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Coppersmith Barbet

Don Tako, Ratchaburi

09.02.11

I did my bit for the kingdom of birds yesterday at school. A colleague told me a small bird was in one of the lower grade classrooms and that the kids were chasing it around and making it feel scared and nervous. So we went to have a look and found a little sparrow  on a ledge in a corner, clearly petrified. I took off my shirt and used it as a net to catch the bird and then managed to pick it up and release it. Most of the kids know of my interest in birds but I don't think they understood it extended to taking off my shirt!

Pied Kingfisher

Don Tako, Ratchaburi

09.02.11

Yesterday afternoon the pied kingfishers were back but a group of small boys were intent on splashing about in the stream so that scared the birds away. I managed a couple of shots. Looks as if the kingfishers are nesting  nearby so maybe a bit of stealth and fieldcraft might enable me to get into position for some decent shots........when my scope comes back. I am amazed that we have 4 species of kingfisher on our doorstep: common, collared, black-capped and now pied. 

With the boys creating mayhem in the river I headed towards the main rice paddy. Flocks of black drongos, plain-backed sparrows and a coppersmith barbet "hooting" in a nearby tree. With the scope I might have managed a decent shot. I proceeded on into the rice paddy and there I watched a black-shouldered kite hover in its very distinctive manner. And in came a male pied harrier for a bit of supper, as ever sending everything scurrying. Sadly too far away to photograph. What a mighty bird!

Black-shouldered Kite

Don Tako, Ratchaburi

09.02.11

The day before's eagle remains unidentified, not very good shots. Tom agrees it is an eagle so we can record an eagle sp. for the local patch and I must keep looking! No sign of it yesterday evening however.

An Unsuccessful Twitch

Coppersmith Barbet

Kaeng Krachan 23.10.11

With a huge amount of pressure on my time right now I decided to try to twitch the reported Spot-billed Starlings on Sunday afternoon, my free time this week. These birds have been seen in the Kaeng Krachan National Park area and I opted to go look for them as opposed to eagles, vultures and shorebirds. I am sorry to report that I dipped on them. I am pretty sure I didn't miss them as I got to the location at about 4:30 pm and had a good scout around. A fair few Bronzed Drongos and a few Coppersmith Barbets but not much else. Fortunately a mere 240 km round trip which I am sure hardly registers on the Richter scale of unsuccessful twitches! My reward was a lovely drive up into the mountains and a real sense of how beautiful Thailand is and how lucky I am to live here. I should mention that in the day's embers I watched a flock of 50-60 Pied Hornbills flying across the sky. How lucky I am indeed! I must explore Kaeng Krachan more: I don't because it gets very busy at weekends and dodging traffic is not my idea of birding. I am completely tied up this weekend on a course but fortunately that will be the end of it and the summer holidays are in sight!

The Sirindhorn International Environmental Park, Cha-am

Common hoopoe

Upupa epops

นกกะรางหัวขวาน

Sirondhorn Environmental Park, CHa-am

08.09.10

I had a brief look at a few fairly common birds today during the school's educational trip to Sirindhon International Environmental Park. 160 rampant kids are not ideal birding companions! However these axe birds as the Thais call them, or rather, common hoopoes, were very obliging. These were taken with my EOS 500D with the 85-250 mm zoom. I'll photograph any bird and hoopoes may well be commoners but, you can see for yourself, they are very striking creatures. Elsewhere we saw a little heron, a pacific golden plover, common sandpiper, coppersmith barbets, olive-backed sunbirds, little egrets, little cormorants, lesser sand-plovers...... what you would expect. If you were stranded in the Hua-Hin/Cha-am area on a  "conventional"(!)  holiday you could do a lot worse than here. Nice friendly people, good facilities, a decent mangrove walkway, a good stretch of beach, restaurants, toilets ...... Bring the family. There is also a decent exhibition on environmental protection/sustainability themes.