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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

A Thailand Retrospective (1 Viewer)

halftwo

Wird Batcher
Fragrant frangipani blossoms waft across lilly ponds where Chinese pond herons, almost tame, stalk tiddlers on marble corridors. The Magpie robin swoops down on a singing cicada as night falls. A waning moon - soon to signal in the Chinese New Year - rises in a cloudless sky. I wait for dawn.

Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor

Inky pre-dawn and the chorus has already begun - Koels call their name and answer each other across the garden. The stars fade as a hint of light out east blooms ever brighter. Unable to sleep I tread the dewy lawns.

Dawn: an unseen Indian nightjar sings its accelerated chucking notes somewhere close. I approach. Suddenly it launches itself from the track onto some mothy prey and resettles to sing again. But before proper light it has hidden away.

Dry grasses have ripened and browned - my winter bare legs receive their first scratches as I push through scrubby land. Prinias are calling but stubbornly refuse to show. Black drongos are coming in from roosting to perch prominently on every treetop, electric wire and lamp-post. They squabble and chatter.
But closer-to a series of "tacks" from a most elusive bird - several birds in fact - remain sounds only: even the prinias are showing a little now - Plain and Rufescents both in the weeds. It would be the third day before I got a glimpse of this most skulking of birds.

In the copse the Collared scops owl is still where I'd left it two years ago when last I came here, and this time I get better views. But even better - something perched at the top of a tree - obviously cuckoo-shaped.
The grey head and orangy belly of a Plaintive cuckoo!

Hoopoes are commoner this year and several are showing their crests and calling - Greater coucals responding with several more similar "hoo hoo hoos".

A burst of golf-ball-sized gamebirds from underfoot and a whirr of wings from Barred buttonquails skims them briefly a few feet back to cover. Brown shrikes protest my intrusion. A Black-capped kingfisher in the plantation even more gaudy than the Indian rollers and Green bee-eaters all around. A Coppersmith barbet begins to strike the morning anvil monotonously - his mate sidles up beside him as they show their colours in the now risen sun.

Time to wake Mrs.H and go for breakfast - where we watch pink dolphins play offshore across the surface of the swimming pool, as Swallows head north along the beach. These, it transpired were not Irrawaddy dolphins as someone at the hotel said, but Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins - and it wasn't the jetlag - they really are pink!
 
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Not your usual patch musings H but just as evocative. All those birds are a distant dream to me.

Welcome back to Blizzard Britain....you are I take it home. Hope you and Mrs H had a restorative holiday.

Joanne
 
Hi Joanne,

Yes, got back early yesterday - from 30c to 30f in one fell swoop. Snowing as we touched down and shivering as we waited for the car park bus in our sandals!
Jet-lag set in around 7pm and so to bed (in woolly hat!), so I woke c.3am and decided to get up and write.
Just been researching the dolphins and edited the post.
More later.

Yes, thankyou, I got lots of exercise, and birding and Mrs.H lots of pampering; both lots of sunshine & wonderful food.
For quite some intervals we could 'forget' our troubles and relax. Fortunately everthing went very smoothly and to plan - we even missed the bomb in Bangkok(?)

Snow now melted - and as I write ten Long-tailed tits on the feeder!

H
 
Part Two: A Rescue Mission

Dawn another day saw me in a different direction and a nasty surprise.
Not far from the hotel a small pool was an obvious attraction for the local wildlife. Beyond it a seven feet high concrete wall.
On top of the wall was a mist net strung between two huge bamboo poles.
Luckily it must have only been put up the night before and just two victims were in it.
A quick detour around the wall and I could bring the poles down and inspect the birds caught in the net. One was obviously dead - and was a Plain-backed sparrow; the other was a Spotted dove and was alive. Getting it out was not so simple without a knife and without injuring it further. Its legs and wings were thoroughly tangled in many layers of fine netting.
Eventually I freed it and put on the ground. Still in shock it sat unblinking.

