That’s all for now

I am now back in the UK after an excellent, although not entirely trouble-free (are they ever?!) trip. It was trimmed from the original 2 months and 3 weeks to just under 2 months, due to the fact that Australia ended up costing me a packet. Prices in Australia have gone up a lot since I was previously there in 1997 - more than I realised, in fact it’s as expensive if not more so, as the UK - and I ended up trimming two weeks off Australia and 9 days off Thailand. Next time, I’ll omit Australia and just do Asia.

The trip has had its ups, downs and grey areas, but it was highly successful. I saw most of the birds I wanted to see, apart from some seabirds due to the postponed pelagic, and got some pretty good photos, too.

 Ups: the birds, of course. Also, the Great Barrier Reef, the Warrumbungles, Cassowary House, Doi Inthanon, Khao Yai, the people I met such as Tony, Rob, Marie, George, Mr and Mrs Daeng, Somchat and ‘Mr Nine’.

Downs: The biggest bummer was that the vile weather in NSW that week ensured the SOSSA pelagic from Wollongong got put back to the following week, which was a total bugger because I was leaving for Thailand before then, and the weather in Australia was pretty bad for a proportion of the time – I got wet in Cairns, Coonabarabran, Wollongong and Sydney.
Getting to Bangkok was a culture shock and the city itself  is a nightmare, gridlocked and polluted.

Things I’d do differently next time: Leave out or shorten Australia and lengthen Asia. Not be so short of money that I can’t hire a car – public transport is a crap way to get around no matter where you are. Except perhaps in Singapore. Go to Asia in the winter (dry season).

Despite the troubles of the first few days I got to like Thailand very much, it’s a fantastic place once you are out of Bangkok, and I hope to go back to do some more birding there, in the dry season.

Khao Yai

After arriving back in Bangkok from Chiang Mai, I stayed one night in the All Seasons Bangkok Siam Hotel in the city centre. I got a taxi from the airport and showed the driver a map with directions but, true to form as seems to be the case with Bangkok taxis, the prat still got lost and we took 2 hours to get there instead of 30 minutes. He spoke no English, it seemed, until he asked for a tip when he suddenly found he could speak very good English. He did not get a tip.

The next day, Monday, I set off for Khao Yai – taxi to Mor Chit bus station, a three hour bus ride to Pak Chong (during which I added Asian Openbill Stork to my list) and then a 20 minute journey by songthaew (pick up truck buses) to the Greenleaf Guest House 7.5 km outside Pak Chong, towards Khao Yai NP.

I booked a guide for the next day, ‘Mr Nine’, and we set off in his truck for the ‘Cold Mountain’ at 0545 the following morning. I had had no sleep the night before due to the combination of (the fear of) spiders and cockroaches, heat and a very hard mattress but I felt fine. The first birds of the day were Red-breasted Parakeets, Black-shouldered Kite and Black-collared Starling. 

On entering the park and paying the 400 Baht entrance fee we carried on to the first look out point and soon found Lineated Barbet, Golden-fronted Leafbird, Grey-eyed Bulbul, Bar-winged Flycatcher-shrike and Common Iora. Further up we found male and female Great Hornbills and their nest with a grown young one inside it, who was still being fed by the parents. We stopped and took quite a lot of photos and I managed to get some nice flight shots.

Great Hornbill, Khao Yai NP

We went for a walk in the jungle. I got my camera out of the car and moved to the back of the vehicle. There was a sudden pattering noise, like falling rain, and I looked up, to see a Pig-tailed Macaque right above where I had been standing a second earlier – I had only narrowly avoided being pissed on by a monkey!
On the jungle trail, which was dense, leechy and spidery, we got good, but brief, views of a Siamese Fireback pheasant, which was one of my target species, although I didn’t get a pic due to the brevity of the views and the fact it was too dark in the forest. We also heard Imperial Pigeon and Sultan Tit, and while I didn’t see the pigeon (but saw one later) I got a very quick view of the tit plus we saw Barking Deer (Muntjac) in the dense vegetation. Other birds were Greater Flameback and Greater Racket-tailed Drongo.
There were a lot of spider webs strung between trees, fortunately well above head height (unless you were taller than 6′7″) as these contained huge orb spiders bigger than a man’s hand. To a spider-phobic person like me, these were frankly nasty-looking although they are not dangerous unless you are an insect or a small bird.

