Mountains of negros oriental

Cashew nut

Over the last few years we have visited many areas of the mountains above Valencia and dauin, we have come across many new plants and animals, the picture on the left are cashew nuts grown by small time farmers. The strange thing is most of the time they eat the fruits above the nut and discard the most important part as they do not know how to process it or where to sell the nuts.
Also there are many exotic fruit trees like advocado, lansonis just to name a few.









                                                                                                                                                                       

Queen ant

The picture to the right is the biggest ant I have ever seen,it must have been over one inch long. There are some strange bugs and creatures in the Philippines and some of them don't even have a scientific name yet and little is know about them.
I think this ant is called a queen ant.
Below is a picture of one of the giant tree ferns which are found up around 500m in the Forrest's, also is a picture of one of the many species of ginger. If you sit quietly near one of these plants you may see a sun bird come along and feed on the nectar.
I am just starting to learn all the names of the animals and plants here on negros bit it's slow going as my wife only gives me the local name which really does not help when trying to find a reference on the Internet so best is by photo only!

Some times I just sit and watch what comes along but you have to be very quiet as the wildlife is very shy here unlike back home in the uk,it's not surprising though as the locals shoot or trap everything that moves so I don't know how long these animal will have left on this planet.

Tree ferns

One of the ginger family