Next I took the net from the poles and stashed it in my rucksac - an obviously expensive item which would take some replacement. One of the poles I took for a walk and left it. Nearly two weeks later, on my last morning, the net hadn't been replaced. A small success not unlike my first time in Thailand when I collected a dozen or more snares I'd watched being deployed along a small creek. Unfortunately this kind of thing is all too common in south-east Asia.

Later in the same place I watched various species - including the local pair of Shikras (Sparrowhawk equivalents) flying just where the mist net had been. A large shrub was alive with Plain-backed sparrows - obviously a local communal roost - perhaps two hundred individuals.

Returning to the hotel I was rewarded by the stunning sight of a Verditer flycatcher (pale blue) sitting atop a tall tree next to a Coppersmith barbet - this must have been a migrant - there just for a day - and a new species for me.

The rescue added a few cuts to add to my scratches, but breakfast tasted all the better for the mist net removal.
 
How very sad. :C Clearly good mist net practice has not been heard of by whoever set it. You did the right thing.
 
No, Joanne,
As Steve implies - the net was set only to catch the birds for the cage bird trade.
And/or food.

H
 
Well done H only way to make a difference to the numbers of birds killed or caught and condemned to a life in a small cage starting with a terrifying ordeal in a busy street market while it gets sold for peanuts ... standard good practice of any civilised birder ;)

Hope Mrs H is holding up and enjoying the break.
 
Thanks Deborah,

Yes, nasty to see the wonderful stuff crammed into cages. There were local moves afoot to try to capture a Hoopoe - fortunately the Thai lady owner of the garden two were frequenting refused to allow attempts at their capture.

And yes, thanks, Mrs H. really enjoyed it and seems to have got more energy from it.

H
 
Sorry for being naive....I hadn't thought of the caged bird trade.

That's OK - until you witness the shock of it it is difficult to imagine how others perceive the "uses" of birds.
The dogs have a bad time too - lots of emmaciated mangy pathetic specimens living in the streets. Strange from a country of genuinely nice people on the whole.
 
Nice account H. I didn't get a chance to bird much in Thailand when we went through. I obviously missed a lot. I'm glad you and Mrs. H had a good time.
Sue
 
Part Three: The BIGBY Section.

Thanks Sue,
If I remember your sojoun there was interupted by events. Have you been keeping the Blog up? Will be updating myself on your travels today.

Life in Thailand settled for a while into a routine: after an early breakfast I'd hire a bike from the hotel (I was one of their few customers) and take myself off for two hours or so, Mrs.H esconced by the pool, around and about. This is a distillation.

Last time we were there it was October - the rainy season had just ended and everywhere was lush and green. Now the contrast was stark - trees had shed leaves, grasses had browned and the local marshes were reduced to small areas of pools with dry muddy surrounds.
Bulldozers continue to chew great swathes into all the habitats, "For Sale" signs dot every other plot of land, houses and hotels going up all around.

So out into this reduced habitat: my legs as yet unused to the bike, all of me unused to the heat. Low gears to begin with, slowly replaced by higher ones and greater distances as the days went by.

And the birds were different to quite some extent too. Winter had arrived proper and so had winter visitors.
On one of the first days down at the marsh along with the usual insect-hawkers (Germain's swiftlets, Ashy woodswallows, Red-rumped and Barn swallows, Asian palm swifts) was an Asian house martin - which briefly gave good views before moving on.
Plain prinias were singing, Intermediate egrets and Little cormorants on the pools, a Yellow wagtail.

On a little bit of marsh, one morning, along with the resident Red-wattled lapwings, Wood sandpipers (mating!) and Little ringed plovers was a magnificent Grey-headed lapwing - a real turn up - a tick - and a superb bird. At the same time I flushed a Painted snipe - another new marsh bird.

The bike-hire guys suggested the nearby mangrove reserve: I went there four times in all. My main quarry was Mangrove whistler - which is an elusive little critter.

