Inner Gulf Winter 2012/13 (1 Viewer)

[Neil Lawton]

Morning spent birding Pak Thale/Laem Pak Bia, numbers of waders generally poor

Pak Thale
Spoon-billed Sandpiper - adult winter plumage
Great Knot 650
Dunlin 1
Ruff 2
Painted Stork 13
Heuglin's Gull 2
Greater Spotted Eagle immature

Laem Pak Bia
Spot-billed Pelican
Mangrove Whistler
White-shouldered Starling 12

Neil

www.norfolkbirderinthailand.blogspot.com

 

[gandytron]

Good to know that there is a Spooner back at Pak Thale already.

Mr Tii saw one at Khok Kham at the start of the month.

 

[tombac]

Sometime your lucky! I grabbed a picture of a flock with small waders at LPB today. Didn't see what they were before i came home and started edit the picture. At least 6 Spoon-bills(if not seven)!
There are good numbers of waders around now. Estimated 5000 Great Knots. The probably stopped here instead of going further South. 30.11 I counted 42 Pied Avocets(which should be a record) and Dave Sargent counted 70 asian dowitchers at the beach at Pak Thale and 52 Nordmann's at LPB!/Tom

 

[rockfowl]

Brilliant stuff... and news Tom!

 

[tombac]

I did a check of the bill of all 11 birds in the flock. At first I thought that there were a few other waders but the are all Spoonbills!

 

[gandytron]

Tom, this is fantastic news!

 

[rockfowl]

Brilliant Tom, I don't recall ever hearing of so many (on the Gulf) and obviously when they split up, much harder to assess. Great news indeed!

 

[gandytron]

Brilliant Tom, I don't recall ever hearing of so many (on the Gulf) and obviously when they split up, much harder to assess. Great news indeed!

Mark,

There was a claim of 16 at Pak Thale in winter 2003/4.

Certainly Tom's record seems to be the highest count here, for the best part of a decade. Perhaps Slimbridge is missing a few

Best wishes

Dave

 

[tombac]

There seems to be difefrent opinions of the bird in the picture that it's in fact a Broad-billed Sandpiper. The "spoon" is just some strange illusion. All bills look the same but I'm ready to admit that it like that even if I got confirmation of the species at first. Petty. It would have been a good record.

 

[gandytron]

There seems to be difefrent opinions of the bird in the picture that it's in fact a Broad-billed Sandpiper. The "spoon" is just some strange illusion. All bills look the same but I'm ready to admit that it like that even if I got confirmation of the species at first. Petty. It would have been a good record.

Hi Tom,

so, just to be clear - are you saying you now think that all the birds in this photo are Broad-billed Sands?

Thanks

Dave

 

[tombac]

I havn't yet done a recheck but it seems when you look at the bill "head on" that the base of the bill appears like a spoon. There might be other than B-b Sandpipers too. I have to do enlargments of all the birds. Might take a while.

 

[tombac]

There are 10 birds with the same head pattern,which would make them B-b Sanddpipers. I must say that I never experienced anything like this before having only one picture where the bill looks like a spoon. In this case it fooled me and it was only a illusion. A lesson learned. Never belive what you think you see!

 

[rockfowl]

I didn't even look at the cropped image Tom, but agree, that's a Broad-billed. I can certainly see what appears to be at least one Spooner in the first image, probably two. A good feature to look for is the very white forehead and often isolated dark ear covert. The bird with both wings up centre looks like a Spoonie and possibly the bird, second to the left of the trio with the former.

 

[tombac]

The long staying Kittiwake made a visit to Hua Hin today. It's been around the fishing pier and very easy to see. /Tom