Thailand...again - 3

We were not disappointed by Malee’s Nature Lovers Bungalows; it was a very pleasant place to stay and the beds were indeed comfortable as promised.  However, a 5.30 a.m. departure on our first morning meant that we didn’t get to linger long in them.  We were taken by 4x4 pick-up truck to a well-documented birding site, Den Ya Khat sub-station, where we spent the morning walking trails in the forest and looking for birds around the campsite.  The road up the hillside was steep and rough in places and a high clearance vehicle was a must.  The bird most enjoyed was a Collared Owlet.  Like the bird at Doi Lang it was very vocal but we did manage to find this one after a brief search.  Other highlights were Grey-headed Parrotbill and Slender-billed Oriole and there was a first proper look at a Mountain Imperial Pigeon, up to now seen only as a flyover.

 Malee's 

 A Nature Lover at the door of her bungalow

 Collared Owlet

Mountain Imperial Pigeon

From Malee’s we were able to walk to the nearby temple, which was quite interesting in itself and also produced a few birds along the way, such as Pin-tailed Pigeon, Orange-breasted Trogon and Hill Blue Flycatcher.  There were 500 or so steps up to the temple so regular stops to look at birds were very welcome!  The same walk also gave the opportunity to photograph Brown Shrike and a couple of the common bulbul species.

 Words of wisdom at the temple

 Sooty-headed Bulbul

 Red-whiskered Bulbul

Brown Shrike

Another excursion from Malee’s was to some rice paddies south of Chiang Dao town where the ‘star’ species were Glossy Ibises and Eurasian Starlings!  Neither of these species that are common in Europe was to be expected in Northern Thailand but from our point of view it was a rather disappointing outcome to say the least.  There were also a great many Eastern Cattle Egrets but they too had a somewhat familiar look about them.

 Rice paddies near Chiang Dao

Eastern Cattle Egret

The best birding in this area was on Doi Ang Khang, a mountain that peaks at 1,928 metres and, we were told, offers some wonderful scenery.  Unfortunately, once again we were blighted by the weather.  During the journey the fog became thicker and thicker with light rain, and by the time we arrived visibility was just a few metres.  Our first stop was at a Chinese Cemetery, again apparently a well-known birding site.  Here in the fog and drizzle we saw Brown-breasted Bulbuls, a species with a very limited range in Thailand and White-browed Laughingthrush.

Conditions for birding around the Chinese Cemetery were less than ideal!

We quickly moved on to Ban Luang Resort where over breakfast we enjoyed great views of Eyebrowed & Black-breasted Thrushes, Oriental Magpie Robin, White-capped Redstart and some very obliging White-headed Bulbuls but the light was still very poor.  A wander around the grounds produced Streaked Spiderhunter, Mrs Gould’s & Black-throated Sunbirds and a female Daurian Redstart.  On a better day it would have been good to spend more time here.

 Eyebrowed Thrush

 Black-breasted Thrush

 White-headed Bulbul

 Oriental Magpie Robin

 White-capped Redstart

 Streaked Spiderhunter

Despite continuing poor weather, we managed to see some decent birds in and around a nearby army camp.  What we wouldn’t have given for some sunshine as we peered into the gloom looking at, or more often looking for, Scarlet-faced Liocichla, Common Rosefinches, Mountain Bulbuls, more White-browed Laughingthrushes and a Pallas’s Warbler.  Even a poor view of the last of these was pleasing as our absence from the Algarve had recently resulted in us missing a Pallas’s Warbler at Fonte da Benémola.

 Mountain Bulbul

 Camping in the fog!

It was amusing (bemusing?) to see scores of Thai tourists arriving to Doi Ang Khang, many of them setting up tents with the intention of camping there on the mountain for the weekend.  Apparently, the cold and particularly the prospect of experiencing frost are the attractions for those who live in the heat of Bangkok.  It takes all sorts…

More to follow…

China - 4

During the second week of our stay in China we spent four nights on Happy Island.  Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to find out the island’s Chinese name nor how it came to be called Happy.  It didn’t seem to be a particularly suitable name.  Much of it was a construction site and even the shape of the island has been changed by the reclamation of huge areas of mudflats that were once wader roost sites.

 Your guess is as good as mine!

On the way there we heard that a causeway had been built connecting the island to the mainland but on arrival we were puzzled to find that we had to wait for a ferry boat and make the short crossing in a rather less convenient way!  There was no explanation.

Our accommodation was, to say the least, spacious.  Externally, the building brought to mind the Bates Motel of Hitchcock’s Psycho movie but it was obviously no more than a year or two old.  It was huge; it had meetings rooms and large communal areas but only four bedrooms.

Happy Island guesthouse

Happy Island has a history of spectacular falls of passerine migrants and after the disappointment of Beidaihe we were very much looking forward to some better birding action.  We had also been led to expect good numbers of waders.

There were several birders already there who were happy to share information about the island’s best sites and what birds had been seen recently.  One of them was Ray Barnes from Birmingham with whom I soon found I shared several mutual acquaintances from Bittell Reservoir and Upton Warren back in the 1970s.  Who would have thought 40 years ago that our then friend, schoolboy birder Mark Brazil, would go on to author The Field Guide to The Birds of East Asia that we were all now using.