I'd got the bike-ride time down to ten minutes to the mangrove entrance by the end of the holiday. You arrive at an entrance road, which, depending on tides, holds an adjacent wader spot. Black-winged stilts, Common and Wood sandpipers and Redshanks there. As soon as the mangroves are near a strange whistling song becomes obvious - which I took to be the Whistler before I saw the singer.

Along the boardwalks between the mangroves - dark and cool - roots exposed or hidden according to tide - huge ugly mudskippers plopping and swimming away - two warblers are at home: Dusky warblers' harsh "tak"s draw the eye, while Pale-legged leaf warblers' call also give them away.
The insanely loud harsh cries of Collared kingfishers - a stunning pale azure bird - echo around, and Green herons protest croakily as you approach.
But that whistling? A loud, clear, melodic piping, up and down the scale - wierd. Soon enough the confiding owners of this song gave themselves up - Golden-bellied gerygones. Delightful, tiny and tame - they would sing almost as they sat on my shoulder, the female sidling up beside her mate as he did so, they seemed to have no fear of man, almost uniquely in Thailand.

So with that mystery solved, and another tick added, the Whistler search continued. It was on my third trip that I finally got a look: Mangrove whistler - a pair. Meantime, all around, Pied fantails called and flitted high and low.
Four kingfisher species - including the only site I saw Pied - were present at the mangroves, Collared and Black-capped both abundant.

But the mangroves, though they had their specialties, were fairly species poor. I needed to find some different habitats locally if I was to add to the bird tally. And find some I did.
 
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H,
Wow, you really got some great birds didn’t you? I had to look up the Grey Headed Lapwing, it is a striking bird, congratulations. I know that you Europeans are used to seeing your Northern lapwings, but I have to say that I was thrilled to see it and I think it is more attractive than all the other lapwings I’ve seen; I seem to be a sucker for any birds with crests. I would not have seen one at all had we not gone to Germany to visit ‘Our Germans’. And the Painted Snipe! You lucky dog.
Is the Mangrove Whistler you refer to the same bird the Aussies call Mangrove Golden Whistler—Pachycephala melanura? Probably not since the lapwings and fantails are different. I have been longing for Australia lately and your post just made me very ‘homesick’ I can almost smell the creek and hear the Wompoo Fruit-Doves in the Kingfisher Circuit of the Conway National Forest. Last week, at three in the morning or so, I had a good internet connection and spent a few hours googling accommodations in OZ. Finally, as the sun came up and I went to bed, the fantasy ended and I acknowledged that I could not go back to Oz until the circumnavigation is over. That will happen when we reach Zihuatenejo, Mexico. God, now that I’ve totally highjacked your thread with my ramblings, I’ll shut up.
Thanks for the post, I really enjoyed reading it.
Sue

...If I remember your sojoun there was interupted by events. Have you been keeping the Blog up? Will be updating myself on your travels today.

Don’t bother with the blog. I’ve been too lazy, or apathetic to write (unless it's blabbing on your thread;)). I did write a little thing about my embarrassing encounter with Amy Winehouse, but that is about the extent.

Yeah, the tsunami was definitely a wrinkle in the Thai sojourn.
 
Aren't Pied Kingfishers the neatest things? When we were in Egypt I watched a pair showing an incredible display. Their flight and sounds reminded me of giant hummingbirds.
Sue
 
Hi Sue,

I read your blog but missed the Amy Winehouse ref. (?)

Golden whistler is another bird - there are a few Whistlers - Oz has many I think.

I must say I was impressed by the Grey headed lapwing - especially as the Thailand guide doesn't do it justice. Reminded me of White-tailed plover in Egypt - which was lovely too.

I must say that Pied kingfisher - though impressive - isn't one of my favourites - it's some of the really colourful ones I prefer.

Many more birds to talk about yet - I'm going to do another 'local' birding bit, then go on to my 4x4 jungle adventures - where the birding was really great.

