman on August 20, timed to WBPP's anniversary. If the first two legs are any sign, it'll be another morning of long lenses, sharp eyes, and a community that treats a day of birding as a small act of conservation.
Whether you shoot a full super-telephoto rig or you've never framed a bird in your life, the invitation stands. Bring your patience, bring your longest lens, and come see how much wild still lives in the city.
Relive It on Instagram
See the official recap from the day over on our Instagram.
From @camerahaus. View the post on Instagram →