Our first day on the island was disappointing.  Waders were comparatively few although they did include Far Eastern Curlew, Lesser Sand Plover, Great Knot and Terek Sandpiper so not too many complaints!  Passerines of note were Daurian Starling, Japanese Grosbeak and Yellow-rumped Flycatcher but it was hard work.

 Japanese Grosbeak

Our second morning was much better.  Two Common Cuckoos were seen flying in off the sea at about 5.30am, there were several Siberian Stonechats where none had been before and surely that must be a different Yellow-rumped Flycatcher from the one seen yesterday!  During the next few hours Grey-streaked Flycatcher, Asian Brown Flycatcher, Black-browed Reed Warbler, Radde’s, Pallas’s, Dusky & Yellow-browed Warblers, White’s Thrush, Rufous-bellied Woodpecker, Japanese Waxwing, Siberian Rubythroat and Siberian Blue Robin all contributed to making this the best day of the trip so far for migrants.

 Siberian Stonechat

 Grey-streaked Flycatcher

 Asian Brown Flycatcher

The following day saw a similar pattern.  A particular highlight was seeing Siberian Rubythroat, Siberian Blue Robin and Siberian Thrush one after the other coming to drink and bathe at the same water.  Other birds during the morning were White’s Thrushes, Eye-browed Thrushes, Swinhoe’s Robin, Pale-legged Leaf Warbler, Brown Hawk Owl, Dollarbird, Taiga Flycatcher and Asian Brown Flycatcher.  All of yesterday’s Grey-streaked Flycatchers had gone overnight; there wasn’t one to be found.

 Eye-browed Thrush

I’m a firm believer in ‘birds first, food second’ so today I skipped both breakfast and lunch.  This enabled me to walk to the far end of the island where several Saunders’s Gulls were nice to see and I agonised for a while over the identification of a probable Blyth’s Pipit among a small group of ‘yellow wagtails’.  Brown Shrikes were everywhere today, several hundred of them, I would guess.  I also found a Bar-tailed Godwit with a leg flag that identified it as a bird from Australia.  The afternoon produced little in the way of new birds but a roosting Grey Nightjar was a highlight.

 Saunders's Gull

 Brown Shrike

As it was going to be my first proper meal of the day I was looking forward to dinner but it proved to be no better than the previous night, which is to say, pretty poor.  There was definitely a marked contrast between the food on Happy Island and that at the hotel in Beidaihe.  Dinners at the Jinshan had been generally very good although fried eggs and cold chips isn’t everyone’s idea of a hearty breakfast.

There don’t appear to be any maps of Happy Island.  We were told that change there is so rapid that there would be no point!  However, as long as the small woodland areas survive they will surely continue to attract migrants and I would certainly consider going back for another try.

 Boardwalk through the Temple wood, probably the best site on the island

When it came time to leave the island we packed our bags a bit more carefully remembering the earlier ferry boat trip.  But then there was the complete surprise when our regular minibus arrived to collect us and take us back to the mainland via the causeway.  Go figure!

Back in Beidaihe, there was a single Relict Gull on the beach but our last morning there produced few other ‘new’ birds.  It would actually have been awful if we had had to leave on a morning when there had been a fall.

It has to be said that this trip was only a very limited success.  The positives were more than 70 lifers that included Ibisbill and quite a few ‘Sibes’ but the scale of the migration at Beidaihe and Happy Island was poor compared with accounts I have read of previous years , the numbers of waders were disappointing and the opportunities for photography were not as good as I had hoped.  But I’m still glad I went!   

Thanks are due to Ray Tipper who organised the trip from this end; Jean Wang of the Beidaihe Jinshan International Travel Service who made all the arrangements in China and obtained all the required permissions, all of which were impossible to fault; our Chinese guide, the delightful Carol, who seemed able to fix almost anything; our driver, who hadn’t previously adopted a western name but is now known as Ayrton - he was excellent; Mark Andrews, Paul Holt, Vaughan Ashby and everyone else who shared bird information.

China - 1

When Ray Tipper told me that he and two Avian Adventures clients were planning to spend the first two weeks of May in China it didn’t take long to persuade me to join them!  Their main aim was to be bird photography but for Ray it was also to be a scouting trip with the intention of possibly arranging a tour for 2014.

Red-billed Blue Magpie

The itinerary included six nights at Beidaihe, four nights on Happy Island and excursions to Old Peak to look for Koklass Pheasant and to Qinglong River in the hope of seeing Ibisbill.  Beidaihe and Happy Island have long been known as migration hotspots with early to mid May the best time to be there.  Clearly there was the possibility of seeing plenty of birds! 

 Brown Shrike

For me it was also an opportunity to travel to Asia for the first time, to see the Great Wall of China and maybe to see some of those species that I have previously only read about, the ones that have names beginning with the word Siberian!  Just as importantly, there was also the chance of seeing more than a dozen wader species that I hadn’t seen before.

Grey Nightjar

I’ve been back for four days and am now starting to make progress with processing the many photographs taken, a few of which will appear here on the blog over the next couple of weeks or so together with some details of the trip and the birds seen.