H
 
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BIGBY Continued

So the mangroves and marshes, though holding good birds, were getting samey. I had had a few new birds - Spectacled spiderhunter at the mangroves, Sooty-headed bulbuls (several times, though last visit: none), and the Lapwing, and some good old friends - Australasian bushlarks, Grey-faced buzzard, Oriental honey buzzard and a calling Oriental scops owl at dawn by the hotel entrance - succesfully lit by my torch and the security guard's as it sat at the top of a palm tree; even a Vernal hanging parrot, a Spangled drongo and a Black baza turned up at the hotel one day. But I thought a change of habitat was needed if I was to see more.

Before I discovered the wooded hills just inland I had by now finally got a decent view of the skulking warblers that had remained out of sight for days: they turned out to be Thick-billed warblers - not a tick but not far off. Good views of two different Mongooses of possibly one species (must research this!) on the same day too.

Now my cycling legs were taking me further afield and I headed straight for the nearby hills. I found an accessible viewpoint which I named Quarry Hill as an old tiny quarry formed a break in the impenetrable woods - I was hoping that I might get birds through the gap. I was right.

As soon as I arrived a Jerdon's baza broke cover from the canopy and flew around the bend of the hill right in front of me. Still grinning from this amazing tick a Plaintive cuckoo and an Oriental cuckoo (another tick) obliged!
Next a Green iora (tick no. three!) came down to the plantation where I stood and gave brilliant close views - a lovely bird. But there was more. High up over the hill top Brown-backed needtails were gliding around, and a Peregrine (a pale Japonensis) soared above. A Green-billed malkoha - possibly one of my top ten favourites, despite its commoness, sailed down to raid the orchard.

Then upslope another long-tailed bird came across the gap - this was a Racket-tailed treepie - another tick and a delight too. (Again on my last visit I had not managed to see any - but by the holiday's end I'd seen many). Above again a Black eagle swept over - close over. Crested goshawks began displaying - fluffy undertail coverts fluttering in the updraught. A White-rumped shama - a real cracker of a bird and normally a skulker, also broke cover briefly across the gap.

Well pleased with morning I detoured back to the hotel via another track and found a far more extensive marsh - putting up a Purple heron, seeing the only Moorhen of the trip, and finding a Stonechat of the stejnegeri race
- with a white rump. Three Spotted owlets in an old palmless palm tree watched from their nest hole. No Pied or Eastern marsh harriers this time though - presumably those I'd seen in October previously were only passage birds.

I returned to the area the following week after my jungle break - further ticks were found - the best being a cracking view of a Grey treepie - according to the book out of range - and so all the better find.
This was sharing a tree with two Greater-racket-tailed drongos , a Racket-tailed treepie and a Green-billed malkoha - long tailed birds all.
On the marshes I finally got to grips with a Manchurian reed warbler - the only one I've ever seen despite scores of visits to the site. This shared a clump of vegetation with a Ruddy-breasted crake.

So, well pleased with the local birding, I was all set for my big adventure in the jungle of Kaeng Krachan. A break from BIGBY big time!
 
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What a birding day H! Two bazas! I guess you'd be well pleased. It sounds as if you guys chose wisely for your get away. Mrs. H could relax and soak up the heat and you got all those birds within biking distance. It's staggering how many really great birds you saw that day. I will have to look most up as I have no idea what they are. It's a lot of fun to just meander and take different paths on the way back isn't it? I love that--expecially when you discover an out of the way place that is a good bird spot such as your quarry. Funny you mention the mongooses (I trust your choice for plural), I just saw my first a few days ago. It was smaller than I imagined.
Look forward to the jungle visit. You've done an excellent job organizing all this. When I've seen a lot of birds over a wide area in one day I get overwhelmed with the details of exploration and individual findings and end up just printing a list!
Sue
 
Thanks Sue,

If you only look up anything with Racket in its name and any Malkoha it will be worth it!

One of the mongooses was MUCH bigger than the other (presumed youngster) - the larger being around 4+ feet in length. Never saw a snake except for a just-run-over one on the road.

H
 
More great stuff H......where in Thailand were you?

As Sue says; a great getaway for both of you. Best regards to Mrs H.

Joanne
 
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