This spider was bigger than a man's hand

The leeches, as expected, were a nuisance. I had taken all the precautions against them, such as leech socks and plenty of repellant but I forgot one small, but important, detail. I didn’t even think about tucking my shirt in, with the result that I got leeches all round my middle and on my back, happily helping themselves. My off-white (naturally!) cotton shirt, fortunately an old one, looked like I’d been the victim of a stabbing, as it was soaked in blood because leeches inject an anti-coagulant so you bleed profusely and stay bleeding for a while afterwards. The shirt has subsequently gone in the bin as the blood didn’t wash out despite using ‘Vanish’ on it. Oh well, you’re not a world birder until you have been bitten by leeches while in the pursuit of birds…!

We spent the afternoon at the top, where we found an Oriental Pied Hornbill family – the female was busy de-legging the biggest centipede I have ever seen in my life, it was easily a foot long -  and the other side of the mountain and also took the road up to a military installation where the soldiers were kind enough to let me use the ‘facilities’ as well! We didn’t see much up there, apart from a Stripe-throated Bulbul and a lovely view so we drove back down. About a quarter of the way down we found a small party of Silver Pheasants – male, female and juvenile male – stunning birds. We got some photos; Nine is a keen bird photographer, too  and we had great fun taking pictures and comparing them.

By 4.30 I was falling asleep and feeling dizzy because of the lack of sleep the previous night, but I soon woke up when we stopped, got out and saw a Crimson Sunbird, of which I got better views than I did of the one I saw in Singapore.
Back up the mountain the lifers kept coming: Red Junglefowl (the ancestor of domestic chickens and another target species for me), Green-eared Barbet, Crested Goshawk, Needletail Swift and the gorgeous Indian Roller, another target species and one that had hitherto eluded me. I photographed the Roller, but the light was going and 1250 ISO does not really make for anything other than a record shot.

Indian Roller at Khao Yai

Sadly, it was time to head back out of Khao Yai and back to the guesthouse, but not without adding Wreathed Hornbill and Thick-billed Green-pigeon to the list. I was hoping to see Asian Elephants, but although there were signs of their presence, such as droppings (in the words of Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: ‘That is one big pile of shit!’) and wrecked vegetation, I didn’t see so much as a flapping ear. Likewise the gibbons – there were hoots and screams and gibbon songs all day but I didn’t see anything swinging through the trees. However, the brilliant birding was what I went for so the lack of ellies and gibbons wasn’t that disappointing.

The guide cost 4000 Baht, around £78, but was worth every satang, as I saw birds and more of the park than I would otherwise have done. It was brilliant and I want to go back one day.

Travelled back to Bangkok the following day. I got accosted at Mor Chit II by taxi touts (one of the less savoury things about travelling in Asia is that foreigners get hounded all the time – ‘Hey you, where you go?’ and while I hate it and it is very annoying, it is just one of the things you have to put up with) and ended up paying over the odds for a ride back to the All Seasons Bangkok Siam, because I couldn’t be arsed to argue, but he didn’t mess about and I was there in five minutes flat!

Doi Inthanon

I was going to post this last Saturday, but I couldn’t be bothered and anyway, it’s better late than never. Travelled to Doi Inthanon (pronounced Intanon) on 3rd June, leaving Chiang Mai at 1015 am and arriving at Mr Daeng’s at 1215. Went up with Marie and we did some birding on the way there. An unexpected tick was a Cinnamon Bittern which flew across the road by the Tesco store (yes, they have Tesco’s in Thailand, too) at Chom Thong.

After paying our 200 Baht each at the gate we went up to the summit, via Mr Daeng’s where I was staying for a couple of nights for me to drop my bag off,  Thailand’s highest point at 2565 metres above sea level, where Green-tailed Sunbird (the race of Green-tailed Sunbird on Doi Inthanon is endemic to there), Chestnut-tailed Minla and Chestnut-headed Laughingthrush were active around the summit visitor’s centre. Also at the summit, round the marsh area, were Ashy-throated Warbler, Dark-backed Sibia, Grey-throated Babbler, Rufous-winged Fulvetta and Large Niltava, the latter very hard to see high up in the trees as it called it’s ‘Doe Ray Mee‘ song. It was pretty cold at the summit, which made a pleasant change from the hot humid lower elevations.

On the way back down the mountains to Mr Daeng’s we got – in the fog – Hill Prinia and Flavescent Bulbul.

