Thailand: Spoon-billed Sandpipers!! (and some other stuff) (1 Viewer)

The following morning could never hope to match the drama of the previous day, and so it was. A pleasant bird along what I think I heard Ian referring to as the jeep trail (could be wrong here). Things kicked off in similar style to yesterday, with a tree top Yellow-bellied Flowerpecker, followed by one more for the Bulbul tally; Black-crested. There followed a gentle walk, with lots of repeat views of recent ticks (Yellow-cheeked & Japanese Tits, Little Pied Flycatcher, Hume’s Treecreeper, Chestnut-capped Warbler, Maroon Oriole) but I manage to stuff up White-bellied Erpornis yet again. Reaching a more open area Red-whiskered Bulbul was new for the trip, as was a White-browed Scimitar-Babbler (not seen by me though, boo) and Rich and I got onto what was almost certainly an immature Chestnut-bellied Eagle sweeping swiftly by, too brief and partially obscured by trees to nail for sure.

Time came to leave though, and as we began to retrace our steps we were treated to a party of dazzling Silver-eared Mesias moving quickly through. Back near the road I stopped to indulge in one of my favourite tropical forest persuits; snag-watching, and came up trumps with an adorable little Collared Falconet topping a dead tree limb sticking up out of the forest. And then we were back at the car, and back on the road. Fare thee well Doi Inthanon, and thanks for the experience; it shall be long remembered.

So now we’re off to Mai Ping, diptocarp forest and home to, amongst other things, a goodly variety of Woodpeckers. Roadside birds included two new for the trip, Common Kestrel & Large Cuckoo-Shrike, and then we stopped for lunch at a roadside café where we had our other ID clanger, though not so bad this time I reckon, at least the individual involved was atypical. Back home I’d not have hesitated in calling it as a Black Redstart. It was sat up on some metal contraption by a track behind the café, and just Rich & I saw it before it flitted across the track into some sort of plantation where it couldn’t be relocated. Wouldn’t have looked twice at it on Scilly, just moved on looking for something better. Major major rarity in Thailand though but we just couldn’t make anything else fit. Remained as an uncomfortable presence, halfway onto the trip list, until we got home and Rich did some digging and found that Daurian Redstart can lack the supposedly diagnostic white wing patches. Atypical common species sits better than a typical mega-rare one, but I really don’t feel happy allowing it onto the life list without having had the chance to examine it properly, so, lose lose I’m afraid.

Before hitting Mai Ping we dumped bags at tonight’s motel (picking up Asian Palm Swift & Common Tailorbird in the process). First bird in the forest was Radde’s Warbler, and other than that things seemed pretty quiet, but bit by bit things started to come together, with the first real goody being a Grey-headed Parrakeet which bucked the trend for Parrakeets by perching up in plain view rather than simply screeching over. Nice one. One Christmas a few years back my brother gave me a framed print of Red-billed Blue Magpies. It’s a lovely picture but I’m sure there are birders out there who get this, it can be a bit sort of odd having pictures up of birds you haven’t seen. Anyone else get that? Anyone at all? And Rob, if you read this (I guess you might, I did go and send you the link after all) please understand I am not ungrateful, I love the picture, it’s just that birders can be a bit, well, odd. Sometimes. Anyway, as you’ll probably have guessed by now, we saw some Red-billed Blue Magpies at Mai Ping, a bunch of them flying through the mercifully open forest (or we wouldn’t have been able to see them) in the middle distance. Just like in my picture! A roving, noisy flock of White-crested Laughingthrushes also passed through giving some of the best views as they crossed the road but never settling in view for long, and the tree tops held Black-naped Monarchs and a Golden-fronted Leafbird. Down by a bridge over a stream things really started to hot up, with a pair of White-rumped Shamas and a party of Pin-striped Tit-Babblers and then came the headline act, a magnificent White-bellied Woodpecker giving show-stopping views, just fabulous, best Woodpecker ever (so far…). To round the day off we improved on previous views of Lesser and particularly Greater Yellownapes, and I managed to get onto a Burmese Nuthatch in a feeding flock in the last of the light, leaving us just with Black-headed Woodpecker missing from our Mai Ping shopping list.

Pics
Diptocarp forest at Mai Ping
Grey-headed Parrakeet

JWN Andrewes said:

One Christmas a few years back my brother gave me a framed print of Red-billed Blue Magpies. It’s a lovely picture but I’m sure there are birders out there who get this, it can be a bit sort of odd having pictures up of birds you haven’t seen. Anyone else get that? Anyone at all?

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Yep.

I recently had the same experience with Pied Thrush - on the wall of my hotel room in Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka, and ONLY on the wall of the hotel room . . .

However Odd is not the word I'd choose - "really fricking irritating" is more the mark in my case.

I even met a guy who refused (so he claimed) to look at pix in a field guide of birds he's yet to see. How he ever worked out some of the trickier birds I don't know, but it shows how deep the psychosis can go.

