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Birds in coastal Vietnam. (1 Viewer)

Mehitabel

Member
I'm new to birding and would love to know what these two are. Both in coastal areas. The first on the beach on an island in Ha Long Bay in early February. About the size of a thrush. A notably blue colour, which doesn't come over all that well in the photo. He was very busy, grubbing for things in the sand and shunting pebbles around all along the water-line. I sat still and he came right up.. Almost sat on my toes!

The second was at Hoi An, also on the coast - but not the beach - just a few days earlier. A bit smaller; also very busy, so congrats to my other half for getting the snap.

In general, have to say we were astonished by how few birds we saw in Vietnam. Even in the cities (where we mostly were) you'd expect to see a few urban locals, wouldn't you? But it was maybe a dozen sparrows, and that was it. Except the Black Kites over Ha Long Bay....... And these two.

Thanks!
 

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In general, have to say we were astonished by how few birds we saw in Vietnam. Even in the cities (where we mostly were) you'd expect to see a few urban locals, wouldn't you? But it was maybe a dozen sparrows, and that was it. Except the Black Kites over Ha Long Bay....... And these two.

Thanks!

There are plenty of birds in the rice paddies and open farmland by Hoi An. In some areas of the country, however, widespread songbird trapping has meant that birds are much warier than in other countries or exist in lower densities.
 
How sad. We did wonder. Up in the hills round Dalat, we heard quite a lot of birds, but couldn't see them..In the towns and cities, nothing. Not even the LBJs you normally take for granted everywhere. We were really taken-aback, because as new birders we were looking forward to some interesting sightings, however commonplace they might be in Vietnam. But no....
 
We had the same experience as you in a few days in Vietnam. Even in Cuc Phuong nature reserve at the beginning of May, there were far fewer birds than we had been expecting, and essentially none in Hanoi (a few sparrows and white-eyes).

The other few days of our trip were to the Buddhist city of Luang Prabang in Laos with its myriad of temples. There were almost no birds in the city. But worse was to come.

We did a culture / nature guided walk plus hand-paddled river boat trip one afternoon in a place some way out of the city. There were no birds or bird songs at all. Utterly dead. I asked the guides - who turned out not to be locals, but moonlighting students from Vientiane, the capital - about this, and they said that basically if it moves, the local Hmong people will have eaten it. The only living thing we saw was a spider.

Here is our bird list from three days in and around Luang Prabang - but all actually in the city: Common Myna, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, Sooty-headed Bulbul (one), Common Tailorbird (one), Yellow-browed Warbler (one), Grey-backed Shrike (one), Blue Rock Thrush (one), Swift, Swiftlets (huge commercial swift nest business in the town; maybe it's a Buddhist thing, ha ha), Spotted Dove (in cage), Feral Pigeon, domestic Chicken.

Don't believe the romantic nonsense you read about peasants and their closeness to nature: wild nature is the peasant's enemy, and they strive to eliminate it, or at least to control it. Peasants armed with modern technology (material (guns, metal traps, rapid transport by car or motorbike), chemical (incesticides, herbicides), and info-tech (cameras, CCTV, data sharing, drones)) are the greatest threat to biodiversity in my opinion, and it is this which makes me utterly pessimistic about the ecofuture.

And don't believe romantic nonsense about Buddhism and nature either. I live in a Buddhist country (Japan), and naiveley expected Buddhist pro-nature and pro-conservation activity to be a big thing in the country. But not at all. All pro-nature activity is secular.

And if you think about this, it makes sense. After all the goal of the Buddhist is 'nirvana', which isn't traditionally 'heaven' (although it often is is in modern Christian-influenced Mahayana Buddhism), but rather 'extinction without remainder'. That is the goal, the preferred state, of Buddhism is the total disappearance of life. In this it's the opposite of Christianity whose goal is the eternal prolongation of life.

I'm not religious at all, but it's surely the case that Christianity is more plausibly a protector of nature than Buddhism. Anti-Christians say that the Genesis story of God giving mankind dominion over the animals means that western culture thinks we can do with nature what we will. But logically the opposite is the case - if God made it, we have a duty to preserve it. After all, that's what the story of Noah shows.

It's true, however, that Christian-based conservation organisations seems to be as thin on the ground as Buddhist-based ones.
 
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I'm new to birding

In my rant in my previous post, I forgot to say three things:

1. Welcome to Bird Forum Mehitabel;

2. Get into birdwatching. I did from the age of fifty, and it's change my life for the better; simply I enjoy daily walks more, and I enjoy the variety of our planet more;

3. Despite a general pessimism, I think that the more of us that enjoy nature openly, and advocate for the preservation of a variety of life on this planet, the better the chances of this happening will be.
 