The next day I was joined by guide Somchat, from a nearby village. He works for Mr Daeng and is a pretty good birder, finding stuff I most likely wouldn’t have found by myself. It wasn’t without some trepidation that I set off, at 0615, on the back of Somchat’s motorbike, but it was perfectly safe and in no time did I feel in any danger, despite coming down the mountain at 35mph with no crash helmet (I don’t think my mother reads this, or I will get in trouble!), in fact it was brilliant fun. The first lifers of the day happened to be in Mr Daeng’s garden – Streaked Spiderhunter and Japanese White Eye. Further up the road, at KM 34 we encountered Green-billed Malkoha, White-browed Shrike-babbler (great names these birds), the fabulous Silver-eared Mesia, Oriental Magpie Robin (not a lifer as I’d already seen these in Singapore and Bangkok) and at Check Point 2 were Yellow-cheeked Tit, Grey-cheeked Fulvetta and Mountain Tailorbird. We also got a good view of Asian Emerald Cuckoo and a briefer one of Violet Cuckoo, just up the road from CP2. Also on that stretch of road was a Japanese Sparrowhawk, high in the trees.

We continued upwards in fog and rain to the summit where we got Grey-cheeked Minivet and Yellow-bellied Fantail. After a summit visit to Thailand’s highest point and a look, from the road, at the grandly named ‘Princess Sirindhorn Neutron Monitor’, an astronomical observatory for cosmic ray detecting, and the shrine to the late King Inthawichayanon of Chiang Mai who the mountain is named after.

It was then straight down to the lower-altitude dipterocarp forest at around KM 15, but this only resulted in three new birds: Common Flameback, Collared Falconet and Blue-winged Leafbird. Following this it was up the mountain again, to KM 20 and the Vachirathan Waterfall, in the hope of a forktail species and Blue Whistling Thrush. We found Blue Whistling Thrush easily, plus Ashy Drongo, but no forktail.

Later, we went to some paddyfields, but only saw Pied Bushchat and Paddyfield Pipit and a lot of rain. I got soaked to the skin, so as we were passing Mr Daeng’s anyway we went in and I put on a dry t-shirt before we headed out again (and me having purchased a plastic raincoat from the Doi Inthanon 7 Eleven store!) to look for the Black-tailed Crake at the campsite by the park HQ. Expecting the bird to be elusive and hard to see we went armed with worms, expecting a lengthy wait but it was actually walking around, plain as anything. The supposed hardest bird to see turned out to be the easiest, as often happens.
Further up the road, beyond the market stall area, again in torrential rain (was greatful for that 25 Baht plastic raincoat!) we went down a turn off towards Mae Klang Lung, and on the road, was a Slaty-backed Forktail. We’d only been to just about every waterfall and suitable-looking riverine habitat that afternoon searching for one and there it was, on the road, of all places!

The following day, Marie came to collect me and we headed back to Chiang Mai, but not without another couple of lifers – female Scarlet Minivet (I was to see the stunning male a few days later in Khao Yai) and Black-throated Sunbird. We birded our way back to the park entrance but got nothing new, bird calls were all around but the birds themselves kept hidden, apart from a Green-billed Malkoha and a Racket-tailed Drongo.

Had to stop at the Chom Thong Tesco store for some groceries, but there was no sign of the Cinnamon Bittern.

I didn’t take many pics on Doi Inthanon, due mainly to poor light and rain/fog but what I did take are in the post below.

Chiang Mai

I arrived in Chiang Mai on 30 May, but the first few days were hampered by a bad cold and a touch of the flu – NOT swine flu (I hope). Went birding at a site known to local expat US birder Marie as the ‘Trash Patch’ due to the huge amounts of garbage dumped there. It was at the Trash Patch that the Thailand list finally got properly going with Ashy Wood-swallow, Green Bee-eater, Fulvous-breasted Woodpecker, Grey-breasted Prinia, Sooty-headed Bulbul, Streak-eared Bulbul, Pied Bushchat, Red-wattled Lapwing, Greater Coucal, Greater Racket-tailed Drongo, Wire-tailed Swallow, Black Drongo, Black-collared Starling, Large-billed Crow and Common Tailorbird. Photography was hampered by the heat, the non-cooperation on the birds’ part (although I got some flight shots of the lapwings) and the fact my specs kept steaming up.

Also in Chiang Mai, after returning from Doi Inthanon, I did some more ‘cultural’ stuff, with a visit to Wat Phra Singh. The buildings of the Wat are beautiful, very colourful with gilded dragon-like things guarding the steps up to the entrance and golden Buddhas in many different poses. One Buddha lies in an out building at the back of the gardens; he is reclining (I think that represents Buddha attaining enlightenment) and there is a LOT of gold leaf on that statue, some peeling off.

Wat Phra Singh

 

Golden Buddha

I liked Chiang Mai a lot more than the polluted, crowded nightmare that is Bangkok. Sure, it’s got bad traffic but is much smaller and much nicer.

