Gulf Of Thailand Common Birds Digiscoped

Greater sand Plover - breeding

Charadrius leschenaultii

นกหัวโตทรายใหญ่

Pak Thale

02.04.11

Greater sand Plover - breeding

Charadrius leschenaultii

นกหัวโตทรายใหญ่

Pak Thale

02.04.11

Greater sand Plover - breeding

Charadrius leschenaultii

นกหัวโตทรายใหญ่

Pak Thale

02.04.11

Note 07.04.11 Let me record grateful thanks to Dave Gandy for correcting me in wrongly identifying these plovers when they are in fact Greaters. Dave reckons the bill is too long and after consideration and a little look at the literature I have to agree with him.  I'll take consolation from the fact that the literature acknowledges the difficulty in separating the two species. However I have the literature and should have looked at it before rushing into publishing. Hayman et al in Shorebirds says:  "Best features to separate from Greater are leg length and colour, relative proportions of bill, head and body, call and extent of white on wing and tail, and size. Lesser has shorter dark grey legs....... in Greater, leg colour is more variable but always paler.......Greater has a....clearly longer bill." Later in "Bare Parts" Hayman says of the Lesser :"[Bill]....length about equal to the distance between the bill-base and rear edge of eye." It is quite clear the legs are almost green, the bill is long and in fact is shorter than the distance from the base bill to the rear edge of the eye. So once more thank you Dave. 

Javan Pond Heron

Ardeola speciosa

นกยางกรอกพันธุ์ชวา

Pak Thale

02.04.11

Black-winged Stilt

Himantopus himantopus

นกตืนเทืยน

Pak Thale

02.04.11

Brown-headed Gull - breeding

Larus brunnicephalus

นกนางนวลธรรมดา

Bang Kao

03.04.11

 Little Tern

Sterna albifrons

นกนางนวลแกลบเล็ก

Bang Kao

03.04.11

 Brown-headed Gull - non-breeding

Larus brunnicephalus

นกนางนวลธรรมดา

Bang Kao

03.04.11

 Great Egret - breeding

Casmerodius albus

นกยางโทนใหญ่

Bang Kao

03.04.11

 Whiskered Tern

Chlidonias hybridus

นกนางนวลแกลบเคราขาว

Bang Kao

03.04.11

Curlew sandpiper - breeding

Calidris ferruginea

นกชายเลนปากโค้ง

Bang Kao

03.04.11

The weather in Thailand has returned to the normal heat and of course this means much better light for photography. So we had a gentle drive up and down to Cha-am Saturday afternoon returning Sunday and en route I stopped a did a little bit of digiscoping. We didn't see any Spoon-billed Sandpiper but a local birder confirmed they are still around and that Saturday morning he had seen four birds, two of which were showing breeding plumage. A lot of the waders are well advanced into breeding plumage none more so than this very striking curlew sandpiper. I hope I can shoot it again in better light to really show the complexity of its breeding plumage. As you can see the Brown-headed Gull is huge - see how it dwarfs the out of focus sanderling in the above shot!