As for your redstart - un-spotted Daurian Redstarts are extremely rare here in HK where they are a common winter visitor. Sometimes birds on the deck can hide the spot beneath fluffed up flank feathers, but in flight such hidden spots soon become apparent. A bummer you didn't see more, and I would agree that putting it down as an aberrant Daurian does not solve the problem of not getting enough on a potentially very interesting bird. And just to make it more complicated . . . It's probably also worth mentioning that you have to add female Hodgson's Redstart into the mix.

Cheers
Mike

Did consider Hodgson's but I think they're just as rare as Black (or rarer?) in Thailand, and would be paler and greyer. Also Blue-fronted was considered but should have shown a wing bar & distinct eye ring and I think is less of an open country bird (this was lawn, dirt track, cultivation, roadside, commerce and a few scattered trees), but can't remember all the details of the various discussions we had. Deep down I consider it to be an odd Daurian. There's a mostly obscured pic of it somewhere, when we all swap photos I'll see if I can post it here.

Cheers

James

"Anyone else get that? Anyone at all?"

brilliant. Never thought of it before, but I reckon I might suffer from this too! :t:

It’s one of those things you have to face from time to time on world birding trips. Do you stick to the plan for the sake of one target bird you’re missing, or change plans to capitalise on having seen nearly all of what you were after at a given site. In a nutshell do we try again for just Black-headed Woodpecker the following morning, with pretty much all the other realistic targets in the bag (necessitating a long drive in & then out again) or do we bail early and give ourselves more time at our next site; Mae Wong. We bailed. Shame about the Woodpecker, I really like Woodpeckers, but the knock on effect of hitting Mae Wong early was definitely worth it in the end.

As we headed south Red Collared Doves joined the Spotted & Peaceful Doves, Great Mynas, Ashy Woodswallows, Large Cuckooshrikes and Brown Shrikes as a roadside wire birds, and then someone (Richard I think) called a stop for a Black-winged Kite hovering by the road. Being a fair way into our journey at this point we decided to have a break and bird some roadside pools for a bit. Good views were had of the Kite, and then one of the first birds that flew up from the pools as we worked the track was a male Greater Painted Snipe! One of my most wanted birds, a family tick to boot, totally fluked! A male Yellow Bittern was also a new bird for me, while Purple Heron, Green Bee-eater & Red-wattled Lapwings padded things out nicely.

Onward then, to Mae Wong, with a Taiga Flycatcher (first of several) feeding near our rooms when we dumped our bags, and then we headed up to the top, seeing Flavescent Bulbuls & Oriental White-eyes by the campsite while Games arranged a session at a nearby blind. This done we headed downhill again and were soon settling in behind a tatty sheet of plastic sacking held up with sticks, and with half a dozen ragged holes torn in it. The lucky ones amongst us baggsied a couple of folding stools, I was left perched uncomfortably on a rock. The view out through the holes was relatively open, some mossy rocks more or less centre stage, with mealworms scattered about for bait. So we waited and, bit by bit, the birds came.

Female White-tailed Robin was first up, with its big, peering eyes (so tame that later in the afternoon it joined us in the blind, by flying through a viewing hole passing inches from Rich’s face). A Hill Blue Flycatcher then dropped in, female again, to snack on mealworms, and then finally Richard got decent views of Blue Whistling Thrush, and by decent I mean stonking, an adjective that could be used over and over when writing up these sessions in blinds. Next to join the party was the first of three new Babblers; Buff-breasted. These, I’m afraid, ranked alongside Yellow-browed Tit as contenders for blandest bird of the trip, they reminded me a bit of House Wrens without the interesting markings. That’s not to say I wasn’t delighted to see them but they didn’t really compare with the subtle scaliness of the duo of Streaked Wren Babblers that followed them, and certainly not with the handsomely adorned and richly coloured Spot-necked Babblers that rounded off the trio. Stonking they was. A very smart black male White-tailed Robin, with its blue highlights and white tail flashes put in a brief appearance, and then all of the above was comprehensively out-stonked by a dazzling White-crowned Forktail strutting in from the back and performing to perfection. The snowiest of whites alongside the jettest of blacks, a true nightmare of a bird for the proper lensman to get the exposure right for, but oh my, what a stonker.

Ok, that’s enough stonking for the time being, my arse was now in spasm from two hours crouching on a rock, so we took a break to go do some trail birding with the aim to come back and finish the day off with another session. The trail walk started well enough with a delightful party of Silver-eared Mesias and then went quiet, with no sign of the target Burmese Yuhina (which we never did catch up with) pretty much until we reached the farthest point of our walk, when we were treated to excellent views of a pair of Rufous-browed Flycatchers. The walk back was considerably better, though not without its frustrations! It started with a good bird wave, and I finally managed to get onto a White-bellied Erpornis (yay!) although the views were ever so brief (less yay!) as well as a Speckled Piculet, but then I managed to be in completely the wrong place for a very showy Bay Woodpecker and had a bit of a strop (come on, who hasn’t?). A Golden Babbler on the way back, followed by a couple of Sulphur-breasted Warblers put me in a better frame of mind by the time we reached the campsite & car park back at the head of the trail and spotted the ranger (Annan I think his name was) beckoning from up the road, where it bends round to the right out of sight. Thais beckon with the palm down, and Annan was doing this furiously with both hands, in an almost “Wayne’s-World-we’re-not-worthy” fashion. Clearly this was something good, and Ian speculated Coral-billed Scimitar Babbler, one of the site’s special rarities as we rushed up, but it turned out to be something so much better. We were put onto a black shape halfway up a tree across the valley side, and initially, before I got a feeling of scale I though “hmmm, Binturong”, but no, this was much bigger. This was a Bear! Asiatic Black Bear as it turned out, shaggy coat and big prominent ears distinguishing it from Sun Bear. Totally unexpected sighting of an extremely rarely seen mammal, we watched it draped over a branch for ages. At that distance the photos really don’t do it justice, through the scope at x60 it was so much better, at one point lifting its head and revealing its chest crescent, what a beast, beyond stonking.