Some pics from Doi Inthanon

I’ll write a proper post about my three days on Doi Inthanon tomorrow, but I got around 50 or so lifers. I am now back in Chiang Mai and will return to Bangkok on Sunday, but in the meantime, here’s some pics from the national park. I didn’t take that many and what I did get were not very good, but a few came out reasonably well – well enough that I feel that I can at least inflict them on the viewing public.

Black-throated Sunbird in Mr. Deang's garden

Chestnut-tailed Minla at summit of Doi Inthanon

Collared Falconet in Dipterocarp forest

Green-tailed Sunbird at summit area of Doi Inthanon

Whale watching trip photos

Because the Wollongong pelagic trip got called off and I couldn’t make the rescheduled one (today, as it happened), I went on a consolation whale-watching trip out of Sydney. While a public whale-watching trip is nowhere near as good for birds as a dedicated birder-pleasing pelagic would be (I dipped on at least 10 species, probably more, that I could have added to my life list), at least I got good views – well, as good as you can get of an animal whose body is mostly below the waterline – of Humpbacked Whales and views of Black-browed Albatrosses.

Here are some of the photos I took on the whale-watching trip; I’ve also thrown in a snap of some obscure concert venue that sits on Sydney’s waterfront, for good measure:

A really crap pic, sickening when I think what I could have got if it hadn't been for the bloody weather. But, looking on the bright side, at least it's an albatross and it's on MY life list!!

'There she blows'...or something like that

As most of the animal is below the water you don't see it that well

Mother and calf whales

Some obscure backstreet concert venue

Heat, bugs and chaos!

My initial first impressions of Thailand have not been good ones. Bangkok is the most chaotic, scary place I have ever been to, I am not easily fazed, but I was definitely fazed on my first few days here with the pollution, the smell and the taxi drivers all too willing to get ‘lost’, take long ’shortcuts’ and relieve you of 300 Baht over and above what the fare should be! Fortunately I am now in the far more pleasant and less chaotic surroundings of Chiang Mai in the north where I am planning to get up to Doi Inthanon sometime in the next few days. Thanks to the kindness of Bird Forum member Marie, I am staying at her place on the outskirts of Chiang Mai for a night or two.

The birding has been slow as I have had a lazy few days induced, partly, by complete disorientation (that’s a good one, considering this is the Orient – disORIENTation) and also coming down with a bad cold, courtesy of numerous Australians who had them on my last day there. A cold in the topics is even less pleasant than it is in temperate climes, because added to the usual discomfort of being blocked up and having a runny nose, plus the face aches, you have suffocating heat and humidity like a hot damp cloth pressed on your face. I also had an very nasty and painful abscess on my left hand on the site of a cut I sustained a couple of weeks ago while cutting a bread roll in half. Some penicillin obtained from a back street chemist – a bit risky, I know – and some self minor surgery with my Swiss Army knife, plus copious quantities of Savlon cream, antiseptic wipes and plasters soon sorted that out and I now just have a scar left.

I have uploaded some new photos to my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/v_birder/sets/72157618953326085/ I will properly sort out the photos and process them better when I get home, they’ll eventually appear on my PBase pages. I have also gone back and added photos to various blog posts here.

Scrubbing round a side trip to southern Thailand and Malaysia for now, mainly for financial reasons, but I will definitely be out this way again sometime in the relatively near future and southern Thailand and Malaysia – and hopefully their birds – will still be here.

‘Bangkok, oriental setting…

and the city doesn’t know what the city is getting’…as the Murray Head song about a chess tournament went.

Ok, so that’s Australia done and dusted for now. I think I ended up on around 180 species which isn’t too bad, 202 lifers in total now. I am now 4500 miles and three time zones nearer home, having arrived in Bangkok late last night – after walking miles from the gate to immigration, waiting ages for my bag to put in an appearance and then tracking down the representative from my hotel I eventually got checked in and to bed at around 1am this morning. The weather is very warm and overcast, though dry and I hope it stays cloudy because that will keep the temperature down, although as I type the sun is coming out.

It’s a bit of a culture shock here, as expected. Very little is in English and even the alphabet is totally different. I plan to stay put for another couple of days before heading off to my first national park, probably Doi Inthanon in the north.

Sydney Harbour

I did a quick ferry trip to Manly in the hope of seeing some seabirds (the entrance to Manly is just inside the heads at the entrance to Sydney Harbour). It was a pleasant round trip, taking an hour and a quarter, but apart from Silver Gulls, Great Cormorant (that’s the same species as our Cormorant back home) and two Crested Terns diving for food, it wasn’t a lot of cop for birding. It was also heaving with families with small children – I detest small kids yet I seem to be some sort of brat magnet, a bit like the way people who loathe cats seem to attract cats - including one with a very obnoxious child of about eight in tow. This kid was so badly behaved and whiny that I am afraid to say that I was amused when she got soaked as spray came over the bow as we were getting near Manly harbour! The downside of that were the resulting screams of fury…!

