Doi Angkang: 12-14 Aug 2010 II

The real highlight of the second day came when a large flock of more than 20 Long-tailed Broadbills (Psarisomus dalhousiae) appeared in a large tree on the different side of the hill. The bird is incredibly beautiful with its comical black, yellow, green and blue pattern. Too bad the birds were all too far for my lens, but we all had a good time watching them from a telescope. There were many juvenile birds in the group as well and they look so different from the adults. It was the first time for me to see a juvenile of this bird. If you want to see how pretty the bird actually is, you can simply click here.

Long-tailed Broadbills (Psarisomus dalhousiae)

(From left to right) 1. This worn male Hill Blue Flycatcher (Cyornis banyumas) was also sticking around under the thick vegetation at the Royal Project's restaurant. 2. This young female seems to be the fledgling of him. 3. An immature Long-tailed Shrike (Lanius schach) in a garden near the restaurant 4. Blue-winged Siva (Siva cyanouroptera)

This shy Green-billed Malkoha (Phaenicophaeus tristis) was feeding along a thick dense bush in the garden near the Royal Project's restaurant. Although being a subfamily of the cuckoos, malkohas build nests and raise their own chicks unlike true cuckoos. The Green-billed Malkoha is a common bird throughout the country, but undoubtedly a difficult bird to get a decent pic of. It is very shy and almost always stay inside thick bushes.

On the last day, we luckily spotted 3 adult Crocodile Salamanders (Tylototriton shanjing) sitting still at the bottom of a small pond inside the garden near the restaurant. They had an interesting habit of swimming up from the bottom of the pond to catch insects on the surface of water. We later picked two of them up to the bank shortly for taking photos before letting them crawled back to the pond.

I spotted a large flock of Bar-winged Flycatcher-Shrikes (Hemipus picatus) staying on the top of a very tall tree in the garden since the early morning. I could only hope for the birds to come down to the lower trees, so I could be able to take some photos of them. Finally, before leaving the place, some of the birds came down to the lower trees and gave me a chance to photograph them. One immature bird even perched in front of me in a very close range calling for food from its parent. Since it's a species which I haven't successfully got a decent photo of, I was quite happy with the result.

Small Birds

This post is going to be the last one for this week since I'm going to Doi Angkang tomorrow morning and will be back on Sunday. Yesterday as I was walking around in my garden, I heard a loud voice of the Olive-backed Sunbird (Cinnyris jugularis), a usual visitor of my house, calling from a tree nearby. I later found a male perching in a bael tree singing his sweet metallic song. It is a very small bird with long curved beak adapted for nectar sucking. The name sunbird comes from the male bird's glossy feathers. For the Olive-backed Sunbird, male bird has bluish-glossed feathers on its throat and upper breast with maroon breast band and bright yellow belly. Female has glossy black throat replaced by plain yellow feathers. It is one of the few sunbirds in Thailand that can be found in gardens and cities.

Olive-backed Sunbird

Another small bird for this post is the Common Tailorbird (Orthotomus sutorius), a member of warbler family, which can be commonly seen in parks and gardens. Male bird has elongated central pair of tail feathers during this season of the year, but unfortunately I could only photographed the female, which has much a shorter tail. This bird also has loud high-pitched voice which can be recognised easily. Although very common, it is truly a difficult target to photograph.