Chris Watson, a bird guide based in Alice Springs, Australia, contacted me a few months back about a birding trip in the local area. After some discussion we decided to try out a few sites in Phang Nga and see what we could find.
Coming along for the day were two of Chris’ friends, Col Fink and Samantha (Sam) Hopley.
The weather this year has been far from predictable with terrible flooding in the beginning of the year and plenty of scattered thundershowers throughout what should have been the dry season. Our birding trip was scheduled at what should have been the beginning of the wet season but by this time this year the wet season was already in full swing. Happily for us, the beginning of the wet season also heralds the start of the pitta breeding season and we were all quite eager to find a few of these special birds.
Our first stop was Sri Phang Nga National Park where we were met with light rain and grey skies. Birding commenced a bit later than I had hoped but that didn’t dampen things too much, especially when our first bird for the day was a pair of Black and Yellow Broadbills close to the ranger office.
Five Hooded Pittas and a single Blue winged Pitta were heard calling around headquarters and our initial attempt to connect with a pair near the river was unsuccessful. Around the back of the bungalows we managed to call a Hooded Pitta in quite close and all our frantic searching for the bird was in vain until Sam finally located this terrestrial bird almost 20 feet up in the boughs of a tree! –Our first Hooded Pitta for the season!
Down the trail the sound of the swollen river drowned out the calls of many birds and made it hard to call out the Blue banded Kingfisher at its usual stakeout.
Down by the campsite we found Orchraecous Bulbul, Chestnut bellied Malkoha, Raffles Malkoha, Great Iora and a pair of Great Hornbills flew silently overhead.
The weather alternated frequently from sunny to cloudy and the birds seemed to be wary of coming out in full force, making birding a little slow.
On the trail to Tamnang Waterfall we encountered a family of Abbot’s Babblers with their young, all drawn to my playback of the Horsfield’s Babbler. A Green Broadbill hung around as I attempted to draw it in with a playback call but the bird seemed confused and all we could see of it was a green blur whizzing overhead from time to time.
Other birds seen included Rufous winged Philentoma, Moustached Babbler, Silver rumped Needletail, White rumped Munia, Asian Fairy Bluebird, Black naped Monarch and White rumped Shama.
The rains began pelting down soon thereafter and we ended up making the trek back to headquarters in the wet.
After lunch we headed off to the Phang Nga river to see if we could find the River Lapwing. The river was also swollen to riverbanks, offering little or no exposed sandbars for the lapwings to rest. Rain then began to trickle down and forced us to retreat to the shelter of the car, but not before we had connected with Stripe throated Bulbul, Yellow vented Bulbul and Grey rumped Treeswift.
In the fields near Takuapah we stopped to see if we could find any snipes or herons which usually inhabit the marshlands but since the marshes we now lakes, we failed to find much. A few kilometers back up the road we found a relatively dry patch of earth where we twitched Red wattled Lapwing, Greater and Lesser Coucal, White throated Kingfisher, Little Egret and Scaly breasted Munia. A pair of Red Wattled Lapwing were seen staring down a giant Water Monitor near a Chinese tomb, creating something like a Mexican standoff which went on for quite some time.
Since Thai Muang Golf Course is still off limits due to construction on a new five-star hotel, we decided to head for Pra Srinakarin Municipal Park in Phang Nga town in hopes of finding some of the limestone specialties which reside there. When we arrived we headed straight for the caverns of the limestone karsts where we found a single Blue Whistling Thrush. On the way out we were able to observe some Stirated Swallows roosting in the shelter of the cave, as well as many Pacific and Red rumped Swallows flying about in the rain.
After the showers ended we took a look around the park and found a Coppersmith Barbet, a Pink necked Green Pigeon, a number of Jungle Myna and a single Blue rock Thrush drying off after the heavy downpour.
Before heading back we decided to look in the mangroves to see if we could connect with the Mangrove Pitta. Our first stop was the Mangrove Park near Phang Nga Town, where we were met with silence with the exception of a large owl (probably a Buffy Fish Owl) which Chris saw briefly before it took to flight.
The short walkway in Ao Phang Nga National Park Headquarters was also pretty dead, and even the once common Brown winged Kingfisher was nowhere to be seen.
The day ended with a delicious dinner at a seafood restaurant in Phuket, where we padded our list with a few late evening birds such as Collared Kingfisher, Greater and Lesser Sand Plover, Whimbrel, Eurasian Curlew and Common Redshank.
Despite the bad weather we were able to find a number of quality birds and ended up with a list of 78 species. I would like to thank Chris, Col and Sam for a wonderful outing and hope they get to experience southern Thailand and its wonderful birds again in the future, next time hopefully with a little less rain!
A copy of this report along with a complete list of species seen can be viewed here. To view it you will need to have Adobe Acrobat installed on your system. If you have not yet installed it, click here to go to the Adobe installation page.