Eventually though we managed to tear ourselves away and head back to the blind for one last treat. A bird we’d been waiting for at our previous blind session, and hoping for since hearing a couple of days previously that it had been visiting this blind off and on for about a week; Rusty-naped Pitta. Happily, it did not disappoint, and after a nervous wait suddenly it was there. Bounding in and settling down to scoff mealworms, a much bigger bird than I’d been expecting, the colours of the surrounding moss-covered sandstone paying perfect homage to this subtly hued beaut of a bird.

The day wasn’t quite over though, and once the sun was down, the reptiles came out, with Tokay & some sort of Day Gecko just outside our rooms, and then with a night drive that produced more herps than birds (including an as yet unidentified gecko, some sort of Kukri Snake (forget which) and an Indian Black Turtle), with the only bird being a glorious Brown Wood Owl giving stunning flight views in the spotlight. A great end to a great day.

Pics
Flavescent Bulbul
female White-tailed Robin
female Hill Blue Flycatcher
Blue Whustling Thrush
Buff-breasted Warbler

male White-tailed Robin
White-crowned Forktail
The Blind
Asiatic Black Bear (honest!)
Rusty-naped Pitta

Gecko sp
Tokay Gecko
Day Gecko sp
Indian Black Turtle

Me going to Thailand.....would be like turning back the clock 50 odd years! Probably 95 per cent of the birds in bold type, I've never heard of!...It would be like starting birding for the first time all over again! Sounds like your having ball though. :t:

KenM said:

Me going to Thailand.....would be like turning back the clock 50 odd years! Probably 95 per cent of the birds in bold type, I've never heard of!...It would be like starting birding for the first time all over again! Sounds like your having ball though. :t:

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Oh yes, a ball was most certainly had.

Funny thing, given the season I've heard a few people recently getting nostalgic over the excitement of Christmas as a kid, and how you never get that back once you're grown up. Well, for my money foreign birding comes damn close, particularly in a part of the world you've never visited before.

James

Really enjoying this. Asiatic Black Bear - you lucky blighter!

John

It's very like Christmas.

JWN Andrewes said:

Oh yes, a ball was most certainly had.

Funny thing, given the season I've heard a few people recently getting nostalgic over the excitement of Christmas as a kid, and how you never get that back once you're grown up. Well, for my money foreign birding comes damn close, particularly in a part of the world you've never visited before.

James

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There's the organising (my partner loves that bit - she'll even produce itinerary spreadsheets) buying the new bird/guide/map books and poring over them in anticipation, and finally, the actual trip and the excitement of seeing all that new stuff

just to show we're paying attention, you might want to re-name pic 5 on post 25

Sharp eyes Larry!

I love the shot which looks like a flying gecko - on a window I guess?

Have been enjoying this report quite a lot, particularly as I'm currently following in your footsteps. Keep it coming!

stuartvine said:

There's the organising (my partner loves that bit - she'll even produce itinerary spreadsheets) buying the new bird/guide/map books and poring over them in anticipation, and finally, the actual trip and the excitement of seeing all that new stuff

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As it happens I did next to no planning at all for this trip! I was so involved in the preparation for a work trip to Argentina I more or less left the planning of Thailand to Glyn (for which I am most grateful). Never felt less prepared for a birding trip in my life, it was kind of fun, if a little daunting.

James

Larry Sweetland said:

just to show we're paying attention, you might want to re-name pic 5 on post 25

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Yes, did spot that, but too late to edit it. Will have to start canvassing IOC for a name change, after all, some races whustle an awful lot, probably enough to warrant a split. B

James

Gretchen said:

I love the shot which looks like a flying gecko - on a window I guess?

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Indeed so, quite remarkable the way they can do that!

Andrew Whitehouse said:

Have been enjoying this report quite a lot, particularly as I'm currently following in your footsteps. Keep it coming!

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Ooh, do have fun, it really is a treat of a country to bird. There' s another birdforumer out there at the mo whose report I'm most looking forward to. Be a while until I continue my account, I'm currently away from notes & photos, using one of the boy's hudls to keep up to date. More on Monday probably.

All the best

James

Whustle?

Hole's getting deeper. . .