Uncommon Gulls at Bang Pu

I have not been able to get out this week so far and due to work commitments am unlikely to get out until the weekend. However Paan, aka Wichyanan Limparungpatthanakij, sent me a report and some pictures of Slender-billed Gulls (2) and a Black-headed Gull he had observed at Bang Pu, Samut Prakhan. Now Bang Pu is an easy drive from Bangkok and there is a pier there with some excellent sea food restaurants so it would make a perfect day out plus there will be hundreds if not thousands of brown-headed gulls and many terns and all manner of other common birds and some not so common. A bit like Largs near Glasgow; well when I think of the weather and the food, maybe not so.......! It is just a straight drive along the Sukhumvit Road, about 37 km to be precise so there might be quicker ways of getting there than the direct approach.

Slender-billed Gulls

Larus genei

นกนางนวลปากเรียว

Bang Pu, Samut Prakhan

October 2010

photo credit: Wichyanan Limparungpatthanakij

Black-headed  Gull

 Larus ridibundus

นกนางนวลขอบปีกขาว

Bang Pu, Samut Prakhan

October 2010

photo credit: Wichyanan Limparungpatthanakij

Over the last couple of days I have downloaded two very interesting documents which should keep me busy for the next few years. The first one is  Thailand Red Data: Birds, published jointly in 2005 by Thailand's Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning and the United Nations Development Programme. It has 160 pages of information and photographs on Thailand's extinct, endangered and rarer bird species. Looks very informative and interesting. Secondly, hot off the press so to speak,  Bird Korea's 2010 Blueprint for the conservation of the avian biodiversity of the South Korean part of the Yellow Sea. This is another 160 pages of information, in Korean and English, and photographs and may well persuade me to visit Korea at some point to take a look at the birds there. These links take you directly to download sites.

Roll on the weekend. I want to get out into the field!

Edit: Thursday evening 29.10.10 A friend of Paan's has sighted a Heuglin's Gull at Bang Pu, see post below, and Tom Backlund sitting on his veranda in Hua Hin on Monday counted 225 Black Bazas!