Not a good impression of VietNam, I'm afraid.
In the UK, for example, you don't see many birds on the city streets, but a public park will produce 10-15 species and so will parks in SaiGon or HaNoi (15-25 spp, perhaps). A casual 1-2 hour walk in a rural area with some natural habitat will produce 20-30 common-or-garden spp for me in the UK and 30-40 spp in suburban DaLat, so it's unfair to leave such a bleak impression of VietNam. Pesticides have almost wiped out insect life (and the birds that eat them) in some agricultural areas, but continued loss of habitat must surely be the biggest threat to wildlife outside protected areas (but which country am I talking about?).
Finally, people generally don't feed wild birds in VietNam, so the birds are too busy looking for food where they can find it, away from people. When Vietnamese bird guides set up photographic hides for tourists, they put out worms to attract birds and the birds will then often take food straight from their hands, so they are not really shy.
Next time you visit SaiGon or HaNoi, see if you can find a professional bird guide to take you out for the day. You will be astonished at the number of species they will show you in a small country with nearly 100 million people.
 
Well, I would like to think that things could be better in other circumstances.

I just checked my Cuc Phuong list and there were 35 species, maybe 25 of which were single sightings (over three days).

And we looked in Hanoi in any green areas we could find, and we saw only Eurasian Tree Sparrows and Japanese White-eyes. I'm not a birding beginner, and I live in Asia. If you need to hire a specialist bird guide to find more than two species in a huge city when you wander the parks looking for them, then something isn't right.

But the total desert around Luang Prabang in Laos was a shock.

Mind you, Seoul last year in spring produced only Brown-eared Bulbul, Sparrows and Japanese Tits despite the fact that we were going around the palace sites with loads of trees and greenery even though just for one day.
 
I just checked my Cuc Phuong list and there were 35 species, maybe 25 of which were single sightings (over three days).

.

Wow that's worrying :eek!: what time of year were you at Cuc Phuong? I was there for a few days in Jan 2008 and was blown away by the huge variety of bird species. This from my report at the time:-

"....So back to some proper fun jungle birding. We took a local bus from the old city in Hanoi to Giap Bat bus station, from where we caught a bus to Nho Quan, which is 13km from Cuc Phuong park HQ. From here we took motorcycle taxis to the HQ. The total cost from Hanoi was about $5 each and it took about 3 hours. We stayed 1 night at HQ, had a great morning's birding with a birder we at HQ (Hi Paul !) and walked the 20km to Bong arriving at dusk. We stayed 3 nights at Bong and then walked back to Hq to spend another night there before making our way to Ninh Bin.

Birding was fantastic throughout the park, at the botanical gardens (G), all along the road (R) to Bong (B), and on the trails around Bong. I was on a real roll here and still buzzing on the murrelet (at that stage !). I ended up seeing far more of the specialities than I expected to, doing pretty well for a plonker like me without a tape recorder. With a whopping 70+ new birds for the trip, of which more than 20 were new, it's hard to pick out highlights, but goodies included the male Silver Pheasant that walked across the road right in front of us (near B), Limestone Wren-Babbler (2 R, c200m before the prehistoric man cave), Pied Falconet (1 G ,1B), Brown Hornbill (party of c8 B), Blue-rumped and Bar-bellied Pittas (1 of each R, near B) and yes Gav they do patter with tiny feet , Chestnut-necklaced Partridge (twice R, near B), Ratch and Rack et-tailed Treepies, White-winged Magpie (the latter eventually on the last morning at B then also R and G), Red-vented Barbet (1 R), cracking male Grey-backed (G) and Black-breasted (B) Thrushes, Asian Stubtail (2 B), Rufous-tailed Robin and Lesser Shortwing (1 of each B) and cracking parties of Silver-breasted and Long-tailed Broadbills (B). Some birds I'd never seen before were common, ie Green-eared Barbet, Rufous-throated and Black-browed Fulvettas, and Japanese Thrush. And so on (see additions to trip list below for more). We also had some good birds seen earlier on the trip eg Fukien Niltava and Collared Owlet.