After getting back to Circular Quay I caught another ferry round to Darling Harbour and booked a whale watching trip tomorrow afternoon. After yesterday’s annoyances, I hope it produces something. A whale would be very nice, but a close view of an albatross would be nicer still. In the event of no whales the company gives a 50% refund, but that only applies in June and July. At other times, you get a free cruise to take during 2009, which won’t be much good to me as I am leaving the country on Tuesday and won’t be back during 2009. If we don’t see whales tomorrow I will still ask for a 50% refund on those grounds (the ideal scenario would be a good view of an albatross or five, no whales and a 50% refund!).

Bugger it

I was hoping to give this post a really crappy punning title such as ‘pelmagic’ or some such nonsense. Sadly, it was not to be.

The weather is pretty appalling and frankly I’ve had enough of it. Apart from last w/end which was glorious, most of my time in NSW has coincided nicely with cyclone-like conditions which have battered the coast and the Wollongong pelagic got knocked on the head this morning. We were having doubts about it as the seas were mountainous and I was wondering if we’d even make it out of the harbour, the way the waves were breaking in and also coming over the breakwater. In fact the boat captain was worried and considered the conditions life threatening so that was that; he genuinely thought that if we went side onto the waves, we’d definitely go over. I am happy in a way that he didn’t decide to bat ahead and go for it, because it looked downright dangerous out there, but on the other hand I am pretty pissed off that I have been very unlucky with weather this trip – the Wollongong pelagic almost never gets cancelled so it’s just my luck this is only the second or third time ever it’s been scrubbed.
I console myself with the thought that I like living, hate getting wet and I had my camera gear with me and if that had gone to the bottom of the Tasman Sea it would put a slight downer on the rest of the trip and looking at the small, tatty old boat they use for these pelagics I wouldn’t want to be on it in anything other than a flat calm.
There’s a possibility it might be rescheduled for next Sunday, but I am flying to Thailand on Tuesday and I don’t really want to give Qantas any more money just for a ticket change.

My only reason for the pelagic trip was to see an albatross or two. I may have dipped. Or did I…?

The reason the pelagic was cancelled - mountainous seas.

So, Wollongong was not a success, it has to be said. Not only was the sea trip cancelled this morning, I got soaked to the skin walking from the bus stop to the Wollongong Backpackers at Keiraleagh House as it hammered down, my bag with my stuff in it was wet through, I didn’t have a change of jeans and when I got to the hostel the room they put me in had two unmade beds and rubbish on the table, floor and bin. So they moved me to another room, only to decide to clean that first one and make me move back there. I told them to forget it, I wasn’t moving. Keiraleagh House itself is a ‘period’ house, as it is described in their own blurb. The fixtures and fittings are ‘period’ too – I don’t think the place had been rewired or had new light switches (some looked downright lethal) since about 1939 by the look of it. It’s also tatty, but otherwise not bad. Comfy beds, at least. However, would it kill these hostels to have bedside lights so people don’t have to get out of bed to switch the light out and them fumble their way back in the dark?? Got talking to some pretty strange people, too.

All was not lost on the albatross front. We went to a couple of seawatching places between Wollongong and Sydney, first near Port Kembla at a little place called Five Islands and then a place just south of the city, Maroubra, where we got Black-browed Albatross (fittingly this was my 200th lifer of the trip), Cape Petrel, Australian Gannet, White-fronted Tern, Giant Petrel (we don’t know whether Northern or Southern, though), Brown Falcon (this was at Five Islands) and Kelp Gull. So I was happy(ish) because I had at last seen an albatross species.

And the next person who says to me ‘this is very quiet today’ or ‘you should have been here last week’ gets shoved under a bus! It’s frustrating so shut up!! I also got tired of hearing people waxing lyrical about how good pelagics are and that at least there’ll be another one. Yeah, that’s all very well for the locals, but two of us (there was another English guy there) are hardly local even to the southern hemisphere, let alone a little corner of New South Wales.

I know this post has been a long whinge. Sorry, but this and the weather were among the low points (and there have been one or two) of this trip.

I hope Thailand is better…I know the southwest monsoon will be arriving soon, but it won’t be the sopping wet (and windy) place Australia currently is – the wet season doesn’t necessarily mean rain every day. Australia’s been more like the UK recently but at least on the plus side it’s stopped the Australians being smug (no other nation does smug as well as Australia) for five minutes, they’ve been too busy whingeing about being cold.

I am now up to 202 lifers seen on this trip so far, something like 224 in total.