A New Place

Just a few days before I left Thailand, I discovered my new favourite birding spot only a few kilometres away from my house. It's a flooded area on the Mae Taeng River side filled with tall local reedbeds scattered with short grass. I found it interesting since when I first met the flock of Chestnut-capped Babbler and I followed it into the reeds. There were few tracks made by water buffaloes into the reeds. I followed through the tracks and discovered so many interesting species, especially the Little Brown Jobs.

A nice scenery in the morning after the rain

A flock of Red Collared-Dove (Streptopelia tranquebarica)
White-breasted Waterhen with food for its chicks

Immature male Yellow-bellied Prinia (Prinia flaviventris)

Yellow-eyed Babbler (Chrysomma sinense)

The highlights of the place include a single Rusty-rumped Warbler (Locustella certhiola) I luckily came across while I was chasing the Chestnut-capped Babblers, Baikal Bush-Warblers (Bradypterus davidi), Thick-billed Warblers (Acrocephalus aedon), Red Avadavats (Amandava amandava) and surely Chestnut-capped Babblers (Timalia pileata). I'll be posting photos of the babbler later in another post cos there's just too many photos of them.

The Last Time

It was September 13 when I last visited Doi Angkang before coming back to Japan. As I have said in earlier blog that it started raining again after the weather began to be sunny for quite a long while. I mainly walked around the same area where I did birdwatching a week before. The fruiting persimmon trees were still attracting all kinds of bulbul very well. I tried so hard on photographing my favorite Crested Finchbill and sort of failed as usual. There were Brown-breasted, Red-whiskered, Sooty-headed, Flavescent and Black Bulbuls around the area. A flock of White-browed Laughingthrush and Rusty-cheeked Scimitar-Babblers were also moving around in low bushes with their noisy calls. A new comer was the Arctic Warbler (Phylloscopus borealis) which was feeding along with the resident White-tailed Leaf-Warbler (Phylloscopus davisoni) near the persimmon tree. However, I couldn't get any decent shot of it.

The best I could get from this unique Crested Finchbill

A Brown-breasted Bulbul visitting persimmon tree

And a record shot of the Arctic Warbler

I was surprised to see a small flock of Yellow-eyed Babbler consisting of mainly immature birds. I usually see this babbler in lowland cultivated area or wetlands, but not on high mountains like this. Another pale morph juvenile Oriental Honey-Buzzard of the season soared over my head with a much smaller juvenile Chinese Goshawk (Accipiter soloensis), which was trying to attack the honey-buzzard all the time.

The secretive Yellow-eyed Babbler

Last time I saw so many Brown Shrikes but this time only one juvenile bird was seen. However, two Grey-backed Shrikes (Lanius tephronotus) have arrived, so as the White Wagtails (Motacilla alba). At noon, rain started to fall too hard for birdwatching so I had to go back home. Along the way came a nice group of Ashy Woodswallows on the same dead tree. This time with the heavy rainfall, it looked more artistic than ever.

A pair of Ashy Woodswallows doing courtship display

A female Burmese Shrike from Ban Arunothai

The only Brown Shrike seen, a juvenile

Here Comes the Rain (again & again)

Thought it would have stopped raining but I was wrong. Hopefully this time it'll be the last rainfall of the year. Today it rained so hard that I couldn't even hear my music. I went to Doi Angkang again last Sunday and it was raining in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon, so I inevitably had a hard time birdwatching under the showering rain. Recently the Asian Barred-Owlets(there are sure more than 1 now) have been calling quite often, both during daytime and at night. And fortunately I began to wake up early enough to notice that there's the song of some Cyornis flycatcher singing in the forest edge beyond my backyard every morning. The Tickell's Blue-Flycatcher (C.tickelliae) is resident around here and I see them quite often when I take a walk around the forest, which I don't do much actually because all the dogs there are so scary, and not to mention about the mosquitoes. However, I've seen a Chinese Blue-Flycatcher (C.glaucicomans) singing during migration like this time of year in my house also, and I just forgot how those songs are different from each other, so maybe I have to look out for the bird. Next Friday I will be back in Japan again. Hope the temperature has cooled down so I don't have to turn on the air conditioner!

Doi Angkang: Aug 22-23

Just being too lazy to write about birds from Doi Angkang trip two weeks ago. As I have said before, it rained most of the time and we couldn't go out birding so much, but we surprisingly got several interesting species within a very short period of time. We arrived Doi Angkang quite late in the afternoon. We stopped at the first viewpoint and got some swallows including Striated Swallow (Hirundo striolata) and the winter visitor Red-rumped Swallow (H. daurica) and Barn Swallow (H. rustica). Few Ashy Wood-Swallows (Artamus fuscus) were also perching on a very artistically beautiful dead tree. Near the car park we saw two Chestnut-capped Babblers (Timalia pileata) moving around in dense grass. It is quite common here at Doi Angkang, though relatively uncommon elsewhere. One of the bird was carrying a long dry grass, which supposed to be used for nest-building. Along the road we found one juvenile Crested Goshawk (Accipiter trivirgatus) perching on a dead tree before flying out as we tried to approach it. A noisy group of White-browed Scimitar-Babbler (Pomatorhinus schisticeps) mixed with White-browed Laughingthrush (Garrulax sannio) was also seen in a plum garden along the road too.

A Chestnut-capped Babbler carrying a dry grass preparing for its nest.

A juvenile Striated Swallow; Note its orange beak.

A worn Red-rumped Swallow; Note rufous nuchal collar.

In the evening we spent time birding around the checkpoint at Doi Angkang-Fang junction. Here we found 2 pairs of Long-tailed Minivet (Pericrocotus ethologus) moving together along the pine trees. A Japanese Tit (Parus minor) and a Chestnut-vented Nuthatch (Sitta nagaensis) were also feeding together with the minivets. A surprise was a pair of Spot-winged Grosbeak (Mycerobas melanozanthos) male and female which appeared at dusk. The male bird perched on a pine tree and gave a strange call which somewhat reminds me of a laughingthrush. Before dark, there was a nice bird-wave moving around in low bushes, which included 10+ Silver-eared Mesia mixed with Blue-winged Siva and a beautiful male Verditer Flycatcher. The next day we didn't go birding anywhere since it rained so hard, so we decided to leave after 12. Along the way back we also got a pair of Chestnut-bellied Nuthatch (Sitta castanea) feeding in a deciduous forest near Ban Arunothai village. They were the subspecies S.c.tonkinensis of NW Thailand, which has very dark chestnut underparts. Before leaving Ban Arunothai area, also we saw a lone Rufous-winged Buzzard (Butastor liventer) perching on a dead tree along the roadside. This guy was quite cooperative so I could finally managed to get some good shots of this species. In all we got over 70 species in only two days of birding! This should satisfy my hunger in birding for quite a while.

A male Long-tailed Minivet

Rufous-winged Buzzard, a raptor of open deciduous forest.

Oriental White-Eyes move fastly in small groups.