Identification challenges were catered for by the warbler department. Seicercus warblers were too numerous to ignore and I figured that the commonest form (c20 grilled) were Bianchi's Warbler. These birds foraged generally in the open with parties of fulvettas, phylloscs and Striped Tit-Babblers at or above head height. They all had yellow greater covert wing-bars, some very striking ones. They had eliptical yellow eye-rings and not very extensive fairly pale grey on the crown. I couldn't make out any calls that were definitely attributable to them. Another form (only a couple seen) seemed not, or loosely allied to other feeding birds, fed low in denser cover, had round eye-rings, more extensive darker grey crowns, more saturated yellow and green plumage tones, more prominent black lateral crown stripes and one of them went "Chu-chu", which I reckoned sounded like Frank "Seicercus-man" Rheindt's rendition of what Grey-crowned Warbler sounded like. Good enough for me. A few "Blyth's Leaf Warblers" went unidentified, and there were totally invisible Bush-Warblers in frustrating profusion. The exception was one Bradypterus warbler that provided prolonged exceptionally close views of virtually all of it except the lower mandible. Cracking views of the undertail coverts showed that it lacked the obvious pale tips that should be on Russet-Bush Warbler which according to Robson would be the most expected species at this altitude and range. After looking at Oriental Bird Images I figured this bird was a Brown Bush-Warbler, which should be at a higher elevation. Other trip reports have noted both Chinese and Brown for this site though, Brown in a report by N Dymond. I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong on this one ! I can give a description if anyone's interested...."

And these were just the additions to our trip list at the time from Cuc Phuong, having just already spent a month in China. So I'd rate it as a top notch birding site!:

"....
302 Ashy Drongo
303 Stripe-throated Bulbul
304 Dark-necked Tailorbird
305 Grey-eyed Bulbul
306 Black-crested Bulbul
307 Striped Tit-Babbler
308 Red-headed Trogon
309 Crimson Sunbird
310 Puff-throated Babbler
311 White-rumped Shama
312 GREEN-EARED BARBET
313 Black-browed Fulvetta
314 PIED FALCONET
315 Common Iora
316 Great Iora
317 Brown Shrike
318 Sultan Tit
319 Grey-crowned Pygmy Woodpecker
320 RUFOUS-THROATED FULVETTA
321 Grey-backed Shrike
322 Blue-winged Leafbird
323 JAPANESE THRUSH
324 RACKET-TAILED TREEPIE
325 SULPHUR-BREASTED WARBLER
326 Puff-throated Bulbul
327 Lesser Coucal
328 Orange-bellied Leafbird
329 Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker
330 RATCHET-TAILED TREEPIE
331 GREY-BACKED THRUSH
332 Banded Bay Cuckoo
333 White-bellied Yuhina
334 BROWN BUSH-WARBLER
335 RED-VENTED BARBET
336 Indochinese Cuckoo-Shrike
337 Maroon Oriole
338 Grey-throated Babbler
339 Greater Racket-tailed Drongo
340 Lesser Yellownape
341 LIMESTONE WREN-BABBLER
342 Scaly-crowned Babbler
343 Emerald Dove
344 Yellow-bellied Warbler
345 CHESTNUT-NECKLACED PARTRIDGE
346 BLACK-BREASTED THRUSH
347 Asian Stubtail
348 WHITE-TAILED FLYCATCHER
349 BLUE-RUMPED PITTA
350 RUFOUS TAILED ROBIN
351 Rufescent Prinia
352 Silver-breasted Broadbill
353 BIANCHI'S WARBLER
354 Buff-breasted Babbler
355 BROWN HORNBILL
356 GREY-CROWNED WARBLER
357 Crested Goshawk
358 Greater Yellownape
359 BAR-BELLIED PITTA
360 Common Flameback
361 Green Magpie
362 Red Junglefowl
363 Silver Pheasant
364 Scarlet Minivet
365 Black-winged Cuckoo-Shrike
366 Bronzed Drongo
367 Streaked Spiderhunter
368 WHITE-WINGED MAGPIE
369 Lesser Shortwing
370 Long-tailed Broadbill
371 Black Eagle
372 Crested Serpent-Eagle
373 Bar-winged Flycatcher-Shrike
374 Green-billed Malkoha
375 Large Woodshrike
......."
 
Was in Luang Prabang two weeks ago and saw white-crested laughingthrush, sulphur-breasted warbler, Asian barred owlet, Japanese and chestnut-sided white eye, scarlet-backed flowerpecker, Brown-throated sunbird, common Iora, magpie robin and other common species in town. Also some nice forest birds at Kuang Si falls nearby.

Best birds in Hanoi, wryneck and Siberian rubythroat. In HCMC saw coppersmith barbet, red-breasted parakeet, ashy drongo in the reunification palace area.

Cheers

James
 
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